by Rye Hart
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE – KAMI
Mondays were the worst days to pull double shifts since they were always slow, but at least I had my phone with me to keep me company and my boss didn’t mind if I texted my friends when I wasn’t serving up the Loving Cup’s finest brews.
Tate had messaged me at least fifty times since yesterday. He’d apologized at least twenty times and told me that it wasn’t what it looked like. I’d had to laugh at that one. Wasn’t that what they all said when they got caught?
The thing was, was that I truly thought Tate was different. I thought I knew him better than I obviously did. Could he really have faked all that? He’d told me he loved me and invited me to move into his home with him and his sister. Maybe there was a reasonable explanation. Or did I just want to believe that I hadn’t been fooled again?
Before I could answer that question, Rain walked in with a grim look on her face.
When she’d come to pick me up at Tate’s yesterday, I’d told her I didn’t want to talk about it. I said we’d had a fight and left it at that. She knew not to push me and figured it had just been some petty snit that we’d get over.
“What’s wrong?” I closed the space between us, knowing the girl well enough to tell that whatever it was she’d come in to tell me, was not good news.
She gave me a look like she didn’t know what to say, and I was left to guess for a few more intense moments. “Tell me, Rain. Is it Aunt Helen? My parents? Did someone die?” The look on her face was so unreadable, yet so frightening that I could only imagine the worst.
“No, no one is dead. Though you might wish they were.” She took a deep breath and sat at the nearest table. “I don’t know how to say this, but I guess I could start by asking how well you know Tate.”
“Wait, what? What do you mean, how well do I know Tate?”
“Did you know he’s like really wealthy?”
I shook my head. She’d been talking to Devin again. “I guess so. Big deal.”
“You make it sound like it’s a welfare check, Kam. But I’m telling you, he’s like filthy rich, and has quite a playboy reputation.”
That one hit home. I thought about the messages on his phone again and started to feel increasingly nauseated. She looked down to her phone and then after keying with her thumb, she turned the thing around and let me see a few images that had popped up. Pictures of Tate dressed up for parties, draped with women, everything plush and gilded around him. One of the images I clicked on, showed him with a sports car and the title of the article read Young Millions.
“So he has millions. Who cares?” I asked.
“That’s not all I have to tell you,” Rain said.
“Oh, this should be good,” I said.
“Listen, Kam, he’s been whoring around the Matched Solid site the whole time you’ve been together.”
I sighed. “I know.”
“Wait, what? You know? Is that why he called me to come get you yesterday?” she asked incredulously.
“Yeah. I grabbed his phone to check the time and saw a bunch of notifications. I don’t know, Rain. He swore to me that there was an explanation, that it wasn’t what it looked like. He’s been texting me nonstop, trying to get me to talk to him.”
“Well before you talk to him, you need to see the rest of this. That girl Samantha I work with got a message from him.”
My blood turned to ice-water and my face burned.
“What kind of message?”
“She forwarded it to me, in screen shots, so you can see for yourself, Kam. It’s him, and he seemed pretty interested.” I took the phone and held my breath as I read his brief, but damning message. Hello, Beautiful. It was the first thing he said to me. And sure enough, that was followed by, hope we can chat. He’d baited me like all the others. But why spend so much time with me? Perhaps I was a hell of a lot easier, or gullible. My nausea increased.
There was one last screen shot of Samantha telling him how hot he was and his response was “Likewise.”
“When did she say this happened?”
Rain took her phone and held my hand. “She told me last week she was talking to this amazing guy. She said he was extremely gorgeous and she’d show me his picture at lunch. You can imagine I almost fell over when I saw it was Tate. She said he was well sought after. There’s a forum, and some of the women had been battling for his attention. She figured he finally settled on one.”
“This has been going on the entire time I’ve been with him.” I pulled away and put my hands over my face as tears came to my eyes.
“I’m going to beat his ass; I swear it, Kam!” She was livid, and I knew it was only because of my tears.
Suddenly, I felt the contents of my stomach rise into my throat and I barely made it to the bathroom before I vomited everything I’d eaten that morning. Once I emptied my belly, I splashed cold water on my face and went to tell my boss that I needed to go home. Since I had never once called in sick in my two years, he didn’t hassle me at all.
“I’m so sorry, Kam.”
Rain offered to drive me home. Even though I’d thrown up, I still didn’t feel right. I accepted and we rode the short distance in silence.
I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead to the cool glass of the passenger window. I couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been. I had put myself in exactly the same position that I’d been in with Devin. What an idiot I was.
My phone buzzed in my hand and I looked down to see another text from Tate, begging me to talk. I nearly threw the damn thing out into the street. My stomach lurched again and I had to roll down the window so I didn’t puke in Rain’s car.
She patted my leg and looked at me sympathetically when I was finished. “You really do love him, huh? You weren’t even this bad after Devin.”
Tears coursed down my cheeks as I shook my head. “Yeah Rain, I really do love him.”
We arrived home and I climbed the stairs to my apartment. I looked around and felt incredibly sad. Just yesterday, I was planning on leaving his place behind and starting a new chapter with Tate in his home. God, how had I let myself get so swept up in him.
I ran straight to my bed and laid down, not even bothering to take my clothes or shoes off. I cried myself to sleep and when I woke a few hours later, I felt no better. I got up and went to the kitchen to fix myself a little something to eat, but the minute I opened the refrigerator and looked at the leftover casserole Aunt Helen had sent up with me yesterday, my stomach lurched again.
As I ran to the bathroom, I caught a glimpse of the calendar on the wall.
Wait. What was the date today?
Oh, holy fuck.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO – TATE
I was at my computer tweaking photographs when my sister burst into the room. “Great news, brother!” She plopped down on my bed and tossed a pillow at my head.
I ducked and spun my chair around to give her a dirty look and toss it back. “What the hell?”
“I found a house!”
“The one down the street?” I had hoped my sister would stay closer to me rather than move across the city where I couldn’t keep an eye on her.
“You wish! It’s only a few minutes from here, but the house is perfect, and I already put down some earnest money. I just have to come up with the rest of the down payment, and then I’ll use my next trust check to pay the closing cost.”
“Here, take this.” I passed her the check from Hazen, and her eyes bugged.
“Wow, is this what Hazen gave you to be super-stud on his silly website?”
“Yeah,” I shrugged. “I want you to have it.” Megan’s expression grew softer. “Still haven’t heard from Kami?”
I shook my head. “No. She won’t answer any of my texts. I thought about going down to her work, but I don’t want to be that guy and cause a scene. I just don’t know what to do, Meg.”
“Do you want me to try?” she asked. “I mean, I know she and I don’t know each other well, but I’m willing to give it
a shot.”
I shook my head and smiled at my sister. “I really appreciate that, but I need to fix this myself.”
Megan opened her mouth to speak but the sound of knocking at the front door cut her off. I scrambled to my feet and all but ran to the door, hoping against hope that Kami had come to talk. When I threw the door open, however, it was Rain that was standing on the other side. And boy was she pissed.
“Rain—” I started, but she held up her hand.
“No, you don’t talk, asshole. You listen,” she said, her voice harsh.
I shut my mouth and stood helplessly while she let loose on me.
“You are a sorry excuse for a man,” she began. “Kami is the best thing that has ever happened to you, will ever happen to you, you threw it all away? Why? So you could fuck a bunch of whores who send you pictures of their fake tits?”
“It’s not like that Rain,” I tried again.
“I said you don’t talk!” she yelled. “My best friend is hurting because of you; because of your selfishness and your need to get your dick wet. You are a disgusting piece of shit.”
“Hey!” came Megan’s voice from behind me. “My brother may be a lot of things, but he is not a piece of shit.”
“It’s OK, Meg,” I said, holding up my hand.
“No, it’s not,” she argued. “I’ve had about enough of this. He made a mistake, a really big one, but he doesn’t deserve to be talked to like this.”
“A mistake?” Rain asked, incredulously. “He was fucking several other women at the same time that he told my best friend that he was in love with her!”
“No, actually, he wasn’t,” Megan said.
“Listen, I get that you are his sister and you want to protect him but—”
“Oh, for the love of Christ. Would you please come in off the porch and let him explain? The neighbors don’t need to know our business.”
I stood between my sister and Kami’s best friend, not quite sure what to do, but knowing I had to do something. “Yeah, Rain. Please come in.”
Hesitantly, she stepped over the threshold and into the living room. Megan turned to go back to her own room, but added, “I’ll let you two talk, but know that if I hear you berating him again, you and I are going to tangle.”
I shook my head and motioned for Rain to sit on the couch. “I’m sorry about my sister. She can be a bit overprotective. Can I get you something to drink?”
Rain perched on the edge of the leather sofa and shook her head. “No, I don’t want anything from you but an explanation of why you would do something like this to Kami. And be forewarned, that my bullshit detector is a lot more sensitive than hers.”
I sighed and sat down. I was going to tell Rain everything and hold zero back. I couldn’t let anything stand in the way of winning Kami back.
“It’s true that I have been talking to women on Matched Solid, but I swear to you, I have not been sleeping with any of them. I haven’t even met any of them.”
She regarded me with an air of disbelief, and so I continued.
“The site is owned and operated by my best friend Hazen. He needed some help boosting traffic on the site and he asked me to help him out. The job was that I would send messages to newcomers as well as the women who weren’t getting as much attention, to keep them coming back.”
“So you were baiting them?” she asked, her lip curled in disgust.
“Yeah, I guess I was. But I swear to you, that’s all it ever was. I came across Kami’s profile the very first day I started helping out. I thought she was beautiful and had actually seen her at her coffee shop months before. I sent her the standard welcome message. I never expected it to go anywhere further, but then she responded and we actually started to talk. That’s the truth.”
“So you did all that for your best friend, just as a favor?” Rain asked unconvinced.
“Well, that actually leads to another topic.” I took a deep breath before continuing. “I have a hefty family inheritance, for which I will only be given the lump sum if I’ve settled down and conceived one heir by my thirty fifth birthday.”
“So you used the dating site to find the girl you planned to knock up, and my best friend was one of hundreds of girls you flirted with before you found your perfect baby mama?”
I cringed, hating how that sounded. “Yeah, I guess you could say that. Listen, I know how awful that sounds, but the minute I actually spoke to her and got to know her, I was committed. I will swear to you, to her, to anyone who will listen, that I never met up with or did anything with those other women. It never went past a few harmless messages. I love her, Rain. I love her more than I’ve ever loved anyone.”
“You can see how your reputation makes that a little hard to believe, right?” she asked me.
I sighed. “Yeah, I know. I’m the first to admit that I’ve been a dog in the past. I’ve been selfish and immature and stupid before, but all that ended when I met Kami. I want to be the best person I can be for her. I want to be the man she deserves.”
“I’m not sure that even exists,” Rain said softly. “She deserves the world.”
“I know. And I promise to spend the rest of my life to give it to her. Do you think she could ever forgive me?”
“I don’t know,” Rain admitted. “And I don’t know if she should.”
I got up and went to my room, returning with my laptop and a folder of papers with the terms of my inheritance. I handed all them to Rain.
“Go ahead, look through it all.”
After about ten minutes of reading and poking through my computer, Rain looked satisfied. “Ok, I believe you.”
My heart swelled with hope. “You do?”
“Yes. You made her happy, Tate. Happier than I’ve ever seen her. You’re going to have to do a lot of work to get that back.”
I nodded my head vigorously. “I know and I’m willing to do whatever it takes. Will you help me?” I asked, hopeful.
Rain regarded me with a look before finally nodding her head. “I’ll see what I can do.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE – KAMI
“Kam?” I heard footsteps approaching as I rolled over, still in bed. After I’d looked at the date on the calendar, I’d run to the drugstore and got a test, which confirmed my worst fear. I was pregnant with Tate’s baby. Those two unprotected times were all it took to change my life forever.
I never expected to get myself knocked up by a man I’d fallen so deeply in love with, only to have my heart smashed into bits by him.
I’d cried myself to sleep again afterward. That weekend had been filled with so much hope and love, and now I was left with a permanent reminder of it. I found myself totally lost.
Rain sat down on the edge of my bed and smoothed my hair away from my face. “Are you still sick?” she asked, feeling my forehead?
I shook my head, and the motion made me queasy all over again. I bolted up and out of bed, slapping my hand over my mouth as I ran to the bathroom. Rain followed me and held my hair as I puked, then offered me a cool cloth for my forehead.
“No,” I said, when I regained my composure. “I’m not sick.” I opened the drawer and pointed to the stick that lay in the bottom. I watched Rain’s eyebrows knit together as she leaned down to look, and then shoot up almost to her hairline when she realized what she was seeing.
“Oh my God, Kam!” she shouted.
“What am I going to do, Rain?” I asked her, tears falling down my cheeks.
She grabbed my hand and led me to the living room, pushing me gently down onto the couch and sitting next to me. “It’s going to be ok,” she said reassuringly.
“How?” I asked her. “I’m so stupid. I went and got myself knocked up by a liar and a womanizer. I’d wanted to get pregnant so badly and it happened in the worst way. How is it going to be ok?”
“Yeah, about that,” Rain said. “Look, don’t be mad, ok, but I went over to Tate’s house earlier.”
“What? Why” I asked her.
&n
bsp; “Because I wanted to give him a piece of my mind,” she said.
I couldn’t help but smile. I loved how much Rain loved and protected me.
“Listen, Kam, there’s a whole story that you don’t know—”
“Oh God, not you too,” I groaned. “Please tell me that you didn’t fall for his bullshit, Rain?”
She shook her head. “No way, you know me better than that. I listened to what he had to say, and then I went and got my own proof.”
“Proof of what exactly?” I asked, my curiosity piqued.
“It seems that though Tate was working on the Matched site, he wasn’t on there to meet anyone. The site is owned by his best friend who hired him to help increase traffic by engaging women who were either new to the site, or weren’t getting a whole lot of attention.”
“Ew, that’s gross,” I said.
“Yeah, I know. And actually, Tate felt the same way, but he saw it as a way to kill two birds with one stone.”
“Two birds? What does that mean?”
Rain took a deep breath before diving into the story. “He told me how he came to have his money. Apparently, his grandmother left him a trust when she died, but it came with a stipulation. In order to get the full amount, he has to be settled down and have a kid by his thirty-fifth birthday. His friend convinced him that he could both help him out, and find someone to have a kid with.”
“Oh my God, that’s disgusting,” I said. “But at least it explains the comment his dad made. I can’t believe he was just using me to get his money.”
“Maybe that was his first intention, but he really does love you Kami. And he’s really sorry that he hurt you. Like he’s pathetic right now. Super pathetic. You should see him, he looks like shit.”
“Good,” I said, trying not to smile at his discomfort.
Rain laughed. “Seriously though, Kam. He knows he should have been honest from the beginning but he didn’t want you to think he was using you.”
“So the messages to the other chicks were just to help out his friend?” I asked.