Page 76 of Keeping Kaitlyn

“I could ask you the same thing,” she snipes back. “What areyoudoing here?”

“I live here,” I growl at her, pushing the words past the rusty hinge of my jaw.

She gives me thatslapped in the facelook again. “You live in California.” She says it slowly and carefully like I must’ve forgotten.

“No.” Leaning forward in my seat, I shake my head, forearms braced on my knees. “I went to college in California. “I livehere. I’ve always lived here.”

When I say it, her mouth falls open and her forehead crumples like she can’t understand what I’m telling her. “I thought…” Shaking her head, she looks around like she’s trying to map out an escape route. “You never?—”

That’s when it dawns on me.

If she’d known I lived in Boston, it would’ve been the last city she moved to and fuck me if knowing that doesn’t sting like a motherfucker.

“Why did you move here?” I ask, cutting her off again in hopes of pulling her out of her panic spiral.

“I—” Still shaking her head, she looks back at me. “Nursing school. I was accepted into the nursing program at Boston College and they had the shortest waitlist. I worked as a groom on a ranch outside of Chyenne and saved my money until it was time to move here.”

I make a rough, ugly sound in the back of my throat. “Is that when you met Conner?”

Her eyes go wide again when I say his name, shame staining her cheeks and it takes everything I have to keep myself in my chair. To not leave the hotel and go find him so I can drag him into the street and beat the absolute piss out of him. “I met Conner my last semester of school,” she tells me with a nod. “Some classmates and I went out and we ended up at Gilroy’s. That’s when I met him.”

“And then the two of you startedseeing each other.” It’s not a question but she answers me anyway.

“No,” she tells me, shaking her head on another frown. “It was never like that. Conner and I never?—”

“So it was just about fucking then?” I’m being an asshole, I know I am but I can’t seem to make myself stop.

“No.” She practically shouts it at me, her cheeks stained with temper. “Conner and I never slept together. We were friends. Just friends.” When I make that ugly sound in the back of mythroat again, her blue eyes narrow down to a glare. “What about you and Tess?”

Something cold and sticky rolls through my stomach. Something that feels a hell of a lot like guilt. Putting it in a chokehold and shoving it down before it can show on my face, I give her a shrug. “What about us?”

Swallowing hard, she looks away from me for a moment before looking back. “Did you fuck her?”

“Yeah…” Pushing a nasty smirk on my face, I nod my head. “I did.”Because you left me.Instead of saying it out loud, I lean back in my chair and swipe a hand across my jaw like I’m trying to scrub the taste of the words out of my mouth. The guilt that goes along with them. “I want you to leave.” Dropping my hand, I look at her. “Boston—for good. I’ll pay for it. Give you enough money to start over somewhere—anywhere but here. I’m sure Ryan will be more than willing to give you a good?—”

“No.” Now it’s her turn to slap at me, the word coming out hot and fast.

“Excuse me?” Jesus Christ, what does it say about me that it’s taking every shred of self-control I can scrape together to stop myself from tackling her into the bed so I can fuck that temper right out of her.

“I saidno.” She shakes her head at me, jaw set at a mutinous angle. “For the first time since I lost my brother, I have people,” she tells me, her tone level and absolute. “People who care about me. I’m not going anywhere.”

That’s not true.

You hadme.

You just didn’t want me.

“Well, neither am I.” I lift my hands in a shrug before letting them fall to slap against my thighs. “So, how’s this supposed to work, then?”

“I guess we do what other divorced couples do,” she says with a faint, bitter smile. “We divide assets.”

So that’s what we did—only, instead of 401Ks and vacation homes, we divided an entire city and our friends who live in it.

FORTY-TWO

KAITLYN

PRESENT DAY

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