Jay paused. “She doesn’t want me to tell you where she is.”
“Why the fuck not? What’s going on?” This was absolutely ridiculous. I just couldn’t understand how we could go from being inseparable last weekend to her disappearing a few days later. What had happened since then? She seemed fine earlier on Christmas Day. The only thing I could think was that it had something to do with me punching my brother in the face. But why would that make her run? It’s not like she was against violence per se. She punched me in the face just a few months ago.
Jay sighed. “I don’t know. I actually don’t even know where she is either. All she said is that they’re staying with her mom’s cousin.”
“When is she coming back?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“Jay, you have to give me something, I’m totally in the dark here. I have no idea what I did wrong.”
“She hasn’t said anything about you to me, she only talks about her mom. If I had to guess, though, you got too close.”
“Too close to what?”
“To Cat. Haven’t you noticed she’s a complete commitment-phobe?”
“You really think that’s what this is all about?”
Jay let out a long breath before speaking. “I don’t know. All I know is that she’s hurting and confused.”
***
I had to go into work Monday morning. Cat still hadn’t returned any of my calls, and I was debating on whether I should hire a private detective to track her down. Her actions since Christmas made no sense at all and I was worried. At first I was upset that she wasn’t calling me back, but now I was just downright pissed off. I didn’t care what Jay said about giving her time, I was going to find her and get my answers.
Around lunch time, an interoffice envelope was delivered to my desk. I opened it, read the letter inside, and immediately called Cat’s supervisor.
“This is Gerald Manning, how can I help you?” he answered.
“Gerald, it’s Will Stone. I just got an interoffice envelope from you. Inside was a letter of resignation from Cate Maverick. There must be some mistake.”
“No mistake. She sent it in this morning. She organized the transfer of all of her incomplete projects to other designers on Friday afternoon. She told me she would personally finish the Hoffman account projects in time for the Conference, but that she wouldn’t be back in the office. The letter was her official resignation.”
“Did she say why she was resigning?”
“Family matters,” Gerald replied.
“Did she leave a forwarding address for her paycheck?”
“Yes.” The uncertainty in his answer was clear.
“I need it.”
“That’s private personnel information, Will. You know I can’t give that to you. Why do you want it anyway?”
“So I can hunt her down and shake some sense into her,” I answered without thinking. “She can’t just quit this job.” What I was really thinking was that she couldn’t just quit us, but that’s exactly what she was doing and I had no clue why. Everything had been fine until I attacked Trace. But why would that be such a big deal to her? Why would confronting my brother send her running for the hills?
Gerald laughed. “People quit jobs all the time, Will. Don’t take it personally. If it’s any consolation, she expressed regret that she couldn’t give us an official two weeks notice.”
No. That wasn’t any fucking consolation at all. It was just another infuriating aspect of the mystery that was Cate Maverick—the woman that I couldn’t get out of my head for a damn second. I’d been right about one thing, though. I couldn’t even sit at my desk without thinking about what she and I had done on it before we went to Maryland for the long weekend.
“Thanks, Gerald,” I managed to say through clenched teeth. “I’ll make sure to be in contact with her about the Hoffman projects.”
I hung up the phone and immediately called Jay.
“Cat quit her job,” I told him before he could even say hello.
Jay sighed. “I know, she sent me an email this morning.”
It was like a kick to the face that Cat was ignoring me, but telling Jay everything. I dropped my head in my hands. “Please tell me what’s going on, Jay,” I begged. “I think I fell in love with your best friend. And somehow, I lost her before I could tell her that.”
There was a moment of silence, as if Jay was too afraid to speak.
“Anita has cancer,” he finally said. “She has terminal gallbladder cancer. That’s why Cat quit. While her mom was on vacation during Christmas, she fell and hit her head. They patched her up, but the doctors at the hospital told them it was time to call in hospice, that her body was starting to shut down too quickly. Anita decided she wanted to be close to her cousin, Alicia, since she doesn’t really have any other family, so Cat decided to quit her job so that her mom could be with Alicia until the end.”
Christ. I knew Anita was sick, but I had no idea she was terminal. Knowing Cat was in pain and dealing with this alone was killing me, but knowing that she didn’t want or need my comfort was agonizing. I wanted her to need me. I needed her to need me.
“Jay, you have to tell me where she is.”
“Vegas,” he muttered. “But you didn’t hear that from me. That’s all I know. I swear.”
— CAT —
33. FOUND
My mom was awake. Finally. And I still didn’t know what to talk about with her. I spent most of every day at her bedside, waiting for her to wake up so I could tell her all the important things I needed to say. But when the time finally came, I found that the best I could do was hold her hand and manage not to cry. How do you say goodbye without actually saying goodbye? How do you let someone go when you don’t want to? When you can’t? I’d only been able to trust two people in my life—my mom and Jay—and I would never be okay with letting her go. Everything about this stupid situation was unfair. Where was our miracle? My mother had a shitload of money and the heart of a saint and neither of those things had managed to buy or win her health back.
I wished I had something to destroy. I’d love to take a sledgehammer to a room of mirrors and just let loose, to shatter everything into tiny pieces. That’s how my heart felt—broken, jagged, and so fractured there was no way it’d ever be right again.
The hospital bed that hospice brought in to Alicia’s house for my mom was placed in the den, which had a shitty view of a yard full of grubby grass and bushes that were so gnarly, I was fairly certain they’d be able to survive a nuclear holocaust. The view was pathetically ugly, and I realized that’s what my mom would see in her final moments—cactus and dirt. I begged her to let me take her home to my apartment where she could hear the ocean and see the bright blue skies of Venice Beach, but she wanted to stay in Vegas. I honored her wishes and stayed with her.
I didn’t tell her I quit my job. As far as she was concerned, I took a leave of absence. No need to tell her it was a permanent one. If she knew I’d given up my job and all the projects I loved, she’d think I was falling apart at the seams. The honest truth was, she’d be right. What I’d seen between Huck and Bridget had not only crushed my heart, but my soul. There was no way I could ever go back, no matter how much I liked my job.
I should never have trusted him. I knew better and I didn’t listen to my brain. I listened to that foolish part of me that had misinterpreted sexual chemistry for something more. It was nothing more. I was a rebound.
Tossing thoughts of my stupidity aside, I looked down at my mother’s gaunt face. Her skin was yellowed from jaundice, her eyes were sunken in, and the smile she gave me was laced with pain, but she was still beautiful. She was still the strongest, most intelligent woman I knew. She was still my mom.
I grabbed her frail hand, pressing a kiss to the back of it. It was cold and hung limp in my grasp, but her eyes slowly fought through her exhaustion to find me.
“You know, I never did tell you that I hired Brodi to run your Galler
y,” I told her. “I feel like I have to at least confess that much to you.”
A soft laugh rattled out of her throat and she attempted to squeeze my hand. “I know, honey. Keith and Nadine took me by the Gallery a few weeks ago. He’s doing a great job. I couldn’t have picked someone better myself.”
“Good,” I said in relief. “I’m glad you approve.” I reached over to place my hand on her head. There was a slight dusting of hair there, but it had never gotten a chance to grow back, and since she’d been confined to the bed, she’d given up on wearing her wigs. She just didn’t have the energy to care about her looks anymore.
“You met him in art school, right?” Her eyes lazily blinked shut as I traced comforting patterns across her scalp with my fingers.
I nodded. “Yeah, Jay and I met Brodi our first year at school, but he graduated a year earlier than us. After school, his mom lost her job and he came home to help her get back on her feet. His dad passed away a long time ago, and he’s got three younger brothers who still live at home. I think he just did what he had to do to get by and help his family. He didn’t have the luxury of searching for his dream job.”
“Well, it gives me a sense of peace to know I’m leaving the Gallery in capable hands. One less thing to worry about.” My mother’s voice was soft and tired. She was always tired. Everything took too much effort—talking, moving, even breathing.
“What else do you have to worry about?” I asked gently.
My mom turned her head weakly, but the gaze she fixed on me was powerful. “You.”
“Don’t worry about me, mom. I’m going to be fine,” I lied.
“You’re going to be alone.” Tears welled in her eyes.
“I’m not going to be alone.” I managed to choke back my own fears that she was right. It didn’t matter what the truth was right now, all that mattered was that she believed I was going to be fine. I’d deal with my own problems later. Now wasn’t the time to confirm her fears.
“You have to learn to trust, Cat. You have to risk your heart. If you don’t, you’ll never know the beauty of love.” It was hard for her to speak and I felt guilty that she was putting forth so much energy worrying about me. Besides, I got a preview of love. I learned that with beauty, comes ugliness. It’s called betrayal.
“Did you ever know the beauty of love?” I asked.
A smile creased her fragile lips and her eyes took on a distant look. “Oh yes.”
“You risked your heart?”
“I did.”
“With who?”
“Your father.”
“Was it worth it?”
“Of course.” Her head turned toward me and her hand raised shakily into the air until her fingertips were touching my cheek. “I got you.”
***
For years I thought that my mother hated my father for what he did to her, how he left us and let his drinking take him out of our lives, eventually for good. But in those last few words she said to me before she went to sleep, I could hear how much she loved my father. Still. Maybe it was because she was so close to her own end, and she was remembering the good times, but it was hard for me to believe that she would advise me to risk my own heart when her own love story had such a sad ending. No matter how much she loved my dad, she couldn’t want the same ending for me. Could she? He abandoned us, he destroyed our trust, and he took the easy way out—giving up his life rather than fighting his demons. How could she think that being with him had been worth it?
She must be confused.
While my mom was napping, I decided to take a walk around Alicia’s neighborhood. I needed a break from that room, just a quick breath of fresh air to give me the strength to be what my mom needed me to be when she woke up again.
It wouldn’t be much longer now. Deep down I knew that. My mom was hardly ever awake anymore. Her body was shutting down and she was slowly falling into that eternal sleep. Eventually she’d close her eyes and they’d never open again. It was a terrifying realization that each movement, each breath, each word, each smile, each touch might be the last one. And there was nothing I could do to stop it.
It had been a little over three weeks since I’d arrived at Alicia’s, but it didn’t feel that long. My mother’s decline in health was really more of a plummet than an actual decline. She was fading fast, and every time I looked at her, her eyes were a little more haunted and distant, her body was a little less lifelike, and my heart was a little more broken.
The helplessness was overwhelming, like being trapped under an avalanche of pressure and emotion and not being able to breathe. Instead of feeling the grief and anguish I knew I should, I’d become emotionally numb. It was almost as if I’d locked away my feelings. Not purposely, of course, but I think in a way I was protecting my mother. She seemed to be so worried about me, that I was subconsciously putting on an armor of emotional strength whenever I was around her. In reality, I felt anything but strong. I knew that when it was all over and done with, when she was gone, I could then let myself feel. But for now, I had to be her foundation, her rock.
As I walked out the front door and into the fading sunshine for my walk, I could feel my emotional armor sloughing off just a bit, allowing the pressure of my sadness start to creep in. I took a deep breath. Vegas in January wasn’t nearly as warm as Venice Beach, so I slipped on my hoodie for warmth and wrapped my arms protectively across my chest. The grief was little pinpricks of discomfort that tried to seep into my soul now that I wasn’t at my mother’s bedside. I did my best to ignore it.
“Cat.”
I stopped. My name was a strangled plea from a voice I’d severed from my life weeks ago. I turned to see Huck getting out of a car that was parked on the street in front of Alicia’s house. He quickly crossed the lawn, ran up the steps to the porch, and gathered me in his arms, crushing me to his chest. His lips touched down onto my hair.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. My composure was slipping and crashing to the ground around me. Without my armor, stripped bare to the one person who could destroy me, I could feel the misery clawing its way from the dark places I’d hidden it.
“Looking for you. Jay told me about your mom, Cat. I’m so sorry.” Huck’s hands slid up to my face, forcing me to look at him. “Why have you been ignoring me?”
“I can’t deal with this right now,” I said, pulling out of his grip as I backed toward the door, desperate to get into the safety of the house where the only danger to my heart was the reality of losing my mom.
“Deal with what? I’m here for you. I’m here to help.”
My heart was torn in two. I was disgusted with the part of me that wanted Huck around to comfort me and share my pain. But I still remembered that intimate moment between him and his fiancée, and I knew that he wasn’t free to be mine. I knew trusting him was too much of a risk, no matter what my mother said. I couldn’t give my heart to someone who wasn’t free to give his to me.
“I know why you’re here, but you don’t need to feel guilty, Huck. We never had an official commitment.” My hand reached behind me, fumbling for the door handle I knew was there.
“Guilty? What the fuck are you talking about? One minute everything is fine and the next minute you’re drunk and passed out. And then you run off without saying goodbye. You ignore my calls and quit your job. What should I be feeling guilty about? I don’t even know what’s going on with you.”
“I saw you with her, Huck. You’re engaged to her. She loves you.”
It was as if I kicked him in the kneecaps. He staggered back, anger and confusion warring across his features. “This is all about Bridget? I thought this was about your mom. You left because of Bridget? That’s why you quit your job and why you’re ignoring me?”
I gathered my pride and forced it around the broken pieces of my heart. If I didn’t care about him, I couldn’t hurt. That was the only way I was going to be able to survive this—the only way I could survive him. “No. This is about the fact that you were in lov
e and engaged to someone and then you hooked up with me immediately after she cheated on you. I’m a rebound, Huck. And hey, it was great fun, but I’ve got too much going on right now to question whether what I had with you was real.”
“Of course it was real,” he said angrily.
“I saw you kissing her.”
“No. You saw her kiss me.” He stepped closer to me, erasing the precious distance I’d put between us.
“You didn’t resist.”
“Well, I guess you didn’t stick around long enough to see that part.”
“How long was I supposed to hang around watching you kiss another woman?” I didn’t even give him a chance to answer. “The point is, you weren’t finished with her before you started with me. Trace told me you ran off after you found out she cheated on you, that you didn’t confront either of them. And then you ended up in my bed less than a week after you got to California. That is the definition of a rebound. Jesus. She was still wearing your ring, Huck. I was basically the other woman.”
Huck grabbed my arms. “Don’t you dare pretend that’s what we are. Bridget and I were over the minute she shared my brother’s bed. This is about you and me. You’re scared and you’re afraid to trust. You don’t want me to care too much about you, so you’re trying to push me away. I get that. I understand you’re afraid, but it won’t work. You can try to run from me, but I’m going to follow. Because I don’t want her, I want you.”
I shrugged his hands off me. “I’m not running away, I’m moving on. I’m done risking my emotions with you. I can’t afford it. Not when you can’t even deal with your own.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh really? You punched your brother in the face because he screwed your fiancée, and then you were kissing her thirty minutes later.”
“He deserved it. She’s not my fiancée. And she was kissing me!”
“Go home, Huck.”
“No.”
“I don’t want you here.”
“You don’t know what you want.” He grabbed me by the waist and pulled me into his chest, his lips crashing desperately into mine.
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