by Nina West
A corn kernel to the forehead pulls my attention back. I look up to find Connor watching me intently through a sip of beer.
I sigh. “Yeah?”
“You good?”
I nod.
He leans in slightly. “It’s not because of... you know what.” He quirks a brow. “No regrets, right?”
For all that Connor may be, he’s decent enough to be concerned that my boundaries were pushed too far. I feel bad that he has no clue what this is really about. If I could tell him, I would. But instead, I offer him a weak smile. “No regrets. I swear.” Not about what I did with him and Ronan.
Regrets about Henry? That’s an entirely different question, and one I can’t answer. Had I not met him, not fallen for him, not given him me, would I still be that idiot pining over Jed?
Chalk it up to a life lesson. A brutally painful one.
Ronan smooths a hand over my back. “She’ll be fine. Right, red?”
“You shut up. I’m still pissed at you. It’s your fault we missed the last ferry,” Connor grumbles, shoving a mouthful of meatloaf into his mouth.
I nod at Ronan with appreciation. He took the blame, disappearing mysteriously, only to reappear as John was leaving the docks. He knew a night in a hotel in Homer was not happening between us.
He also knows that nothing is going to happen between us again.
I just can’t.
“Hey, buddy.” Mark drops a hand on Connor’s shoulder before settling in beside him, Corbin on the other side. The lodge is busy tonight, with people continuously joining our table.
“A grizzly can weigh up to fifteen hundred pounds,” Corbin says. They’re obviously mid-conversation. Or mid-argument.
“That’s not just any grizzly. That’s a Kodiak.” Mark shakes his head at his friend. “Dude, have you not learned anything while in Alaska?”
“When the hell am I going to learn something? I’m always working!”
“Yeah, ‘working,’” Mark jokes, making a jerking off hand gesture.
I get the feeling that Corbin and Mark are the type to argue about the sky being blue and the grass being green, just for the sake of arguing.
“So, what’s new in the world of voyeurism anyway?” Ronan asks between mouthfuls of his burger.
“It’s been pretty fucking dull lately,” Corbin mutters. “Too many respectable guests. But, Wolf is back so maybe that’ll change.”
“He’s too smart to let us catch him on camera, dumb ass.” Mark shakes his head at his friend, but Corbin’s already ready with a counterargument.
“Need I remind you about the smokin’-hot magazine writer?”
I’m ready to toss my fork at them. I really don’t need to hear about this again right now.
Mark smacks the table with this palm. “I already told you, Wolf didn’t hit that!”
“I watched him go into the cabin with her and that hot blonde with my own eyes!” Corbin emphasizes “hot” with two hands cupped and held out in front of his chest. “A guy like Wolf walks into a cabin with two women like that and the hell they aren’t bangin.’ He probably said ‘get naked’ and they were all ‘yes, Mr.Wolf!’ Dude’s my hero.”
Mark shakes his head. “That’s not what happened.”
“Basically, it was.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Fuck! Shut up!” Ronan shouts, annoyance filling his face. “You two need to get laid.”
Mark rolls his eyes at Ronan. “Fine, Corbin. How long was he in there?”
Corbin shrugs. “I don’t know. I went on break.”
“Well, I can tell you for a fact that that’s not what happened.”
“You weren’t there!”
“No, but Andy was. Right, Andy?” Mark points his fork to the end of the table where Andy has just slid into a seat.
Heads turn toward him, waiting.
“I was where?”
“That journalist. The night Wolf shot her down.”
I can’t keep the frown from showing. What?
“Damn, just throw me under the bus, why don’t you, Mark.” Andy’s shaking his head, but he’s struggling to hide his smile.
“Wait. You were there with Wolf and those two hot chicks?” There’s no small hint of envy in Corbin’s voice.
“Oh, he was there all right.” Mark waggles his brows.
Andy tosses a corn kernel at his roommate’s head, pinning him in the nose.
But it doesn’t distract Corbin from his need for the decadent details. “Bullshit. Like there there? What happened?”
Andy takes a sip of his Coke—I assume, because he’s working tonight; he drinks as much as the crew, otherwise. “Fuck, Mark. If I get canned for this....” Andy shakes his head but then heaves a sigh. “I heard them come in so I went to see if they needed anything. The two chicks had stripped and were standing in the living room in nothing, waiting for Wolf. But he turned them down.”
“What? No. He never turns ass down.”
“How the fuck do you know?” Mark mutters.
“Because he has a Wolf shrine that he jerks off to, nightly,” Connor jokes, earning a round of laughter from everyone but me.
Because I desperately need to hear the rest of this story.
Andy shrugs. “I don’t know. He gave her some excuse about being involved with a woman and not wanting to fuck things up.”
“That guy doesn’t commit. Not when he can have as much ass as he wants.”
“Don’t shit where you eat.” Connor licks mayo off his finger. “She’s from a big magazine. Smart guy. I guess that’s why he’s the boss.”
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t sure how smart he was. She was pissed. Tried to save face by blowing him off, saying she didn’t care because she had the better fuck the night before with his brother, and she was going to destroy his hotel. And Wolf... damn.” Andy’s eyes widen. “Did he let her have it. Told her that if her article even suggested to him that she was acting unfairly, he’d make sure her boss knew what she’d been up to while here.”
“Fuck. The guy’s got some huge fucking brass balls on him.” Corbin is officially in love with Henry. “Shut that bitch down. Crushed her.”
Mark chuckles. “I wouldn’t say that.” His sideways glance at Andy tells me there’s more to the story.
Andy shakes his head. “She called me in there and made me watch her and her friend do lines of coke off each other.”
“And then?”
There’s a long pause. And then Andy grins wide. “Then they broke my cock. I couldn’t get it up for two days. Best night of my life.”
They’re all laughing and jeering. I feel Ronan’s eyes on me, but I keep my gaze on my plate as blood rushes through my ears like a freight train. If what Andy’s saying is true—and I get the feeling that it is—then that means....
Henry lied to me. He led me to believe that he slept with Roshana and that other woman.
I thought I felt ill before but this churning in my stomach, this guilt whirling around inside me, is going to make me lose my dinner.
My eyes begin to burn and I furiously blink away the tears, not wanting anyone to find out.
I need to know. I need to look Henry in the eye and get the truth from him.
Ronan, so in tune with me and having figured out the other piece to the story, leans in and whispers, “Go. I’ll clean up for you.”
Barely managing a nod of thanks, I slide out of my chair.
It takes everything in me not to run all the way to Cabin One.
Chapter Twenty-Four
My hands tremble as I hit the doorbell on Cabin One.
I have no idea if he’s home. If he’s alone.
Please be alone.
The door opens up and a freshly showered Henry stands there.
“You lied to me.” It’s barely a whisper.
He says nothing, stepping back to allow me in. I walk through, inhaling his cologne with a shaky breath. I haven’t been in here since the day I discovered him gone. It loo
ks the exact same.
The desk he laid me out on is still there, with his laptop set up on it.
The dining table he tied my wrists up on now holds dishes from room service.
Henry strolls past me, seemingly unconcerned. “Miles!”
A young, brown-haired guy who I’ve seen around pokes his head through the service entrance door. “Yes, Mr. Wolf?”
“You can call it a day. Please be back tomorrow at 8:00 a.m.”
“Yes, sir.” He disappears. Moment later I hear the door shut. I peer out the small window by the front door to see him trudging along the covered path.
“He’s not the type to eavesdrop, if that’s what you’re worried about.” A tiny smirk curls Henry’s lip, but otherwise he shows me nothing.
I can’t even begin to know how to approach this the right way, so I don’t bother. I just blurt out, “You lied to me. You told me that you slept with her, but you didn’t.” My voice breaks at the end.
His eyes graze over me. “Isn’t that what you wanted to hear?”
“What? Why on earth would I want to think that you slept with someone else? You should have told me the truth!”
He pauses, his fingers on a glass. Of water, it seems. The decanter of scotch remains untouched. “All I’ve ever told you is the truth, Abbi. I told you things would be different for a few days. I told you that I didn’t have time for jealousy. I told you that I didn’t fuck anyone on Friday night. I told you that my brother is a liar and manipulator. I told you that I wouldn’t beg you to believe me.” He fires the list off without pause, as if he’s got them itemized on a sheet of paper, the anger seeping through his words. But then he falters. “I told you that I trusted you. All of these things were the truth. Truth that you chose to either ignore or interpret differently.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. He did tell me all those things. “You should have told me the truth about what happened that night.”
“Why?”
“Because then I wouldn’t have hated you so much.”
He steps closer to me. “I figured it would hurt you less than telling you the truth. That, while you were lying under Michael, letting him fuck you, I was sitting in my cabin alone, considering whether I should be selfish and fire you as a Wolf employee so I could keep you for myself and avoid all this hassle.”
His words are a kick to my stomach.
It finally clicks.
Henry didn’t cheat on me.
Technically, I cheated on him.
Tears fall freely now. I don’t bother holding them back. This is all my fault. I fucked up. I messed everything up between us.
“Did I want to hurt you?” Henry watches a tear slide down my cheek, but he doesn’t reach up to catch it, to wipe it away. “Yeah, I did. Because I was angry. At you. At myself. Had I known you’d run off and fuck the first guy who put his arm around you, maybe I would have handled things differently.” His jaw tenses. “Never in a million years did I think you’d go and do something like that. You surprised me, Abbi, and not in a good way. I didn’t think you had it in you.”
Tears spill from my eyes. “I saw you leave with them. I thought—”
“I told you I wouldn’t, Abbi. But that wasn’t enough for you.” A brief wave of emotion flares in his eyes before he’s able to get it under control, to ice me out. “And then you tried to threaten me, something else I never thought you’d do. So I did and said some things that I can’t ever take back.” He sighs. “And now there’s no going back. There’s no fixing it.”
I try to stifle my cries with a hand over my mouth, his words stripping away the anger and blame I’ve used as a shield, leaving me unprotected and raw.
I wanted a miracle, a reason to believe Henry wasn’t all bad. He’s just given it to me, and it doesn’t matter. I screwed up with Henry. Oh God, I screwed up so badly.
“I’m so sorry,” I manage to get out through my sobs before I bolt out the door.
~ ~ ~
Whispers surround my privacy curtain. I hear their questions, their concern, but I stay curled up in a ball, facing the wall, and no one bothers me. Not after I screamed at Tillie, telling her to mind her own damn business and stop looking for gossip.
This hurts a million times more than thinking that Henry cheated on me.
I cheated on him.
I mean, we weren’t technically “officially” an exclusive item.
But he trusted me to believe him and not go and sleep with another guy, and I did exactly that. I fucked everything up. I caused this pain. Me, who was crushed by Jed only months earlier for sleeping with another girl.
My head tells me that it’s nothing like what Jed did to me, because Jed and I were getting married. Jed and I shared a childhood of memories and promises, of plans. We already had a life. There was no doubt that we were exclusive and committed to each other.
And yet, down to my core—and every fiber of my body—I know that Henry owned me from the first time I gazed into his eyes, my head spinning from alcohol, my heart spinning from betrayal.
What have I done?
A knock sounds on the door and a moment later, angry voices.
“Is this because of you?” Katie hisses.
A guy sighs. “Yeah.”
I immediately recognize Ronan’s voice.
“You are such a dick!” The sound of skin slapping against skin ricochets through the cabin. “Make it better.”
The curtain shifts and, a moment later, weight hits my mattress as Ronan crawls toward me to stretch out next to me. I can see the red mark where Katie’s hand made contact with his cheek. It must have hurt, but he doesn’t show it, wedging his arm under my head and pulling me against him. He leans in to place a soft kiss on my mouth.
I pull away. “Don’t, Ronan. I’m not in the—”
“Shut up.” He brushes the hair off my face. “I’m not here for that. I’m not Aspen.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. I don’t think I’ve ever regretted anything so much as that night.
Ronan’s arms tighten around me, pulling my face into his chest, the smell of his soap comforting.
“You took the blame with them,” I whisper, my fingertips sliding over his cheek.
He shrugs. “I’m sure I’ve already earned it somewhere. Now cry all you want, red. I’m not going anywhere tonight.”
And I do, muffling my sobs against his t-shirt, soaking the cotton material.
I cry over Henry and what can never be fixed.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Someone is shaking me awake.
“Yeah. I’m trying.... Abbi?” Ronan’s sleepy voice fills my ear. I’m still burrowed against his chest, exactly as I was when I fell asleep. I don’t want to move, or even open my eyes, which I’m sure are swollen and red.
“Abbi, you need to take this.”
Finally, the urgency in his voice clicks. I peel my face off him to find him holding my phone in his hand.
“It kept vibrating, so I finally answered it. Seemed important.”
Oh crap. “Who is it?” If that’s Mama, I will never hear the end of this.
“Some guy named Jed.”
Jed? I frown. I haven’t talked to him since the night I told him that we were done. I take the phone, a tiny bite of satisfaction lifting my spirits that Jed called here in the morning and a guy answered. “Hello?”
“Abigail, I’ve been trying to get hold of you all morning. Your dad had an accident.”
I bolt up. “What do you mean an accident?”
“He rolled his tractor.”
“What?” I heard him, but I don’t believe it. My dad’s been driving tractors in the fields since he was ten years old.
“On that slope near the back of the property. Your mom called our house on the way to the hospital, and she asked me to get hold of you.”
“Well, how bad is it?”
There’s a long pause. “It’s bad, Abbi. You know him, not bothering to buckle up. He was tossed, and then it rolled onto him. Defin
itely broken bones, probably internal bleeding. I.... It doesn’t look good. Look, you need to come home. We don’t know if he’s going to make it.”
A strange wave of shock washes over me, throwing me into an odd state of calm. “Yeah. Of course. I just.... I don’t know how long it will take. Just, tell Mama I’m coming. And call me as soon as you hear something.”
“For sure.”
“Thanks, Jed.”
“Of course. He’s like a dad to me.”
I hang up the phone, my blood rushing in my ears. “My dad rolled his tractor. He’s hurt really bad. They don’t think he’s going to make it.” Is that even me speaking? It doesn’t sound right. “I need to get home.” I frown at Ronan. “How do I get home?” I’m in Alaska!
He checks his watch. “John leaves with the supply ferry in half an hour. Hop on that.”
“Right.” I look around at my little bunk cubby, at the shelf that holds a picture of my parents when they were young. I guess I should pack. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. “Do I call Darryl?” Or Belinda? I haven’t talked to her since the day I moved to the crew.
“Don’t worry about Darryl. I’ll tell him.”
“Okay, then. I guess... I’m packing.”
And leaving Alaska.
~ ~ ~
“Tell the airline that it’s an emergency and they might be able to work something out for you,” John says, spinning the wheel with ease. The small ferry that I arrived on oh so long ago churns water as it heads toward Homer. “It likely won’t be cheap but emergencies never are, are they?”
“No. I guess not.” I stare back at the hotel, at the guests out for early morning walks or preparing for a peaceful kayak tour of the cove, their days full of promise.
I haven’t even had a chance to grasp my current reality. I stuffed my duffel bag in a mad dash and said a quick good-bye to Rachel and Lorraine, who were the only ones around. Ronan walked me to the dock and left me with a fierce hug. He promised to say bye to Connor for me.
But now I can’t do anything but stand idly and wait for whatever’s going to happen to happen, good or bad.
Penthouse Cabin One is now visible as we gain distance from the beach, perched atop the cliff and overlooking the waters. I can’t help but watch it as we drift, wondering if I should have said good-bye to Henry. Should have apologized again. If that would have made today any less horrible.