Page 41 of Loving You Always

Kerris disciplined her mouth, refusing to let it tremble, denying the tears burning in her throat.

“The first time they met at camp, Walsh and Cam fought. Aunt Kris had to break it up. I never saw them fight again.” Jo’s silvery eyes dulled. “But the last time I saw them together, they were both bloody, fighting over you.”

“They fought?”

“Yeah, they fought.” Jo glanced around the room, at the festivity that continued even while they spoke. “I wanted to hate you, but I can’t. Walsh loves you. Aunt Kris loved you.”

Pain twitched Jo’s face.

“Cam loves you.”

That look when Jo said Cam’s name was so completely different from anything else, Kerris couldn’t help but study the other woman an extra moment or two. The lines of Jo’s face, usually guarded and disciplined, softened. She bit her bottom lip and ran her palms along the silk of the skirt she wore. She closed her eyes briefly, and Kerris could see Jo clamp the emotion welling up to the surface.

“Jo, you love Cam, don’t you?”

For a moment Kerris was sure Jo would deny it, but maybe her face was too tired to hide the truth anymore.

“Yeah, I love him.” Jo stood up, the glance she ran over Kerris close to a dismissal. “And you didn’t. You promised me on your wedding day that you’d take care of him. You told me you loved him. You lied to me.”

In the face of the kind of selfless love Kerris read for Cam in Jo’s eyes, there was no defense for how she had abused the other woman’s trust. She could explain that she had never felt good enough for Walsh. Could say she had assumed he’d marry Sofie. Could even say Cam had known what he was getting into. But none of that would do any good. So she said the only thing that might.

“Jo, I’m sorry. Will you forgive me?”

Jo towered over Kerris with her height and her will. Just when Kerris thought Jo might haul off and slap her, her face conceded the kind of grin they hadn’t shared in a long time.

“Get things fixed between my boys.” Jo offered an uncharacteristic wink. “And I’ll think about it.”

Chapter Fourteen

When Mama Jess had turned Walsh away a year ago, Kerris believed the months would be covered in molasses. A slow drip. In some ways it had been just like that. The days she forced herself out of bed, forced herself to be with people, forced herself to smile—those were the days she measured in slow, painful breaths and the weight of loneliness. In other ways, the minutes, hours, and days had moved at the speed of sound, thrown ahead and waiting for her to catch up.

She and Cam had lived apart for a year, and according to North Carolina law, Cameron Raymond Mitchell and Kerris Moreton Mitchell could officially dissolve their marriage. Cam’s lawyers, efficient rascals that they were, had already worked out all the details so the divorce could zip right through the system. The papers were here, already signed by Cam, awaiting her signature. They had agreed to walk out of the marriage with what they had come into it with. Cam had acquired a lot more than she had over the last few years, considering the money Kristeene had left him, but Kerris wanted none of it. It was so simple. So easy. So clean.

And yet, the typed words blurred under Kerris’s teary eyes. She saw her failure, her selfishness, her faithless heart woven between the lines of text. That kiss with Walsh had been the domino that fell and started the downward spiral of her marriage. The beginning of the end. Or had the end begun when she said “I do,” knowing she didn’t, couldn’t, love Cam the way he deserved to be loved?

She tightened her trembling fingers around the pen, blinking away the last of her tears and signing the papers. Half of her heart moaned because this was it, but the other half—those chambers she couldn’t hide from any longer—whispered one name.

Walsh.

The thought of being with him made her ache and burn, twisted her heart around itself. Though the divorce wouldn’t be official for another few months, she knew it was only a matter of time before he came to her. Would he even wait? She hoped so. She hoped not.

Kerris was still wrestling with the same riot of emotions when she entered her therapist Dr. Stein’s office later that afternoon. Dr. Liza Stein was a gravedigger, exhuming the cadavers of past hurts, starting with Amalie and working her way backward. She had been unable to fully explore what Amalie had meant to Kerris without touching on Cam. And, of course, Dr. Stein had picked up the thread of that pain, Cam’s departure, and followed it to her foster parents, and Mama Jess, and, finally, her mother.

It was hard for Kerris to accept that she had abandonment issues, but it seemed that was the case. Would she even have married Cam at all if she’d had someone like Dr. Stein in her life earlier? Immediately after the rape, or when she was a teenager? Well-meaning counselors and teachers had recommended it before, but she’d never done the interior work this process demanded, and she’d probably regret it for the rest of her life.

You shouldn’t cry over spilled milk, but there were so many innocent bystanders who had been splashed by her sloppy attempts to feel whole, to feel wanted and secure and like someone worth sticking around for. Namely, Cam and Walsh. Casualties of her insecurity and, dare she admit it, selfishness. She didn’t just cry over the milk she had spilled. She mourned it, and wondered how she could ever make amends.

Dr. Stein didn’t believe in a lot of preliminaries and pleasantries. She dove right in, and it wasn’t long before she had Kerris confessing her guilt about the divorce, which was moving ahead with speedy inevitability.

“Kerris, do you want to stay married to Cam?”

“No, I definitely don’t.” Kerris shifted on the couch, glancing at the petite therapist with her stylish auburn bob and cat-eye glasses. “But he deserved someone else. He deserved better. I married him knowing I didn’t love him the way I should.”

“And did he know that? Did he walk into this with his eyes open?”

“Well, he knew I didn’t love him that way.” Kerris hesitated, not wanting to broach a subject she had managed to avoid. “He may have even suspected how I felt about Walsh.”

“Walsh?” Dr. Stein pounced. “And who is that? Where does he figure into all this?”

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