“Tell me what you do need,” I tempt fate by putting that out there.
Her top teeth latch onto her bottom lip as she thinks it through.
She’s inside my bar. I want her to stay. I don’t want her to walk out of here yet.
I step in to give her more time and to keep her in place. “I’ll make you a whiskey sour.”
“No,” her reply is instant. “I don’t drink those anymore.”
The declaration spears my heart. It’s just a drink, but it was our drink. I was the person who introduced her to hard liquor. I poured her a shot of straight whiskey the night we moved in together.
Her throat burned, a tear welled in her eye, and when I leaned forward to brush my lips over hers, I could taste the whiskey on her mouth.
Weeks later, I made myself a whiskey sour, and she sipped it too, stealing kisses from me between swallows.
“What do you drink?” I ask even though I can guess.
When you spend enough time behind a bar, you get a sense for what people crave when they walk in.
The woman across from me now is elegant and sophisticated. She carries herself with an unspoken grace that wasn’t there when she was twenty-two-years-old.
A martini. She drinks martinis.
“When I do drink it’s usually a dirty martini.” Her eyes scan the withering rose petals covering the top of the bar. “I’m leaving.”
“Do you have plans?” I have no right to ask her that, but I do.
The thought of her rushing off to see the suit from last night knots my gut. It’s not my business, but I haven’t been able to shake the image of her holding his hand as they walked down the sidewalk.
“I’m not answering that.” She says harshly, her arms crossing her chest.
“Are you seeing him again?” I push for more because I want her to tell me that he’s nobody.
Her bare ring finger gives me hope, but it doesn’t mean that she’s not in love with the guy.
“Who?” she spits the word at me.
“The guy you met up with last night.”
Her eyes narrow. “Preston.”
I don’t want to know his goddamn name. That only adds to the hell I’ve put myself in.
“Preston,” I repeat it back in a low voice. “Is Preston your boyfriend?”
Her fingers skim over the top button on her blouse. “He’s a man I’ve been seeing.”
The heavens must be smiling down on me tonight. He’s not her boyfriend. She would have confirmed that. It’s a casual thing.
I take that as a sign and jump in with both feet. “I want to talk, Katie. I want to explain what happened five years ago.”
Her gaze darts to the shelves on the wall behind me. I watch her face intently as she scans each of them. I see the moment when realization hits her.
Memories of the life we shared back in California are on one of those shelves. I’ve never let them go. I’ve carried them with me everywhere.
Chapter 14
Kate
My gaze catches on the wall behind the bar.
A large mirror hangs in the center, but the glass shelves that border it are crowded with liquor bottles.
My eyes lock on a leather-scented candle, a collection of poetry books, and a chess set on the top shelf.
I take in each item. All are a memory of my past. The past I shared with Gage.
My heart feels like it’s squeezing into a tight ball inside my chest.
I tap my hand over it, willing it to stop aching.
“Do you want me to clean these flowers up, Gage?” A deep voice asks.
I turn and look into the face of a dark-haired man wearing glasses. He shoves his hand in my direction. “I’m Zeke.”
His arms are covered with tattoos. He’s wearing a black T-shirt with Tin Anchor printed across the front in white lettering.
I take his hand for a soft shake, not offering anything but a half-smile.
Gage slides a glass of water toward me. “This is Katie.”
Zeke’s eyes widen. “I’ve heard about you.”
I’m tempted to ask what he’s heard, but I stop myself. I don’t care what Gage has told him about me because I doubt like hell he included the part where he dumped me days before our wedding so he could sail the high seas.
“I’ll take care of the flowers,” Gage pats Zeke’s forearm. “I’d appreciate if you take over the bar. Callie’s got the floor covered.”
“No problem,” Zeke says with a smile. “It was good to meet you, Katie.”
“Kate,” I correct him. “I prefer Kate.”
“Kate it is.” Zeke nods before he turns his attention to a man at the end of the bar waving his hand in the air.
Gage crosses his arms over his chest. He’s not wearing a Tin Anchor shirt. He’s dressed in a black sweater and dark jeans.
His jaw is peppered with a five o’clock shadow.
I may not want to admit it, but he’s still the most handsome man I’ve ever seen.
“I wish I could turn the clock back, Katie.” His green eyes lock on my face. “I’d give anything to make that happen.”
“You can’t.” I push the glass of water back at him. I don’t want anything from this man, especially a trip down memory lane.
“You deserved better,” he admits on a low sigh. “I regret the way I handled things.”
“You regret the way you handled things?” I question back.
That’s a hell of a lot different than regretting breaking my heart.
“I do.” He scrubs his hand over the back of his neck. “I panicked and took off.”
Panicked because you realized that you didn’t love me and that meant you couldn’t marry me.
I’ve suspected as much since the day he broke off our engagement. Why else does a man leave a woman right before he’s supposed to marry her?
My family and friends back in California all tried to convince me it wasn’t about me. They twisted the situation into something it wasn’t by assuring me that he left because of his immaturity or the fear born from loving me too much.
If Gage loved me as much as he said he did, he would have been standing at the end of the aisle waiting to exchange vows with me.
“We don’t need to do this.” I take a step away from the bar. “It’s history now. Why it happened doesn’t matter anymore.”
“It matters.” He runs his hands through his hair.
It’s shorter now than it was back then. I used to tug on the back of it when his face was between my thighs.
Gage’s mouth took me places that I haven’t been since. His cock made the journey even more unforgettable.
I’ve had a handful of lovers since I moved to Manhattan, but there’s nothing about any of them that I can remember.
My gaze stalls on his left wrist.
I blink twice to be sure I’m not seeing things.
He’s wearing the bracelet.
I made that bracelet for his twenty-third birthday. I bought the stone beads from a craft supply store and looped them together with fishing line I found in the garage at my parents’ place.
He told me he loved it when he opened it. He swore he’d never take it off his wrist.
I rub at my forehead. Emotion is clouding my vision.
“I need to go,” I whisper into the air around me.
I can’t breathe. None of this makes any sense. He left me. Why the hell is he still holding onto things that symbolize the love we once shared?
“Katie, please,” he pleads in a low tone. “I want to talk to you.”
I stare at him, unable to form any words.
He fills the silence. “Fate put us in the same place for a reason.”
Fate. It’s Gage’s answer to everything. He used to tell me that fate put me in his path the afternoon we met on the campus at UCLA.
I was there to earn a business degree. Gage’s future was in medicine.
“You are my true north,” he lowers his voice. “I was meant to walk into your
store the other day. Our story isn’t over.”
My heart clouds with a dozen conflicting emotions. My knees shake. My ears ring.
I can’t do this.
“Our story is over,” I whisper back.
“Not according to fate.”
I almost laugh at his choice of words. “You waited for fate to find me. All of this time, you never once bothered to look for me.”
He shakes his head, his hand flying into the air between us to stop me from continuing. “Katie, I…”
“Go to hell,” I interrupt him. “Take fate with you.”
Chapter 15
Kate
Gage calls after me as I march out of Tin Anchor.
I look up and down the sidewalk, trying to decide where to go.
I should go home, but I don’t want to be alone. My heart feels like it’s been flipped inside out.
“Katie, wait.”
I glance over my shoulder to see Gage standing at the entrance to his bar with a denim jacket in his hands.
“Put this on.” He moves to drape it over my shoulders. “You’re getting wet.”
I slap the jacket away with my hands. “I don’t need that.”
He ignores my protest and slides it over me, tugging the front together. “You should wear it home. You used to catch a cold whenever you got stuck in a rainstorm.”
I gaze down at the wet sidewalk. “Don’t do that. You can’t keep bringing up the past.”
“I need to.”
His words are bold and direct. There’s no hesitation in them at all.
I look up into his green eyes. I used to stare into them for hours, fascinated by the way they seemed to change hue depending on the light in the room.
They are still the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen.
“I don’t want you to.” I take a step back from him. “We’ve both moved on. Why bring up the past at this point?”
“You’ve moved on?” He questions with a lift of his left brow. “With Preston? I thought you said it was casual.”
“Not with Preston,” I say tightly. “Not with anyone. I meant that I put my life back together. What happened between us was so long ago.”
“It feels like yesterday to me.” His tone is deep and soothing, just as it was years ago when I needed reassurance about the problems that would pop up in my life.
Gage was always the voice of reason. He could help me see the light at the end of the tunnel, regardless if there was one or not.
“Give me a chance to explain what happened, Katie.”
Taking a step toward the street, the rain beats down on me. I tug the jacket closer to my body. It’s a reminder of forever ago when Gage would offer his jacket to me whenever I was cold.
Gage follows my lead, taking the spot next to me as I scan the oncoming traffic for an available taxi.
“Come back inside,” he insists. “You don’t have to talk to me. You can have a coffee and sit at a table by yourself. You need to get out of this storm.”
I turn to face him, angry that we’re standing together in the rain just as we were the day after we met.
Maybe fate does have a hand in what’s happening.
“You don’t know what I need.” I push a finger into his chest. “You don’t know me anymore.”
Tears bubble up inside of me. I push them back with a heavy swallow and a reminder that I promised myself when I left the boutique with the flowers in my hand that I wouldn’t let him see me cry.
“I know you need answers.” His gaze glides over my face.
“I don’t.” I shake my head, trying to add weight to the lie that just left my lips.
His hand jumps to my chin. “You do.”
I don’t pull back from his touch because I’ve craved it for years. I stare into his eyes. “There’s nothing you can say to me that will change a thing. You don’t understand what you did to me.”
His eyes drop to the front of the jacket. “I broke your heart.”
I push his hand from my face. “You broke all of me. I couldn’t make sense of the world anymore. Everything I knew and believed was turned upside down.”
I’m giving him too much. I’m letting him see the most vulnerable parts of me, and that’s not what I want.
I have to protect myself at all costs. I have to protect the woman I am now and that broken girl he left behind with a wedding dress in her closet and a heart full of dreams.
“I’m sorry, Katie.” His voice is rough and edged with sadness. “I’m so sorry for what I put you through.”
Something inside of me cracks. Hearing the words and seeing the emotion swimming in those green eyes shatters me.
My hand covers my lips as I let out a sob.
“I need to explain.” He inches even closer to me. “Please let me explain why I left.”
I can’t hear him tell me that he doubted his love. I’ve known it for years, but I can’t bear to hear the words leave his lips. “No. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“It matters.” His hands fist at his sides. “All of it matters.”
“You stopped loving me,” I say the words to give them a voice; my voice.
A confirmation nod from him won’t split me in two the same way his words will.
“Never.” He exhales harshly. “I never stopped loving you.”
I never stopped loving you either.
I stare into his eyes as I hold tight to the words, not saying a thing.
I can’t still love him, can I?
“Katie,” he pauses, his hands jumping to my cheeks as the rain falls on us. “The day I left… that morning, I found out…Katie, I found out I had a daughter.”
Chapter 16
Gage
Katie’s mouth drops open. She stumbles back on her feet, but my hands are wrapped around her forearms before her knees give out.
I’ve pictured this moment for years. I’ve rehearsed how I would tell her about my daughter. I had the build-up all worked out.
In my fucked-up optimistic mind, we’d be having a drink or dinner, and I’d open up to her slowly.
She’d be naturally shocked, but in time understanding would replace that.
Thunder claps above us as her eyes seek out mine. I see the plea in them. It’s the same plea that was there the day I told her I couldn’t marry her.
Back then, I couldn’t find the words to tell her that I had a child.
“What?” she asks, staring at me like I’ve grown a second head. Confusion doesn’t even begin to describe her expression.
“I’ll explain all of it.” I look up when another blast of thunder echoes over Manhattan. “Let’s go back inside.”
Her gaze darts to the windows of Tin Anchor. People have been ducking inside in a steady stream to escape the rain. It’s more crowded now than when we left a few minutes ago.
“I can’t go back inside.” Her arms shake beneath my touch. “I can’t think in there.”
“There’s a coffee shop around the corner,” I suggest because I can’t let her walk away without the full story.
You don’t throw something like this at someone without a foundation of understanding.
“I should go home.” She tries to tug her arms free. “I have to think.”
“I have to explain,” I counter. “We can get a coffee and talk.”
Her gaze drops with a shake of her head. “I can’t be around people right now.”
The office in the back of my bar is private and secluded, but it’s uncomfortable. I’m not going to talk to Katie about why I left her while we’re sitting in two folding metal chairs with an old air conditioner unit humming noisily beside us.
“We can go to my apartment,” I suggest knowing that it’s a ridiculous idea. “I live three blocks from here.”
Studying my face, her brows pinch together. “Your apartment?”
I tighten my grip on her arms out of fear that she’ll bolt if I let go. “Just to talk. I’ll make us coffee. I’ll explain about Kristin.”
Her bottom lip trembles. “Kristin?”
Fuck. Just fuck.
I’m throwing too much at her at once, and there’s no place for her to hide. She bats her long eyelashes as the rain showers her face.
“My daughter,” I clarify. “Kristin.”
“That’s a pretty name,” she whispers. “Is she pretty?”
I see her resolve break right before me. Tears stream down her face with the raindrops, melding together before they fall from her chin.
Children were never part of our plan. Katie was insistent that we would remain as a family of two for eternity.
I questioned it when I felt the longing that a man does to have a child after he meets the woman he’s destined to love.
She’d overheard her mom one too many times complaining about the life that she might have had, the career, and travel dreams that were snuffed out by the positive sign on a pregnancy test.
Katie wanted her career and me. I wanted her. I was willing to sacrifice fatherhood for her until I discovered that I was already a dad to a beautiful little girl.
“Let’s go to my place to talk,” I suggest again because I need to get her out of the rain and I need time to formulate what I’ll say. “We’ll be alone there.”
She nods without a word.
I glance to the side and catch sight of a couple exiting a taxi.
I glide my right hand down Katie’s arm until it catches her wrist. I tug her toward the car. “Get in, Katie.”
She slides onto the torn leather backseat, her gaze trained on the rain out the window.
I sit next to her, tell the driver where to drop us off, and pray that I’ll be able to put the pieces of this beautiful woman’s heart back together again.
Chapter 17
Kate
A daughter.
Never in the days, months or years of the tortured hell I’ve put myself in have I imagined that Gage left me because he had a daughter.
He’s a father.
“Can I make you a cup of coffee or tea?” Gage glances over his shoulder at me as he unlocks the door to his apartment. “Do you still like Earl Grey with steamed milk?”
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