Page 66 of Keeping Kaitlyn

“Well…” Grace gives me an exasperated eyeroll. “If it makes you feel any better, Tess gave me round two not more that fifteen minutes after you gave me round one.” When I give her a miserableit doesn’tlook, Grace laughs and bumps her shoulder into mine. “I deserved it. Leaving him like that was shitty. I’m glad you chewed me out—bothof you. You were right—hediddeserve more than coming home to find me gone without giving him a chance to talk me out of it.”

Hearing her say it is like a kick in the gut. A reminder that it’s what I did to Went. A realization that I reacted so harshly to finding Grace on my doorstep with her suitcase because I wish I could go back in time. I wish someone had been there to yell at me the way I yelled at her. To stop me from leaving and making the biggest mistake of my life.

How do you know he wouldn’t have left you? How do you know he even came back?

He came back—I know he did because he signed the divorce papers I left behind when I ran away. I called the county clerk’soffice in Helena almost every day to check until the woman on the other end of the phone said,yes, ma’am. Those papers were countersigned and filed a few days ago.

Right. He signed the papers, Kaity. He signed them because he might’ve enjoyed fucking you and he might’ve felt compelled to save you—but he never loved you.

“Are those your friends?”

Grace’s question snaps me back to the present and I look up to find myself walking across Gilroy’s packed parking lot. Jill and two RNs from Sojourn are huddled under the security light bolted to the wall, directly over the employee entrance. When she sees me, Jill smiles and waves.

“Yeah.” I nod my head, suddenly wanting nothing more than to yank my arm out of Grace’s grip so I can run home, drink my abandoned wine and cry myself to sleep.

Doing a quick head count, Grace bobs her head. “This I can work with.” Pulling us to a short stop in front of the side door that leads directly into the bar, she pulls a set of keys from her coat pocket. Feeding a key into the lock, she gives it a turn and opens the door to wave us all inside instead of making us wait in line to go through the front. “In the wise words of Conner Gilroy—membership has its privileges.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

WENTWORTH

When Con askedme to work tonight, I almost told him no. Not because I have anything better to do because I don’t. Working at Gilroy’s is the whole of my social life. If I’m not here, I’m at my shop. If I’m not at my shop, I’m hanging out with my nephew. If I’m not with Noah, I’m holed up in my suite, hunched over my worktable, drawing until my back is killing me and my fingers are numb.

Give you three guesses what I’m drawing.

Or rather,who.

You’d think that nearly six years without her would dull the edges on my…fixationbut it hasn’t. She’s still the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thought I have before I fall asleep.

Kait.

Where is she?

Is she okay?

Why’d she leave?

The first two are easy to answer.

She went home. Without me in her face, clouding her judgment, she lost her nerve or maybe came to her senses and went back to Barrett.

And no—she’s not okay.

Because if she’s not married to me and she went home, she’s almost certainly married to the same slimy piece of shit I took her away from—and that means she’s miserable.

As for why she left… I go back and forth on that. All I know for sure is that I asked her to stay, to wait for me, and she said that she would.

And then she didn’t.

The only thing waiting for me when I came back was a petition for divorce. Under cause were the wordsirreconcilable differences.

Whatever the fuck that means.

It means she didn’t want you.

It means that for whatever reason, she’d rather be punished for the rest of her life for things that weren’t her fault than be married to you.

When I found the papers on the bed, her wedding ring resting on top, my first thought was that her father came back and forced her to sign them somehow. Threatened her. Made her come home.

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