Page 92 of Keeping Kaitlyn

As soon as we’re on the elevator and it starts to climb, I take her chin in my hand and tilt it up so I can get a good look at the place where my mother hit her. As soon as she realizes what I’m doing, Kait reaches up and tries to push my hand away. “It’s fine, really,” she says with a sigh when I continue my inspection. “I was more surprised than I was hurt. I didn’t expect her to get physical.”

I never would have expected it either. Not that I didn’t know Astrid is capable of it but she’s usually more careful about where she throws her tantrums. “I’m sorry,” I tell her, dropping my hand on a sigh. “I should’ve known?—”

“It’s not your fault. You had no way of knowing she even knew who I was,” Kait reminds me with a flat smile. “To be honest, I’m surprised she even remembered me.”

“She was here earlier today.” Moving away from her, I lean against the wall of the elevator. “Ambushed me with a stack of debutante headshots and told me itwas time to start thinking seriously about my future and the future of this family.” Rolling my eyes on a short laugh, I lever myself away from the wall when I feel the elevator start to slow, a second before it does a soft bounce and stops. “She’s been pushing me for years now. I’m guessing you left more of an impression than you think.”

“She wants you to get married?” Kait asks quietly while the elevator doors slide open in front of us. “To someone better than me.”

“There is no one better than you, Kait,” I tell her with a wry smile. “But, no—she wants me to marry someone like her. Someone she thinks she can control. Someone she thinks can controlme. Help manage my…eccentricities.”

“Eccentricities?” She sounds confused. Like she has no idea what I’m talking about. And that’s one of the million reasons why I fell in love with her.

“The tattoos. The obsessive drawing. The fact that I sleep on a mattress on the floor in my studio and refuse to wear a suit to monthly board meetings.” Taking her hand, I lead her off the elevator and into the foyer. “I’m guessing, she took one look at you and knew that managing me was the last thing you’d be willing to do.”

“I don’t understand,” she says, frowning up at me, her tone hesitant.

Reaching for her, I brush her hair away from her face on a smile. “You don’t try to control what you love, Sunshine. You don’t try to change it… and you loved me, just as much as I loved you.”

As soon as I say it, as soon as she realizes what it means, she shakes her head, instantly ready to reject it. “Went…”

“You’ve got twenty-six years of your father’s bullshit, clogging up your head. Lying to you. Convincing you that no one could ever love you and I just made matters worse. I never told you how I felt because I’ve got bullshit too.” Finding her hand, I lead her through the living room. Past the dining room and kitchen. “Even though Iknowwhat love looks like, and I knew how I felt about you, I never trusted myself to say the words out loud because they’ve always felt like a curse. I was convinced that telling you how I felt would change it somehow and I didn’twantitto change. Iwantedto love you. I like the way it felt. I like who I was when I was with you. That you saw me and didn’t expect me to be anything more than what I was. I didn’t want to mess that up, so instead of saying it, I tried to show you instead. I tried to make youfeelthe way I felt about you but—” Stopping in front of my closed bedroom door, I look down at her, my heart banging around in my chest like it’s looking for a way out. I’msure I’m not making any sense. That I sound crazy but I keep talking because this has been a long time coming and now that I’ve started, I’m determined to see it through. “I should’ve just told you. Maybe if I had, maybe if I’d been braver, trusted us a little more, the last six years would’ve been different.”

Looking up at me, I watch the line of her throat bob before she licks her lips. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I loved you too, Kait.” Reaching out, I push the door open on the bedroom I rarely use. “I’ve loved you from the first time I saw you, standing on that front porch, waiting to turn my life upside down, and I’m saying that hasn’t changed. I loved you then and I love you now—and I know I’m going to feel that way forever.”

FIFTY-TWO

KAITLYN

It’s our bed.

The bed we shared in Helena. A massive four-poster with a canopy and heavy, black velvet drapes that are long enough to pool on the blood red carpet. It’s neatly made. Ours never was. We practically lived in it during those weeks we were shut away from the outside world, one of us always dragging the other back into it because we couldn’t keep our hands off each other.

“I brought it with me when I came home,” he says behind me. “I couldn’t stand the thought of someone else sleeping in it... fucking in it.” He makes a rough noise in the back of his throat. “Turns out I couldn’t stand the thought of doing either of those things without you in it with me, so I threw a mattress on the floor in my studio and tried to pretend you never happened.”

This can’t be healthy… how much I want to fuck you…

Went wasn’t the only one who felt that way. The want I had for him bordered on obsession and it never went away.

“I didn’t do any of it to help you.” The sound of his voice is closer. Almost directly behind me and I close my eyes the second I feel his hands close over my bare arms. “I asked you to leave with me because there was no way I was going to leave thatmountain without you.” The hands wrapped around my arms pull me back against the heat of his broad, muscular chest. “I asked you to marry me because I was in love with you. I wasn’t trying to save you, Sunshine. I was trying tokeepyou.”

He doesn’t love you.

He can’t love you.

No one can.

Shaking my head, I angle it to look up at him. To tell him he’s wrong. That he doesn’t love me.

Can’tlove me.

No one can.

“You told me to leave,” I remind him. “The last time I was here, you told me?—”

“I was scared and I was angry,” he says quietly, shaking his head like he doesn’t like the memory of it. “I was so fucking terrified because I was sure if I asked for what I really wanted, you’d just run away again because what I really wanted was the same thing I always wanted. I wanted you to stay.”

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