“Good-bye, Brody.”
“Pl—” My breaths were coming too fast and strong. “Please! Kamryn! I didn’t mean—”
“It’s over. Go back to your wife and stay there. I’m done sharing you with her.”
She turned, and my arms fell away from her. I couldn’t reach for her again even if I tried. I stumbled back until I hit the car next to hers and slid down to the ground as I watched her get in her car and drive away. My end couldn’t come soon enough. In less than twenty minutes, I’d insulted and lost the girl who meant everything to me, and I’d called her by another woman’s name. This had to be the worst nightmare I’d ever experienced. I needed to wake up and have it be yesterday morning all over again.
16
Brody
July 15, 2015
“OLIVIA, CAN YOU come here for a minute?”
“Kinda busy, Bro. We can talk tomorrow. I need to get to my parents’ so we can get to the club on time.”
I blew out a deep breath and tried to remain calm. “This will only take a few minutes, and you’ve been blowing me off for the last couple days.”
She tsked, and I knew she was rolling her eyes. “Poor Brody wants attention,” she mocked. “Go get it from your friends.”
“Olivia, sit in the fucking chair for a minute!”
“Oh, so you have a temper now too? Do you want me to tell Daddy about this?” She sat roughly in the chair and immediately began drumming her fingernails on the table. “Well, what did you want? I need to go!”
I huffed a laugh and couldn’t help but smile. Jesus, why did it take me this long to do this? “You’re making this a lot easier than I—”
“What?” she snapped.
“I filed for divorce three days ago, Liv.”
“You what?!”
“And I should’ve done it years ago.”
She stood quickly and began pacing. “You can’t divorce me! My dad will ruin you. I will take everything you have, Brody!”
“The house is in my name only, and you keep draining our accounts, so I have no money. You’ve already completely ruined my life, what more could you do?”
“You’re about to find out.”
“Save your threats, Liv. I’m done with all of this.”
Tears poured down her face, and her shoulders hunched. “You can’t do this to me! You killed our son.”
“Stop using that against me! Goddamn it, Olivia! I will have to live with that for the rest of my life, but I won’t fucking live another five years of you constantly reminding me of what happened to Tate. If you had an ounce of respect for his memory or me, you wouldn’t keep doing this. And don’t try the suicide thing with me again. I see your bullshit—fuck, Olivia, I see it now, and I hate myself for not seeing it a long time ago. You love yourself and your life way too much to ever jeopardize it. And another thing—since this is my house, I put it on the market this morning. I don’t want anything that reminds me of my years with you, and I want you out of here by the weekend.”
“You bastard! Where am I supposed to go?”
“Your parents have a mansion, and you spend the majority of your time there already. Shouldn’t be hard to take the rest of your stuff there.”
Her tears had stopped just as fast as they’d started, and I wondered why it had taken me so long to notice that everyone was right. She was an amazing actress. Liv deserved a fucking Oscar. “How can you be so heartless?”
I laughed and stood up from the table. “How can you? And don’t bother trying to drain our accounts again, Liv. I had all the money moved and those accounts closed.”
“You can’t do any of this!” she screeched and threw her keys across the kitchen. “There has to be a law! That’s my money, this is my damn house!”
“That’s the beautiful thing about being the only name and signature on the house and all our accounts, Liv. None of it is yours. You haven’t worked a day in your life, all you’ve done is blow my money on useless shit like a Lexus to match your Mercedes, couches when we already had new ones, and a tanning bed . . . to name a few.”
If it hadn’t been for the fact that I hadn’t heard back from Kamryn for a week and a half and I felt like she’d taken my soul with her, this would have been one of the best moments in almost five years. It felt like a huge weight had been lifted off me. Even as Olivia sat there threatening to sue me and make my life miserable, I was so damn happy I’d finally done it.
“Olivia”—I spoke over her and waited for her to stop talking—“you know this is what you want too. It’s not a secret that this is what we want, or what we should have done long ago. So stop acting like this is a shock and pretending you’re brokenhearted over this.”
“I am!”
I pulled up one of dozens of pictures I’d been sent of her on my phone and turned it toward her. “I had a long talk with my brother the other day. Just a thought, Liv: when you’re married and have boyfriends, it’s best not to be seen in public with them. But at least for you, your parents seem really happy with you and the guy in this picture.”
Her eyes narrowed as she marched past me to grab the keys she’d launched. “You’ll be hearing from Daddy’s attorney.”
Considering I’d spent a week searching for an attorney who would actually help me instead of calling J. Shepherd, I’d been waiting for the moment when I heard from him again. “Looking forward to it,” I mumbled when the front door slammed shut.
I tapped the screen on my phone to pull up Kamryn’s number and immediately called her. Like it had done the other hundred times I’d called her since that afternoon in the hotel parking lot, it went straight to voice mail.
“Kamryn.” I sighed and dropped back into the chair at the kitchen table. “Please call me. I’m sorry for everything I said to you. You have every right to hate me, but I can’t live without you. I will spend every day of the rest of my life making it up to you. Call me. I’ll always love you.”
And there went my momentary good feeling. Divorcing Olivia was a must, but until Kamryn was back in my life, nothing would be okay again.
Kamryn
July 15, 2015
“YOU’RE GOING TO stay for dinner, right?”
“I’m not sure, Lee. It was a long day. I kinda just want to go home.”
I knew she was studying me, so I continued to stare at the road. It’d been ten days since I’d left Brody in the hotel parking lot. He’d left at least a dozen messages, and more texts, every day, but I just deleted them all when I turned my phone on for a few minutes late at night to see if there was anything from Barb. Ten days, and it felt like ten years. I felt hollow without him, but I couldn’t go on like that anymore. Especially after everything I’d found out and how he’d reacted at the hotel. I had been stupid enough to think he would leave Olivia, and even more so for thinking he actually loved me. But I had spent more than six years with a guy who treated me like a possession and like I was beneath him. I wasn’t about to spend any more time with a man who didn’t treat me like I was his everything.
A small part of me whispered that Brody did treat me that way when we were together, but I pushed it aside. It had been a lie. Some sick joke he’d played on me, and a betrayal of his wife that I’d taken part in.
“Kace, Kace!”
“What?”
Kinlee looked worried as she touched my arm. “I’ve been sitting here talking to you, and it’s like you didn’t hear me at all, and why are you crying?”
“I’m not,” I choked out and blinked rapidly to keep more tears back. “It’s just allergies or something and my eyes keep watering.”
“That’s such bullshit and you know it. What is going on with you these last couple weeks?” When I didn’t respond, she began angrily tapping on her phone. “I’m going to make sure Jace doesn’t let you leave our house. You’re staying with us tonight, and you’re going to talk to us. KC, you’re scaring me.”
I rolled my eyes and tried to laugh, but it sounded wrong. “I’m fine.” Re
aching over to the stereo, I turned the volume up and tried to get lost in the Pandora country radio.
Two songs later, a song by Sugarland I’d never heard came on. When a line in the first verse about praying she won’t call poured through my speakers, my eyes widened and flashed over to look at the title. “Stay.”
Kinlee started talking again, and I shushed her as I hung on to every haunted word of a song about being the other woman in a relationship and wanting the man you love to stay with you.
With tears streaming down my face, I pulled over into a parking lot. All I could do was listen to every word like she was singing about my life with Brody. Kinlee squeezed my hand, and I looked at her through blurry eyes as the chorus filled the car again.
I couldn’t hold back the sobs that burst from my chest, and I fell forward until my forehead hit the steering wheel. Kinlee kept brushing my hair away from my face as she mumbled words I couldn’t hear. All I could focus on were the words of that song, ten days prior with Brody, and how my world felt like it was crashing down around me. At some point her phone rang, and when she ended the call, she made me look at her.
“KC, please tell me what’s going on. You’re scaring me. The way you’ve been acting lately, and then whatever just happened with that song . . . what is it?”
I shook my head and cleared my throat. “You’re going to think I’m horrible, Kinlee.”
“Why?” she whispered and gripped my hand. “Kace, I’m here for you, just tell me.”
Another loud sob filled the inside of my car, and my body began shaking so hard that Kinlee’s eyes went wide. “I’m hav—I was . . . Brody and I—”
“Did you say Brody?” she asked when I couldn’t continue.
I just nodded and buried my face in my hands as my body was overcome with all the pain I’d been feeling the last week and a half and the realization that we were over.
“Jace just—you and Brody wha—oh, holy shit! KC, you’re with Brody? Brody . . . like my brother-in-law?”
“N-no . . . not anymore. He wasn’t—he lied to me. He wasn’t going to leave Olivia.”
“What the hell? When did all this happen, and how did I not know about this? I’m your best friend! How did you not tell me?”
“I couldn’t!” I cried out and pointed toward the screen where just minutes ago the name of the song had been sitting. “I didn’t want you to think of me like that! That isn’t who I am. I’m not that person. I don’t ruin marriages, but I love Brody—” I cut off quickly and sucked in air at saying those words again. “He called me ‘Liv,’ Kinlee.”
“He what?!”
“He was trying to get me to stay. I was breaking up with him last week, and he said, ‘I love you, Liv,’ and I—I just couldn’t. That was it for me, I can’t be with him when he’s in love with someone else.”
Kinlee sat back against her seat and just stared blankly ahead. “Oh, my God, how did I not know? How long has this been going on?”
“Almost two months,” I whispered and wiped furiously at my face.
After a long silence, she finally shook her head and huffed a sad laugh. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”
“Kinlee, I had an affair with a married man—”
“I don’t care.”
“How could you not?”
Her eyes searched around, like the answer was somewhere between us. “You said two months, so this started right after you first met Brody at my house?” I nodded, and she did the same as she continued: “I haven’t seen Brody this happy since his son, Tate, was alive. You don’t know what it was like watching him emotionally die a little more every time we saw him—when we saw him. We’ve seen him more in the last two months than we have in the five years since Tate died. You gave all of us our Brody back. How could I even begin to care that you had a relationship with him?”
“Because it’s wrong!”
“It is, but Brody is a different case. He should have left Olivia long ago, and he definitely should have left her when you guys got together . . . but you’ve seen his mom, she’s always trying to set him up. No one views Brody’s marriage as a marriage. They view it as a death sentence for him. And I know you, KC. You’re not a home-wrecker at heart. I doubt going through this was easy for you . . . and the only thing I’m upset about is the fact that you felt like you couldn’t tell me.” She held a hand up when I opened my mouth. “I understand, but it still hurts.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m sorry for so much, Kinlee. For lying about Brody, for not telling you about my past . . . all of it. Other than Barb, you’re the only friend I’ve ever had, and I feel like I don’t deserve your friendship with the way I’ve kept everything from you.”
She looked at me with confusion. “Barb isn’t your aunt, is she?” she asked so softly I almost didn’t hear her.
Shaking my head, I blew out a deep breath, and then told her everything as I drove us back to her house. I told her about Kentucky and the horse-racing world. About my family’s status in that world, and what people expected from a family like mine. I told her about my parents. How detached they were, how they expected perfection, and how they viewed me as property instead of as a daughter. I told her about Charles, how ridiculous he was, and how hard it had been to go through years of pretending to even like him. But mostly I told her about Barb. How she’d been my maid, how she’d raised me and been the only person on my side growing up, and how she’d been the one who helped me get away.
“Holy shit,” Kinlee breathed when I was done. “No wonder you never told anyone. You’re finally getting to be who you want to be. And for the record, I think I like KC a lot more than I would like the princess of the Kentucky Derby.”
I laughed sadly and turned onto her street. “I like KC a lot more too.”
“You’re really from Kentucky?”
“Yeah.”
“Damn it.” She hiccupped and sucked in a couple breaths before wiping at her tear-streaked face. “Don’t tell Jace. I bet him two hundred dollars you were from Alabama.” A startled laugh bubbled up in her throat as she wiped at more tears.
“How can you be so calm about all this? I just told you I was having an affair with your brother-in-law. I just told you that I’m really someone else. And you’re joking about it?”
She looked at me sadly and shrugged. “I love you. I’m not going to judge you for wanting to run away from a shitty life. And though I wish you’d told me, I’m not going to judge you for falling in love with Brody and acting on it.”
“Kinlee, what we did was—”
“It was wrong. Yeah, sure, I get that. But you’re wrong about all this too, you know.”
My head whipped to the side as I put the car in park. “Wait, what?”
“Brody. I don’t know what happened between you two last week. But he doesn’t love that woman. And what happened between the two of you, well, it’s never been an option for him before. Which means you have to be special to him. So maybe he made a mistake, and maybe he’s still in love with you. Don’t shut him out. Because if you’ve been shutting me out, then I know you’re doing it to him too.”
I rubbed at my aching chest. “It . . . it doesn’t matter anymore. He chose her, Lee. So whether I’m wrong or not, it’s over.”
Brody
July 15, 2015
“EVERYTHING OKAY WITH Kinlee?” I asked when Jace hung up and tossed his phone back on the table.
“Yeah, I couldn’t really understand what she was saying other than something was wrong with one of her friends and she was on her way home. She was just blowing up my phone with texts I didn’t understand, but there was loud music playing in the car. So, I don’t know, I guess we’ll find out when she gets here.”
“Do you need me to go?”
“What? No, she’ll be happy you’re here. She misses you just as much as I do. Anyway, sorry about that. So what happened with Olivia after that?”
I ran my hand through my hair and settled back into t
he couch. “Well, the tears stopped, and she turned into an ice queen in less than a second. And there was no argument or denying the picture I showed her. She just up and left, saying I’d hear from her dad’s attorney.”
“Bitch,” Jace huffed and drained his beer. “I’m proud of you, Bro. I know that must’ve been difficult.”
“A week and a half ago, I would have thought it would be too,” I said. “But as soon as it was out today I felt lighter than I have in years. I just don’t know why it took me so long to see that this was all bullshit. I mean, even at the end there were times when I knew she was lying but she’d do something to make me actually believe she was suicidal and needed help. I just don’t get why I couldn’t have realized long ago all of this was typical of her games.”
Jace stayed silent for long minutes as he rolled the empty bottle back and forth between his fingers. “I hate to say this, but it’s because of Tate. Because of your view on what happened that day, you weren’t able to see what she was doing to you. You just knew that your world had shattered and figured hers had done the same, so you weren’t seeing her clearly.”
“You’re probably right,” I said. And because of that, because I wanted to help a woman who needed anything but that, I’ve ruined everything with Kamryn.
“Did you at least get some of Olivia’s psychotic episodes recorded?”
“What?” I snorted. “No.”
“What about her dad’s attorney? You can take that shit to court and use it against them for this.”
I frowned and sank even deeper into the couch. “My attorney already mentioned that. With Olivia, half the time I wasn’t even expecting to see her, she’d just be home all of a sudden, or she’d rant at me over the phone. Now that it’s over, it’s easy to think I could have pulled out my phone and recorded it, but I know that’s bullshit. I was always so blown away with whatever was happening, and trying to keep my shit together, that it was taking all my focus. And besides, do you really think she wouldn’t have noticed if I started recording her? She would have stopped whatever she was saying immediately.”
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