Page 120 of Worth the Risk

I hurt them.

The realization hits me like a sledgehammer to the gut. I allowed these last five years to happen because I was a fool. I’ll find out the truth behind Amber’s manipulations and make sure she is punished for it if it’s the last thing I do.

I’ll also fight like hell for Kylie, Riley, and our future together.

Trekking back downstairs, I pick up my box and sit on the sofa. I spend the next couple of hours going through the scrapbooks. There are so many pictures of my princess and her family. Even as a baby, she had my eyes and hair color.

I wonder why I never came back here.Why was I such a coward?If I had faced the past, maybe things would have turned out differently. I would have had my girls with me all these years.

With tears blurring my vision, I hang my head, allowing the guilt of my mistakes to take over.

ChapterThirty-Seven

Kylie

It’s been a couple of days since Manda’s stroke, and Leo has been using the time to bond with Riley while I’ve been spending my days with Mom and Manda in the hospital. He drops Riley off each evening, and when he does, he hugs me, comforts me in his arms, and kisses my forehead before he leaves. I sense an emotional change in him. It’s in the way he gazes at me, like he used to when he loved me.

We haven’t had any alone time together, and with each day that passes, I find myself missing him more.

Manda has been doing better each day. A blood clot formed on the left side of her brain. Although she is confused and has lost some movement in her right side, it could have been much worse.

I’m in the hospital cafeteria with Mom and Riley, who Manda insisted I bring today, getting a bite to eat before we head home when I see a familiar face—James. I last saw him about a year ago. It was at a coffee shop, and he asked me for a moment of my time. I sat down at a table with him, and he told me some things that had happened in the past few years.

James always enjoyed a drink, and I never thought too much about it when we were younger. He was the life of the party, so to my teenage brain, we were simply having fun. What happened after he went to college was a shitstorm. He had upgraded to other substances, and his drinking got out of control. He hid it well from me when he was home like most addicts do.

The night with Beth in college was not the first time he had hooked up with her. He admitted that he slept with her numerous times before we met at a high school party. He said he led her on because he was a horny teenage boy, and she was willing.

He deeply regretted his actions with her too. She wanted a relationship and told him she loved him. When we met, he broke ties with her. He told me she felt hurt, but she would also reach out to him and tell him how much she still loved him. He also admitted she came to see him a couple of times at college to party and have sex, not just the one time like he claimed.

She probably thought he was going to be with her, that he finally wanted her. It explains why she hated me so much. Maybe in her mind, James belonged to her and not me. She must have seen me as the one who took him away from her. In her mind, I was the villain.

She probably even saw the kiss I shared with Leo that first night at the party.

Did she want to take him away from me as she thought I had done with James to her?

I’ll never know, and I don’t need to.

Whatever it was, the past is the past, and it deserves to stay there.

During our conversation, I noticed there was this clearness in James’ eyes I hadn’t seen in the last year we were together, which he told me was about the time his addictions took over his well-being.

He apologized for what he did to me. He’d been through a stint in rehab and was now two years sober. The years before his time in rehab were hell for him, but after his parents threatened to cut him off if he didn’t go to rehab, he went.

Before we finished our conversation, he said he wanted to talk about Leo and what happened that summer. I refused him immediately, but he pleaded with me to hear him out. I had already found out about Leo and Beth, and I assumed that was what he wanted to talk to me about. I shut him down and left right after that.

Now, as I look at him, curiosity is getting the better of me.Was what he wanted to tell me something I already knew, or was there more?I can’t stop from questioning myself that I should have heard him out that day. He was so adamant.

Before I allow myself to second-guess my decision, I rush over to James. If Leo and I decide to try and have a future together again, I need to find out what James knows, so I take the opportunity before me.

James seems shocked to see me but quickly offers a hello.

“Would you be willing to spare some time today? Maybe in an hour? I’d like to talk to you about the conversation we had last time we saw each other.”

His face falls, but he agrees. “Where would you like to meet?”

“At the coffee shop where we spoke before?”

“Sure. Although you may hate me again when you hear what I have to say. Regardless, it needs to be said.”

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