“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Jace sighed and stared straight ahead—seeing nothing for a few minutes before he stood up. “Do you want another?” He held up the bottle, and I shook my head.
Two days after Kamryn had left me in the hotel parking lot, I’d gone to see Jace and demanded to know everything he’d seen from the times he’d followed Olivia. Not only did he have stories of the handful of times he or my parents had followed her, but he had pictures. Olivia shopping with friends, on dates with other guys, out at brunch or dinner with her parents and one of the guys. One of the best pictures was the one of a guy who just happened to be Liv’s doctor when she’d “overdosed” on the antidepressants. And not once did she look like the emotionally unstable woman I’d grown to know over the last four and a half years since Tate died. Jace had been right—she looked like normal Liv.
“You know,” he said, “it’s a good thing you have those pictures, though.”
My forehead creased and I took another sip of my beer. “And why is that?”
“That way, if she tries to come after you in court, you can say she was unfaithful. We have more than enough pictures of her in . . . interesting positions with other men. You throw that into it, the judge isn’t going to rule in her favor, no matter who her ‘daddy’ is.”
I started choking on my beer and had to force it down my throat before I spit it out everywhere.
“You good?”
I held up a hand and took two deep breaths after it was all down. “I, um, I can’t use that against Liv.”
“Of course, you can! You know she’s going to come after you with whatever she can get her hands on just to be a bitch. You need to have something against her, and now you do.”
“Yeah, but it goes both ways,” I whispered and stared at the carpeted floor.
“What does?” When I didn’t answer, he prompted me. “Brody. What does?”
“I’m—I was—having an affair,” I admitted softly, and heard Jace exhale.
“What. The. Hell. With who?!”
I shook my head and finally met his bemused stare. “It doesn’t matter.”
“The hell it doesn’t! We’ve been trying to get you away from Satan in female form and this entire time you’ve been with someone else?”
“Not entire. The last two months.”
“What—I don’t—how the fuck didn’t we kno—Oh, wait, actually, yeah, that makes sense now. You’ve been different over the last couple months. You and I just talked about that a couple weeks ago.”
“Yeah.” My chest felt like it was being ripped apart thinking about that day. I would give anything to do that all over again.
“Well, Brody, if we didn’t know, then chances are Olivia didn’t know.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. The day Ka—uh, the day she broke up with me, she’d seen Olivia that morning, and they’d talked. I don’t know what about, I never asked Liv. But the girl knew about how I’d told Olivia I wasn’t going to leave her, so I’m guessing Olivia knows about her.”
“Wait, whoa . . . back the fuck up. When did all this go down?”
“Ten days ago.” Ten of the longest fucking days of my life. I looked back up at Jace and explained, “That’s why I left so suddenly a week and a half ago.”
“Damn, Brody. And you didn’t tell me? So who is she? You said she knows Olivia?”
“No, I honestly don’t think she’d ever met Liv until last week.” Jace motioned for me to continue, and I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter who she is.”
“Yes, it does! Do I know her? Did we go to school with her?”
I blew out a hard breath through my nose and met his stare. “It’s because you know her that I won’t tell you her name. I can’t do that to her.”
“Come on—” He cut off when the front door opened, and his brow scrunched together. “What the hell happened to you two?!”
I turned around and was off the couch as soon as I saw the beautifully broken girl Kinlee had secured to her side. “Kamryn.” I automatically took a step closer to her.
Jace had been walking toward them and stopped when he heard me. “Who?”
“What did you just call her?” Kinlee’s tear-streaked face was full of surprise as she looked from me to Kamryn, and Kamryn tried to break away from Kinlee’s side as new tears quickly fell down her cheeks. “No, no. You’re not leaving.”
“You knew he was here and you didn’t tell me?” Kamryn cried and avoided looking at me as she continued trying to get free.
“Don’t go,” I pleaded, and Jace inhaled sharply next to me.
“Oh, shit, no way! KC’s the girl?”
Kinlee gasped. “You knew about it and you didn’t tell me?”
“I just found out! How long have you known, and why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I’ve only known for, like, ten minutes!”
Kamryn wrenched her arm from Kinlee’s grasp and took off for the door, with me right behind her. I caught her and slammed her body to mine before she could reach the door and held her as her body started giving way to sobs.
“Kamryn, I’m so sorry,” I spoke into her ear as I continued to pull her back closer to my chest. “I’ll never be able to explain how sorry I am for what I said to you and for letting you walk away from me.”
“I can’t do this with you,” she sobbed. “Please just let me go. You have to let me go, Brody.”
Knowing I was the reason for her tears was gutting me, and each word was like a new knife in my chest.
“I can’t let you go. I’ll do everything in my power to keep you with me for the rest of my life. So letting you go isn’t an option. I love you. I’ve loved you since you ran into me in this entryway. And I will love you until I die.”
“Olivia—”
“No Olivia. Just you and me. I told you, Kamryn, I’m gonna be yours forever. I know I fucked up, but I will do whatever it takes for you to be mine again.”
Her cries filled the entryway, and her hands went to grip where mine were holding her tightly. “But you lied.” Her voice broke, taking my heart with it.
“I never lied to you. I don’t know what Olivia told you that morning, but I’ll tell you everything that happened and why I told her what I did. But I didn’t lie. And you were never a mistress. I had every intention of leaving her to spend the rest of my life with you. She made things complicated, and it was just going to take longer than I’d originally planned.”
“I can’t do this.” She huffed and pushed against my hands.
Keeping her wrists locked in one hand, I turned her body and pushed her back until she hit the door. “Kamryn.” Pressing her joined hands to her chest, I stepped close enough so our noses were touching and waited until she looked me in the eye. “I’m meant to be with you. If I thought for a second that you actually wanted me to let you go, then I would. But I’ve wasted enough time living without you as it is, I’m not going to waste any more.”
“And what makes you so sure I don’t want you to let me go?”
I smiled at her defiance and brought my other hand up to wipe tears from her cheek before cupping it. Her eyes shut and a heavy breath left her at my touch. That’s why I’m sure. “Because right now you’re guarding yourself so I can’t hurt you again. And I don’t blame you for it. I know I don’t deserve you after everything I’ve put you through. But no one will ever love you as fiercely as I do. If you believe anything, Kamryn, please believe that.”
Her head shook back and forth. “I don’t . . . I can’t. I can’t do this with you. Brody, I love you, but . . . I just can’t.” Forcefully removing my hands from her face, she moved for the door again. I trapped her against the wall.
“Please just hear me out.” If she was going to leave now, she needed to know everything. “I filed for divorce three days ago. I told Liv this morning and said she needed to be out of the house by this weekend. I was wrong to do what I’ve done with you.” A harsh breath left her, and I spoke quickly. “I wi
ll never regret being with you, but I hate that I made you wait for me. You didn’t deserve that, you deserved all of me from the beginning, and for that I’m sorry. And God, baby, you will never know how sorry I am for what happened last week. I don’t love her, I haven’t for a long time. I’m not going to try to make an excuse for why I said her name, because there is none. It just came out.”
“You thought I’d cheated on you,” she said through her tears.
“No. No, I was being selfish, and jealous, and let my thoughts get away from me before asking you. But, Kamryn, I knew deep down that you wouldn’t cheat on me. I was just already stressing about telling you what happened with Liv the night before. I was afraid of losing you, and when I heard he’d been at your place . . . I snapped.”
Her eyes had hardened when she looked up at me. “And what exactly happened with you and Olivia that night?”
Letting my hand trail back up to her face, I rubbed my thumb back and forth over her cheek and looked directly into her blue eyes. “I texted you on my way home. I had decided I couldn’t wait anymore and I was going to tell her the next day. But she ended up being home, and was drunk, and when I turned her down—”
“Turned her down?”
I just raised an eyebrow at her and traced the line of her jaw when she clenched it shut. “I’ve been turning her down for years, it was nothing new. But when I turned her down, she started yelling at me. Saying I didn’t want her because she couldn’t have kids, and kept bringing Tate into it. She said I would still love her if that hadn’t happened. I told her that she knew we hadn’t loved each other before Tate ever came into the picture, and that I wanted a divorce. She flipped. Said I’d already taken everything from her, I couldn’t leave her too. She said she would kill herself if I left her, and then I’d have her death on my hands too.”
“What the fuck?” Kamryn whispered. Her expression had turned to one of complete shock.
“That’s just how she is. I kept telling her I’d tried getting her help, and I would still get her help if she would let me, but she just kept saying I would leave her so she was refusing to get help. And if I left her, she would be dead the next day. So I told her I wasn’t leaving her, because at that point I felt like I didn’t have a choice. The next day it was killing me that I didn’t know how I could leave her and I’d just told you I would, and then when I found out about Aiden . . . I just basically said, ‘Screw it.’ I knew I would do anything not to lose you, I didn’t even care if Olivia found out about us. But something happened on the drive over there, and I ended up getting more pissed off about the Aiden thing. Like I said, I let my mind get ahead of me . . . and then I fucked up everything.”
“Brody, I just don’t think I can keep doing this. You keep promising me our forever. But hasn’t enough happened that you’re starting to second-guess this ‘forever’ too? Too much happened with Olivia, and I can only imagine it’s about to get worse with you filing for divorce. Brody, what if all this is a sign? What if—what if we’re not supposed to be together?” she asked, her voice breaking. “So you filed for divorce. That means we should just go on with our relationship now? Brody, you promised me for months that you would divorce her, and you only did it after I left you.”
“No, no. Don’t start thinking about it like that. There’s so much that happened that you don’t know about. So much with Liv, her parents, and her father’s lawyer that I kept from you so you wouldn’t have the added stress. What we were already going through was stressful enough. I saw what it was doing to you—what it was doing to us. But if I had told you what was happening, Kamryn, you would have left me just so I wouldn’t have had to go through what I was going through with them. I know it. I wasn’t not leaving Olivia because I didn’t want to. Trust me, Kamryn, there was nothing I wanted more than to leave her and start my future with you.”
Her eyes had widened with dread. “What was happening?”
Shaking my head, I cupped her cheeks and leaned close. “I’ll tell you everything, just not right now. Right now I need you to know that I love you, and I need to know that I haven’t lost you.”
Kamryn’s jaw quivered, and she looked down to where our chests were pressed together.
Putting my fingers under her jaw, I lifted her face until I could look in her blue eyes and I whispered, “Please. You . . . you I can’t lose.”
A sob broke free from her chest, and she shook her head back and forth. “Brody, I love you. But if we do this, then I want all of you.”
“Done,” I vowed and pressed my lips to hers, only moving back far enough so I could speak. “Done, Kamryn. Completely, one hundred percent yours. No more calls in the middle of the night,” I swore against her lips. “No more leaving. No more hiding. I’m yours.”
“I’m done sharing you.”
I brushed a thumb against her trembling lips and looked back into her eyes. “I hate that you felt like you were. If only you knew that it’s always been only you. I was never hers; she’s never had a part of me. But God, Kamryn, I’m so damn sorry for making you wait so long.”
“Can we please have our forever?” she begged, her voice so soft and broken, I wanted to die for ever making her go through this pain and doubt in our relationship.
“Yeah, babe. We can have our forever.”
17
Kamryn
July 18, 2015
A PAIR OF arms slid around my waist, and I smiled when Brody’s lips pressed firmly against my neck.
“What are you making?”
“Breakfast.”
“Really now?” he asked as he grabbed a sausage patty from the plate and took a bite. “Is breakfast for dinner a normal occurrence for you?”
I took the rest of the sausage from his fingers and spoke around it. “No, but you made me miss it the last few mornings, and I’m a breakfast-food person.”
“Are you really mad at me for making you miss breakfast?” he asked softly. The combination of his soft lips and rough stubble against my neck caused my stomach to feel like it was melting.
“Hmm?”
He laughed huskily, and I leaned against the rumbling in his chest. “I’ll take that as a no. Can I help?”
“You touching me and kissing me like that is the exact opposite of helping.”
Running his hands over my stomach, he played with the top of my pajama shorts and hipbones before bringing his hands back up to pass over the swell of my breasts. “Touching you how?”
“Uh.” I licked my lips and tried to control my breathing. “T-touching me like that.”
“So you want me to stop?”
“Hmm?” I didn’t even know where we were anymore. All I could focus on were his hands moving slowly back down my stomach and his lips on the dip between my neck and shoulder.
Suddenly his body was gone from mine, and I stumbled back a step before he caught me.
“What the hell?”
He laughed loudly and leaned around my body to kiss me chastely. “I’ll finish the sausage,” he said as he moved in front of me to check the cooking sausage.
“But—you—what—not fair!”
“Sausage, sweetheart. Breakfast for dinner. You have a ton of fruit and a waffle iron out. Any of this ringing a bell?”
I just stood there staring at him like he’d stolen an ice cream cone from a child. “That was so hateful!”
Brody barked out a laugh and wrapped an arm around my waist to pull me in for another kiss. “God, I love that accent of yours.”
“I don’t have one,” I grumbled and moved away from his hold to begin cutting up fruit.
It had been three days since we talked out everything in the entryway of Kinlee and Jace’s house, and in that time . . . there had been nothing but us. No Olivia, no Reynoldses, no J. Shepherd . . . just us. It had been beyond amazing and felt like a dream that I wasn’t ready to wake up from. While we’d spent most of the time in the bedroom, we had done a lot of talking. He’d told me everything that was happening with Ol
ivia’s psychotic family that he’d kept hidden from me. He told me about J. Shepherd’s threats, and his worries about what they might come back with now that he had filed for divorce, even though he had a lot of evidence on Olivia. But mostly he told me about everything he wanted to do now that we were about to start our forever. Including being reintroduced to his parents as his girlfriend. I’m not going to lie—that one was scaring me.
Jace and Kinlee had taken the news well—too well—but that was because they hated Olivia and wanted Brody back. Well, and probably because they both knew me and liked me. But while I’d met Brody and Jace’s parents, I don’t think they’d ever given me a second thought. So even though I knew they would be happy Brody had left Olivia, I had no idea how they would react to me. My bet was that it wouldn’t be good. In my mind I was still a home-wrecker. I was still “the other woman.” And I still didn’t understand how anyone could see me as anything but those things.
“What are you thinking so hard about?”
My body tightened as Brody’s voice broke through my inner freak-out, and I focused on loosening it as I continued cutting fruit. “Your parents. I’m still scared about that conversation . . . about how it’s going to go, and how it might be for a long time after that.”
Brody was about to pour batter on the waffle maker, but stopped and frowned at me. “It’s going to be okay, Kamryn.”
“Just because Kinlee and Jace were okay with it doesn’t mean your parents will be.”
“I’m not expecting them to be okay with it. I was never expecting anyone to be okay with it. Hell, my two closest friends more or less said they were glad I was happy but didn’t approve of what I was doing.”
My eyebrows rose, and my eyelids blinked slowly. “Um . . . who?”
“When Hudson and Steele came down for Tate’s—”
“Oh, my God, they know?!” I didn’t even know these men, and they’d known that Brody and I had been having an affair? My cheeks heated in embarrassment. Whenever Brody mentioned them, he always told me they were guys he wanted me to meet someday . . . but I doubted, because of what they knew about me, that this meeting would ever happen.