by Jillian Neal
“That isn’t true,” her mother vowed adamantly. She lifted Kaitlyn’s face in her perfectly manicured hands. “I loved your father from the moment I laid eyes on him, and I still love him to this day. I don’t like him very much most of the time, but I will always love him if for no other reason than for the fact that he gave me my children. He doesn’t have it in himself to forgive me and he shouldn’t have to, but that doesn’t mean that I regret loving him.”
“I should certainly have given you other reasons to love me, and I sure as hell should’ve given you reasons to like me,” Her father’s voice vacuumed the room of all other sounds.
“Langston, what are you doing here?”
Kaitlyn concentrated. Her mother’s question didn’t ring with vengeance. It carried a note of hope.
“I went to the station and couldn’t get anything done, so I went out to talk to Keith, or talk to that blasted headstone. I realized he would have given me hell for the way I’d acted and the way I treated your cowboy. I just … when I walked in that room expecting to walk you down the aisle and you were gone … I came unglued. I know I haven’t been the easiest person to live with since your brother died.”
“I told them why.” Evelyn sighed.
“I heard that, too, Evie.”
Evie.
Kaitlyn sank back down on the sofa. Racking her brain, she tried desperately to remember the last time she’d heard her father refer to her mother by his nickname for her. Shaking off a little of the weight that had been placed on her, she drew a deep breath. “Wait, Keith used to argue with you about me?”
She had no memories of any such things. Keith was perfect. She was broken. He never did anything their parents didn’t like.
“He argued with me on your behalf constantly whenever he didn’t have his tongue down that girl’s throat I couldn’t stand.”
“Caroline?”
“Her, and the ones he cheated on her with,” her father threw a nasty glare at her mother.
“Keith cheated on Caroline?” Disbelief crashed through her. How had she missed all of this?
“That has nothing to do with you right now, young lady. I thought you were finally making an effort. I thought you were actually going to make something of yourself. Then I find out you’d just walked away from a job I handed you and had taken up with some cowboy.”
“I cannot marry Seth.” She clung hard and fast to the only thing that she knew was certain.
“Fine, but does it have to be him?”
“I didn’t say I was marrying Grant either.”
“I saw the way you looked at him, Kit-kat. Your mother used to look at me that way before everything went straight to hell.”
“Girls, would you mind going upstairs for a few minutes? I need to speak to your father alone.”
It had been many years since Kaitlyn and Sophie had been sent up to their rooms, but just like always, they took a seat on the top step just out of sight and listened.
“You know, I wouldn’t mind trying to look at you the way Kaitlyn looks at Grant again.” Kaitlyn swore the tremor in her mother’s voice shook her to the core. Her breath stalled in her lungs.
“She has marks on her wrists. I don’t know how you could have missed them. He bound her hands at some point.”
Sophie jerked Kaitlyn’s hands out of her lap. Her mouth hung open. “At some point I want to hear about this.” She mouthed slow enough for Kaitlyn to read her lips.
“Yes, well, as I recall, the first time I took you back to Charleston to meet my parents I had cuff marks on both my wrists and my ankles. You and I both know it wasn’t because I’d been arrested.”
“Ew, ew, ew,” Kaitlyn and her sister cringed.
“I’ve tried, Evelyn. I have tried my damnedest to get it out of my head, but I can’t. I can’t not see you with him. I can’t. And every time I try that image gets tied up with those men walking into my office.”
“Then please, can we try therapy together? I think it would help.”
“It would do nothing but alert the entire city to the fact that we haven’t been able to move on after our son’s death. It makes me look weak, and I won’t have that. I’m the Chief of Police.”
“At some point, Langston, our family has to mean more to you than your reputation. I don’t even think it’s me you’re still so angry at, and it certainly isn’t Kaitlyn or Grant. You’re mad at Keith, and until you can make some effort to forgive yourself and to forgive him for disappointing you none of us will be able to go on.”
“This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.” Her father’s roar had Kaitlyn covering her good ear. “He was supposed to come home, and not in a damned bag.”
Simply unable to listen to any more, Kaitlyn raced to her bedroom. Nothing made sense. The world around her wasn’t hers. She had no truths. The pillars of her youth disintegrated around her. Everything but her bed and nightstand was stacked in boxes on the floor. She was supposed to move into Seth’s apartment. The rock-like enclosure in her throat sealed off her air supply.
Fishing her phone out of her purse where Grant had laid it with the rest of her luggage, she touched his name.
“Hey, peaches, I was hoping you’d call. Everything okay?”
“No.” Her voice had no volume.
“I’m on my way.”
“Just please talk to me.”
“I’m gonna talk, baby, while I come back to get you.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Mindlessly, Kaitlyn threw every single thing in her suitcase into the back corner of her empty closet. Tearing open the boxes on top of the piles, she located every pair of jeans she owned, a half-dozen shirts, and a few pairs of ratty pajamas. Hurling them into the suitcase, she paced.
“I’m almost there, sugar. Deep breaths for me, okay?”
She tried. God, she tried, but breathing meant crying, and she refused to do that anymore. She refused to feel anything at all. The air in her lungs burned in an effort to escape but she refused it. She didn’t want to breathe, or to think, or to feel. She only wanted to leave. Empty. She was completely empty with nothing left to give. What she couldn’t seem to understand was how anyone could simultaneously feel so empty and so heavy.
“I’m here, baby. Want me to come in and get you?” Grant’s smooth sleepy tone gave her something to cling to.
“No, I’m on my way out.” She ended his call and raced out of her bedroom, almost toppling over Sophie.
“Where are you going?” Her sister demanded.
“Back to the ranch or anywhere Grant wants to go. Anywhere that isn’t here.”
“You can’t just keep running away.”
“I’m not running away.”
“Yes, you are. Look, I know you’ve been the one dealing with everything for a long time, but we have to deal with all of this new stuff, too. Mom and Dad are in her bedroom talking. I can’t hear what they’re saying.”
“I don’t care what they’re saying. I don’t care about anything anymore. I’ll call you later.”
Grant met her at the door, relieved her of her bags, and flung them in the back of the truck. “I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”
“You look exhausted. Can we just go back to your grandfather’s house? We can come back and get your truck in the morning.”
With a single nod, once again, he became her getaway.
He asked no questions. She had no answers to give. Nothing made sense anyway. When she fell into his arms in the guest bedroom, he took her in, holding her in the sanctuary of his body, and became a drug to numb the pain.
Grant walked the length of his grandfather’s lawn twice, debating running his fist through the metal shed on his left. Dammit, he needed more land to walk. This half-acre shit was insanity in a box. How did his granddaddy stand this?
He assumed the sun was somewhere under the thick covering of clouds pressing in around him. His own personal sunshine was still curled up in bed, a beautiful broken disaster. He’d expected tears t
he night before, but she’d given up none. Too strong. She’d been through too much. Confusion was the only recognizable emotion drowning in the blue oceans of her eyes.
Stomping back inside the house, he poured another cup of coffee.
“You could just wake her up,” his grandfather tried.
“No. She’s exhausted mentally, emotionally, and physically. Let her sleep.”
“She give you any idea what happened last night?”
Grant shook his head. “She didn’t want to talk. She wanted to run.”
“You gonna take her back to the ranch?”
“I swear I’ve got half a mind to put her in my truck, point it due west, and just drive. She needs to be done with the whole lot of ‘em. All they do is hurt her. I won’t have it anymore.”
“Careful there, son. It ain’t about what you will or won’t have, it’s about what she wants to happen when it comes to her family.”
“I know that. Don’t mean I have to like it.”
Suddenly, Grant sensed her presence. That sweet peach smell of the lotion she’d taken to wearing lately clung to his lungs as she made her appearance in the kitchen.
“Hey, baby, you sleep okay?”
Her hair hung in a cloud of red curls sticking out every direction. He’d put her in the t-shirt he’d been wearing when he’d gotten her back to the house. Her ample curves tugged at the faded cotton. Sheet marks streaked the freckles on her cheeks. Her eyes were clear and fervent as she stared up at him like he was the only thing in her world that made a damned bit of sense. That was all he needed, for her to believe in him.
The anger and irritation he’d felt for the past three hours bled from him in an instant. “Thank you for letting me stay here again, Mr. Camden.” Her tender sleepy voice gripped Grant’s soul. It was perforated with a sadness he had no idea how to erase.
“You are welcome over here anytime, darlin’. Can I get you some coffee?”
“I got it, Pops,” Grant handed her a mug and watched over her as she downed a long sip.
“I didn’t mean to sleep in. I know you need to get back to the ranch.”
“Hey, come here to me.” When she set the mug down, he drew her into his arms. “I’m fine. We’ll do whatever you want to do. I ain’t in any hurry.”
“He’s got a bunch a’ brothers and sisters and a daddy who’d be more than happy to help him out with his chores. Let him take care of you.” Granddaddy Camden winked at her. Grant tried to locate his customary irritation that he was going to have to ask for help, but came up empty. She was worth him swallowing a little of his pride.
“Yeah, I know, but he hates to ask people for help.” She gave him a grin that didn’t quite reach her eyes.
“Truer words may never have been spoken, but love changes a man.” Granddaddy Camden shot Grant a goading grin.
“I’m not so sure that’s true, Mr. Camden. I can make breakfast. You must be hungry.”
Grant and his grandfather shared a quick puzzled glance as she busied herself in the refrigerator pulling out eggs and bacon.
An hour later, Granddaddy Camden drove them all back to Kaitlyn’s parents’ home to pick up Grant’s truck. The knot in his gut just wouldn’t quit. Gall sizzled through his veins. Something was coming. He could feel it. His fists clenched and unclenched constantly. His muscles tensed of their own accord. His jaw was locked so tightly his molars ached.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized again.
“You didn’t do anything to be sorry for.”
“I haven’t told you why you came to get me last night.”
“You talk whenever you’re ready, sugar.”
“Thank you.” The heat of the kiss she brushed on his jaw eased his strain until his grandfather keyed in the gate code and headed back to the house that had hurt his girl. Bile and fury made a biting cocktail in his stomach.
As they neared her house, the anger located its target.
“Oh, no,” Kaitlyn whimpered.
A red Audi with the epitaph of their relationship carved in the hood sat beside Grant’s truck, and leaning against the hitch of his brand new GMC like a fool with a death wish was Seth himself. His smug expression made Grant want to remove his sac via his throat.
“What is he doing here?” She withered in the seat beside him.
Grant watched her attempt to summon courage from the air around her and come up empty, but she wasn’t fighting this rat bastard. Not this time. “You stay put. Do not let her out of this truck,” he ordered his grandfather.
“What are you going to do?” Kaitlyn demanded.
“Might talk to him, might kill him. That remains to be seen.” Letting the spurs on his boots jangle, Grant seethed as he marched forward. “If I was you, I’d get your ass off ‘a my truck lest you want me to cram my tailpipe up it and twist.”
“You’re the new guy?” Seth laughed. “You. She chose you over me? How quaint.”
Impudent little asswipe was playing with fire. Unadulterated rage seared up Grant’s spine.
“You ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed are ya? She’s sitting in my truck. Slept in my arms last night. Been keeping my bed nice and warm for days. Sure as hell seems to me she’s mine.”
A flashfire of pure hatred formed in Seth’s eyes. His nostrils flared. He stalked forward but then seemed to think better of it and retreated. Grant stood almost a head taller than him and the weakling city-boy didn’t look like he ever lifted more than his finger.
Grant chuckled. “Maybe you do have a few brain cells to rub together, but you’re still mighty close to my truck, meaning I’m mighty close to beating the ever-lovin’ shit outta you. Been lookin’ for a reason since I found out what you did to her.”
“What I did to her? She’s the one whoring herself out with some dropout with more debt than good sense. I have several friends in the police department, I did a little ...”
He didn’t get to finish. Grant had him by the collar of his fancy-ass shirt. With one slight turn of his wrist he shut off the little bitch’s air supply, watching his face turn as red as his ass was gonna be. “What did you just call her?” he snarled.
“Grant! Don’t hit him. He’ll have you arrested. Let him go,” Kaitlyn was beside him in a hot minute. “What do you want, Seth? Why are you even here? When I told you to go to hell that’s precisely what I meant.”
Seth coughed and Grant eased his grip. “Answer her,” he growled.
Shaking himself loose, a crazed look came over Seth. “I came to hand deliver this.” He thrust a thick envelope he produced from the back pocket of his slacks into Kaitlyn’s hands.
If she’d rolled her eyes any harder, they would have lodged themselves in her skull somewhere. Grant kept his malevolent glare on the douche-nugget before him.
Ripping open the envelope, she narrowed her eyes. “You’re suing me for public humiliation?” Her laughter shocked Grant. Being sued didn’t sound good. “You work for the D.A. You know public humiliation suits never go anywhere.”
“I’m also suing you for damages to my car.” Seth reached for the paperwork, but Kaitlyn whisked them away and Grant caught his hand.
“You ever put your hands anywhere near her again, I’ll break every single bone in your body, slowly.”
“Why are you really doing this? I have the text, Seth. It’s on my phone and I already forwarded it to lots of other phones, including my father’s. All I have to do it is show it to whatever judge you try to bribe to get this to even go to claims court. You’d be the laughing stock of the entire district attorney’s office.”
“You want me to go away so bad, Kaitlyn. You want me to leave you so you can go off and be a baby making bitch for him, because let’s be real, we all know that’s all you really wanted and you’re not capable of anything else. I’ll be happy to leave you to your hillbilly loser as soon as you pay me back for ruining everything.”
“I’m gonna kill you,” Grant drew his fist back but Kaitlyn stepped between him and Seth
.
“No. Don’t. Please, Grant.” She spun and faced Seth. “So, you don’t actually want this to go to court. That’s it right? You think I’ll pay you off. You’re dumber than you look.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Kaitlyn. You won’t be paying me anything. How would you? You gave up the job your father handed you and went to work as some low-life short order cook. But we all know your father won’t let this go to court. He’ll write you a check to get me to keep my mouth shut. Didn’t take me long to figure out how to fix everything you broke. This is perfect. Mighty Chief Sommerville can’t ever let anyone know what a stupid excuse for a daughter he has or that his wife is just as much a whore as his little girl.”
“How dare you?!” Kaitlyn lunged at him, and in that moment Seth’s fate was sealed. He drew his hand back and whipped it across her face.
Grant clobbered him, bringing him to the ground a half-second later.
Stumbling backwards, Kaitlyn gasped as Grant pummeled Seth. She cringed. The sound of shattering bone was loud enough for her to hear.
“Grant, please. Stop! You don’t know what he can do.” Hot tears singed the raw skin on her cheek.
Seth didn’t have a prayer. Grant’s knee dug into his groin. His fists flew so quickly, they were a blur. The man hauled hay and cattle for a living. He’d grown up with brothers who were just as muscular as he was. He played football. Seth had done none of those things.
His groans and gasps were gut-wrenching. Another pop of broken bone made its way to Kaitlyn’s ears.
The reminder of why he wasn’t likely to leave the front lawn of the Sommerville’s home unless it was on a stretcher burned on in Kaitlyn’s face.
“Grant, stop. You’re gonna kill him, son.” Granddaddy Camden’s voice reached through the haze of terror swamping Kaitlyn’s hearing. He gently eased her further away from the fight.
Grant stood and jerked Seth off of the ground, trying to make him stand upright for another round. His head hung oddly to the side. He was barely conscious.