by Gina Sorelle
Danny scoffed. “I don’t know shit except you said you loved me and wanted to be with me forever one day and that you’d never loved me and I wasn’t good enough for you the next – all the while fucking my brains out, even after you’d decided you’d rather be with some other dude! That’s what I know, Kat!”
“Stella, I’m trying to stay out of it, like you said,” Fi gritted out, rubbing at her temples, eyes closed. “But I am about to lose it on him.”
Danny let go of the back of the chair, shoved his hands into the front pockets of his pants, and shrugged. “Don’t bother, Fi. And don’t worry, I’m done. And I’ll be leaving soon.”
He latched onto Kat’s eyes and she nearly cried out at the blankness she saw in his. Danny opened his mouth, but before he spoke, Kat was already struggling to stand up.
She couldn’t listen to him say good-bye. Wasn’t sure she’d physically and emotionally survive it. And because it would be one thing to know he’d gone, but an entirely different one to watch him go.
“I’ll leave,” Kat pushed to her feet and braced her hands on the edge of the table. “I need to go.”
Danny extended a hand toward her, backing up. “No, sit down, Kat. I’m leaving.”
She shook her head. “No…” Kat glanced back over her shoulder at Fi – who was already standing, arms extended to catch Kat should she have fallen backwards. “Grab my cane out of the bedroom, okay, Fi?” She took a few steps toward the front room, but felt her fatigued, adrenaline-fueled muscles weakening with each movement. Kat braced a hand against the wall separating the two rooms. “Hurry, please, okay?”
“Kat…” Danny said quietly, but she didn’t look back at him.
She couldn’t. Not now.
A few seconds later, her zebra cane in hand and a concerned look from Fi both received and ignored, Kat grabbed her jacket and purse and slowly made her way to the door.
Get out of here. Away from him. So you can process this. And think. And plan your next move.
But each step was a step away from Danny – from all the things she still needed to say, the things he needed to hear – and Kat found them difficult to take. Her body and mind were crying out at her to turn around and force him to listen to a full explanation before he made his final decision.
But Kat couldn’t do it.
Because you are a coward who’d rather turn tail and run rather than take the risk he won’t change his mind. After all the times Danny bravely put himself out there – mowing down any obstacles that might have stood in his way – you are running away.
Leaving him. Again.
Abandoning him. Again.
All in an attempt to keep yourself safe. Again.
Kat heard the jingle of keys behind her.
Nathan reached around her and pulled the front door open. “I’ll drive you home,” he said quietly.
Kat didn’t argue, because she was too overwhelmed and heartsick to. And she was probably too weak to drive, anyway. She nodded once, let Nathan help her out to the car, and promptly burst into tears.
Chapter Forty-Five
‡
As soon as the door closed behind Nathan, Nina snorted. “Well, you handled that like a real fucking champ, asshole.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Nina, leave him alone.” When Danny turned back to face them, Gigi shot him an apologetic look. “Sorry, Danny.”
Fi flung an arm in his direction. “What the hell are you apologizing to him for!”
“Because, as usual, Nina is flying off the handle like a nut job. Much like I suspect you’re about to.” Stella looked at Danny, smiling wryly. “Although, I will say, you and Kat have managed to make quite a mess of things, haven’t you, Danny?”
He reared back. “What the hell did I do?”
“Uh, let’s start with you seducing our virginal sister!” Nina exclaimed. “And making her fall in love with you! And then trying to abandon her! How about that for starters, MacDonough?”
Danny’s jaw dropped. “How the fuck do you get me trying to abandon her out of this? All I’ve done – all I’ve ever done since the day I met her – is love her! And do everything I could to take care of her and keep her with me!”
“Then why the hell did you just destroy her? Why did you just reject her like that?” Fi demanded. “And, if you love her so much and want her so much, why in the hell are you moving to California?”
“I already explained that to you, Fi,” Stella said.
Fi scoffed, staring Danny down. “Yeah, some explanation. Kat gives you a little push away and your reaction is to run off to the Golden State to drink, screw, and do God-knows-what-else to nurse your broken heart while our sister falls apart back here all alone. That’s some love-filled plan, Danny!”
“She doesn’t want me, Fi!” Danny bellowed. “She doesn’t love me! And guess how I know that? Because she told me over and over and over! But, you know what, I do love her, so what the hell do you want me to do? Stick around here and beg some more? Eat my fucking heart out watching her go along on her merry way while I’m dying inside? Somehow manage to keep living after I see her with some other guy! No fucking way!”
Fi glanced around at her sisters, a smart-ass look of bewilderment on her face. “Was I…am I going crazy or…did I dream that whole scene a few minutes ago?” Her eyes latched onto Danny’s as she smacked her palm against the table. “Kat just said she loves you! That she can’t live without you! She apologized for screwing everything up, so what the hell is your problem?”
Danny scoffed. “That was all bullshit. She feels guilty. Stella probably told her how broken up I was and how worried Nathan was about me and it made her feel bad. Or maybe shit’s not working out with Ben the way she thought it would and she wants to pass some more time with me – I don’t fucking know! I can’t figure out what that woman is thinking to save my life! But I do know she doesn’t love me – because, if she did, she wouldn’t have…” Danny paused, his voice lowering and tightening. “I don’t know…strung me along like that. She wouldn’t have said all that horrible shit and then walked out on me. She wouldn’t have started up with him…” He shrugged, heartsick all over again just thinking about Kat with anyone else. Heartsick and jealous and so fucking lonely without her he could hardly breathe. “And she sure as hell wouldn’t have turned me down when I proposed.”
A shocked silence fell over the room, stretching out for a few seconds before Fi finally exhaled a long sigh and Gigi began quietly weeping into a green and white checkered dishcloth.
“You asked her to marry you?” Stella asked. When Danny nodded, she did, too – her eyes searching his face, a wry smile tugging at her lips. “Yeah, well, she obviously left that particular detail out of what she told me, the little sneak.”
Memories of Kat holding the ring he’d so excitedly and carefully picked out for her flooded Danny’s brain.
Watching her put it back in the box instead of on her finger had been the most painful thing he’d ever experienced and Danny had experienced a lot of painful shit in his lifetime. Which was part of the reason he’d requested she take it. Knowing Kat had it in her possession would have comforted him, somehow. Just knowing she had it in her house and that maybe once in a while she might actually try it on and think of him would have brought him a tiny measure of peace.
But then she’d left it there on the corner of the counter, along with the key he’d made for her…
“Sit down, Danny,” Stella said, pulling him out of his thoughts. “Let’s talk.”
Danny stayed put, crossing his arms over his chest. “About what?”
Stella pointed across the table again. “Please sit down.” When Danny refused, her brow quirked. “I do enough talking up at gigantic men. I’d like to be able to do this without hurting my damn neck.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Danny replied. “I appreciate you wanting to fix everything, but there’s no changing this. It is what it is.”
Stella sighed. “Danny,
I really hate to do this to you, but if you don’t sit down and talk to us, I’m going to start crying.” She gestured over her shoulder at Gigi. “G is already half-drowned…”
One quick glance confirmed Stella’s statement – Gigi’s cheeks were covered in still-falling tears, which knotted his stomach up harder.
Stella jabbed a finger into her chest. “And I’m perilously close. So unless you want at least two – possibly three, if we piss Fi off enough – women sobbing, I would suggest you sit down. Now.” When he didn’t move, her brow quirked again. “Or should I go grab the Kleenex?”
As he walked over to the chair, Danny muttered under his breath – yet again – about the manipulative she-devil. He pulled it out and sat before crossing his arms back over his chest.
Danny shot Stella a pointed look. “Okay. Now what?”
She studied him in that intense, soul-stripping way of hers for a few seconds. “What did Kat say to you – exactly –when she broke up with you?”
Every muscle in Danny’s body tensed up and a fine sweat broke out across his forehead, because he was in no mood to dissect what had gone wrong with him and Kat. Danny could handle tongue-lashings all day long, but he was not going to sit here and relive the agony of Kat leaving him over and over.
But, before he could answer, Fi piped up.
“No, wait, before we get to that, I have a question.” Fi turned to Danny. “Why didn’t you tell me Kat was the one who broke up with you the other night at our apartment? You know how closed-off she is…you must have known she wasn’t telling us anything. Why did you let me believe the worst about you?”
“First of all, because what happened between Kat and me is none of your business.” Fi’s brows shot up, Nina scoffed, Stella smirked, and Gigi wrung her hands. “Second of all, because I’d rather you think the worst of me than anything negative about Kat.” The perpetual lump he’d been lugging around his throat expanded and Danny swallowed against it. “Not that there’s anything negative to think. It’s not her fault she doesn’t love me and doesn’t want to be with me. Yeah, she could have handled shit better, but…”
His earlier anger was rapidly wearing off, leaving only the awful, gnawing ache he’d felt since the last time he’d held Kat.
Danny cleared his tightened throat. “At the end of the day, I can’t really blame her, right? What with her being her and me being me. And with this being her first…” Danny struggled to find a word that summed up everything that had gone on with him and Kat, but all he could come up with was, “Relationship.” He shrugged. “It’s easy to see how she got carried away. And confused.”
Stella laughed. “Kat, carried away? And confused? I’m not sure she’s been either of those things even once in her entire God-blessed life!” Her grin faded into a wry smile as she studied Danny’s face. “Is that what she told you? That she, of all things, had gotten carried away and was confused?”
Danny paused, because he was still very uncertain of why this conversation was happening, where it was headed, and where it would ultimately end up.
He finally nodded.
“That little shit…” Fi breathed out, head shaking. “Carried away with and confused about what, exactly?”
“Us. The relationship. How she felt,” he replied. “Said she thought it was love, but it was actually just lust.”
“Uh-huh,” Stella said, thoughtfully tapping a finger against her lips. She pointed it at Danny. “And you bought this cockamamie explanation, I take it?”
“Well, yeah. Why wouldn’t I?”
All four exchanged looks that left Danny feeling like the stupidest, most out-of-touch person on the planet.
He lifted his hands. “What? She didn’t get carried away and she wasn’t confused?”
Nina huffed. “You ever met Kat before? She seem like somebody that gets carried away and confused a lot to you?”
Danny paused. “No, but a lot of shit happened between us in a very short amount of time. I think most people in that situation would feel that way.”
“Yeah, well, Kat’s not most people,” Fi replied. “If Kat doesn’t want to do something, she doesn’t. If she does, she does, and it doesn’t take her long to figure out which. So the fact that she did it…” Fi’s lips curled. “And you, means she was not in any way unsure of her feelings or the situation.”
“Well, maybe you don’t know your sister as well as you think you do, because she said she got carried away and was confused – in addition to a lot of other shit.”
“Like what?” Gigi asked.
The painful memories washed over him, tightening Danny’s chest and throat.
A part of him wanted to tell Kat’s sisters it was none of their business and get the hell out of there…but another bigger part of him wanted to see where they were going with this. And to maybe gain some insight – any insight – into the situation.
“She said I was not the kind of man she saw herself marrying,” Danny said.
“But you were the type of man she’d give her virginity to? After holding onto it for about a hundred years?” Fi said, laughing. When he shot her a dirty look, she added, “Danny. I know you’re an oblivious, clueless man, but come on!”
Danny shrugged. “Lots of women have given their virginity to men they don’t love or even care about. And most of them don’t marry the dude they gave it to.”
“At the risk of sounding like a broken record, Kat’s not most women. Wouldn’t you agree?” Fi asked.
When Danny shrugged again, Stella said, “You said something before about Kat telling you she loved you and then taking it all back. What was that all about?”
“Just what I said. She told me she loved me over and over…said she wanted to marry me and be a family. But then, all of a sudden, she broke up with me…out of thin fucking air. Said she’d been confusing lust and love, that she’d never loved me, and that she couldn’t see herself marrying someone like me.” Danny clenched his teeth and ground down hard on his jaw, opening it back up just enough to add, “And that she’d lied about her feelings so we could keep doing the physical stuff.”
Stella, Fi, and Nina scoffed loudly, while Gigi had the decency to just smile benevolently.
“Really?” Fi said. “Kat the smooth-talking player was stringing you along like a booty call boy until she got tired of you and moved on? Oh, and with the guy she’s been blowing off for years?”
All Danny could manage was a half-hearted shrug.
Stella’s smile slowly faded as her expression turned thoughtful. “You saw her today, Danny. Did that look like a woman who’d moved on to greener pastures? Like someone who was even the slightest bit okay, let alone happy?”
“I’m not saying she doesn’t feel terrible about what happened. She told me she did – and I believe her. No matter how shitty some of her decisions were, I know Kat’s not a bad person. Of course she’s going to feel bad about hurting me,” he said.
“Danny, I’ve watched Kat go through a lot of stuff – her entire life, but most especially over the past ten years,” Gigi began, her eyes welling again. “Our mother getting cancer and dying, our father going crazy with grief and trying to commit suicide, her MS diagnosis and seven years of MS-related fear, pain, and uncertainty, Stella’s cancer, and then Stella almost dying last year. But I have never, ever seen my sister fall apart – or even come close to falling apart – before now. Before this. With you. What you saw today is not Kat feeling guilty, sad, or even devastated – because we’ve seen her in all those conditions in the past and this is very, very different. This is complete destruction…because she is heartbroken and lost with you.” Gigi reached across the table, took his hand in hers, and squeezed. “Because she loves you, Danny.”
He shook his head. “No, she doesn’t. She couldn’t. She never did.”
Stella smiled warmly. “Oh, but she does. And she could. And she always will.”
“But then why would she tell me she didn’t love me, if she does? And if she lo
ves me, why would she break up with me? That makes no fucking sense!”
“You know, I really hope you never plan on going for detective, because you have got to be the blindest motherfucker to ever walk this earth, MacDonough, you know that?” Nina scoffed. “Hell, I’m the most emotionally clueless person alive and even I could see the shit she was pulling!”
“Oh, you did not!” Gigi exclaimed.
Fi leaned over and met Nina’s eyes. “Uh, no, you couldn’t.”
“We almost had to draw you a diagram to get you to figure it out, but okay,” Stella said, eyes rolling.
“Yesterday, I said I’d noticed how was weird it was that – even though she was supposedly the one who broke up with him – Kat had been crying all the time!” Nina said. “And how she wasn’t eating or sleeping!”
Fi huffed. “Yeah, after we told you Nathan figured it out!”
The four of them started arguing over each other – something to do with Kat’s stubbornness, Nathan’s attentiveness, and, again, Danny’s alleged obliviousness.
“What did Nathan figure out?” he asked. When no one answered, or even appeared to hear him, Danny raised his voice. “Hey, what did Nathan figure out?”
When they still ignored him, Danny yelled, “Hey! What the fuck are you guys talking about? What did Nathan figure out?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Fi whipped around to face him. “Kat broke up with you because she thinks her MS is getting worse!
“Her MS?” Danny shook his head, no more stunned than if Fi had said Kat had broken up with him because she was, in fact, Batman. “But, what the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“Everything, apparently. Kat thinks the disease is progressing, although there is no hard, clinical proof of that, yet, and she decided that you needed to be spared from watching that or feeling obligated to take care of her,” Stella said. “She lied to you, Danny…told you she didn’t love you and didn’t want you so you’d walk away. So that you wouldn’t – as she put it – waste your life taking care of her.”