Page 56 of Wanting Wentworth

Like he can feel me looking at him, Went turns his head, pinning me with a look so hot, I nearly melt in the spot.

Whatever you want, I’ll give it to you. All you have to do is ask…

“And you’ve been coming up here every day for the last two weeks?”

Dragging my gaze away from Went’s, I look at my sister.

“Not every day. When I do, I come early while he’s still sleeping,” I tell her, thankful this is another honest answer I can give her. “You get that you can’t tell anyone he’s up here, right?” I say it carefully because she needs to understand how important it is. “Dad doesn’t want people gossiping about it—he made it clear that he didn’t want anyone to know he was staying up here.” It’s a lie but I tell it anyway because if I told her the truth—that it’s Went and not our father who wants to keep his residency a secret, Abbey would start foaming at the mouth, trying to figure out what his big secret is.

When I say it, Abbey rolls her eyes and sighs. “Yeah—okay. Whatever.” I can tell by her tone that she’s less than enthusiastic about keeping her mouth shut. I make a mental note to ask Damien to talk to her. If he’s the one asking, my sister would take a vow of silence. “But, like… what do you do when you’re up here?”

Blocking out a sudden memory of the way it felt to have Went between my thighs and his hands in my hair, standing almost exactly where I am now, I give her what I hope looks like a disinterested shrug. “Not much. I do a little light housekeeping, make his coffee, leave him some homemade muffins and—”

“That’s why you’ve been baking so much!” Abbey launches herself out of her stool like she’s caught me with my pants down. “I thought it was just stress baking because of this whole, I have to marry Brock Morris nonsense but—”

I don’t know why but it feels like she just slapped me in the face. “Nonsense?”

Hearing my tone, Abbey sighs. “You know what I mean, Kaity.”

“I don’t think I do.” I shake my head, setting my coffee cup on the counter behind me. “Explain it to me.” Mirroring Went, I cross my arms over my chest. “No really, I want you to explain it to me,” I say when all she does is stare at me.

“Okay…” Finding her seat again, Abbey lowers herself into it. “I just meant that I think if you would just talk to Dad and explain to him that you don’t want to marry Brock, he’d understand.”

It’s like she just swung a baseball bat into my chest. I stare at her for a second, unable to catch my breath because of course that’s what she’d think. Of course it would seem that easy to her.

Because for Princess Abbey, it would be.

Mouth open, I’m not sure what I’m going to say—only that it will be nasty and mean and probably make my sister cry—when the sound of someone clearing their throat clamps it shut. Looking away from her, I find Damien standing in the space between the living room and the kitchen.

“We should probably get back. It’s almost eight o’clock,” he says, dividing a nervous look between the two of us while behind him, Went moves into the room. “Your Mom is going to start wondering where you guys are.”

He’s half right. She won’t wonder where I am. The daily work list my father gives me keeps me busy, well past noon. What she’ll start to wonder is why Abbey isn’t lounging in front of the TV or pestering her to let her take the car into town because she’s bored.

“Yeah.” I wipe my hands on the legs of the jeans Abbey brought me and instantly feel bad. “Okay.” Looking at my sister, I force myself to swallow every hateful word that’s bubbling up inside me. “You heard the man—lets go home.”

THIRTY-TWO

Wentworth

“Run me through it one more time,” Damien says, glaring up at me from the arm of the chair he’s sitting on.

Even though I want to tell him to fuck off, I don’t. Instead, I let out a sigh before lifting my arms to cross them over my chest because I’m not so selfish and dense that I don’t understand that beating the shit out of Kait’s fiancé will likely bear consequences.

“I fell asleep on the porch—” Before he can say anything I wave an irritated hand in his direction. “I know—it’s a dumb, stupid, city boy thing to do—anyway…” Re-anchoring my arms across my chest, I throw a quick glance through the wooden screen door. I can see Kait, standing in the kitchen, talking to her sister. I’m not entirely sure how or why but I’m pretty sure whatever version of last night she’s giving her, Kait is keeping it clean, rather than tell her the truth. Irritated all over again, I look back at Damien. “A truck rolled past the house sometime after midnight. I could see Kait, asleep in the passenger seat.”

“And you followed them on foot?” Damien repeats the next part of my story in the form of a question. When I give him a stiff-necked nod, he shakes his head. “Why?”

Because I was jealous.

Because I wanted to see Kait with her douchebag fiancé with my own two eyes because maybe if could make myself look at them together, I’d finally be able to believe that she was exactly who I’ve been trying to convince myself that she is.

Instead of telling him the truth, I tell him something he can understand. “I have sisters,” I remind him. “We both do—it doesn’t matter if I know her or not. My gut told me something wasn’t right so I went with it.”

Damien stares at me for a second before he turns his gaze toward the lake. “What happened next?”

He knows what happened next—I’ve told him no less than fifteen times. Instead of pointing it out, I answer him. “When I caught up to them, they were both out of the truck…” Remembering what I saw, I feel the back of my neck go hot and tight. My jaw clench and it takes a considerable amount of effort to relax it enough to keep talking. “Kait was trying to run. That Morris fuck caught her by the hair and started to drag her back. She swung on him and caught him with a wild one that busted his face pretty good.”

“I bet he didn’t appreciate that very much,” Damien, gives me a faint, crooked smile before flicking a look of his own through the screen door.

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