Reservation (Preservation Series) (21 page)

I had to speak up, or this was all going to blow up in my face. Ian and Amy were egging me on, and it was only a matter of seconds now. The bastards.

“We better get going.” I lifted my gaze to Kate before she could respond to Amy’s question. “I’m feeling sick.”

“Oh? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just ready to go.”

Kate rubbed my back, sliding her chair back to stand. “You’ve barely touched your meal.”

“I lost my appetite.”

Amy’s and Ian’s pleased expressions sat fixed on me and Kate, but they remained quiet, chewing and drinking as I worked to make our escape. I hated giving them the satisfaction of knowing they’d run me off, but the fact was, I wanted Kate as far from them as possible, and it was clear they weren’t interested in having an innocent, civil meal. They were out for cold, sneaky blood, and I wasn’t going to sit around and wait for the slaughter, especially when it was at Kate’s expense.

“Oh, okay. Let me just grab my stuff.” Kate turned for the hall. Carter and Dean slid curious glances down the table, but quickly returned to the conversation, falling back into heated discussion. I stood to follow her, not bothering to trade any more words with Ian or his partner in crime. We apologized to Sam and Jess for cutting the evening short and they thanked us for the cake, making us promise to come back another time when I was feeling better. Sam gave me a knowing look, going along with my excuse like a pro. Dean, Carter, and Crystal all decided to stay, waving us away with plans to take a cab home.

As I turned to follow Kate out the door, Sam gestured for me to call her, and I nodded in agreement before I made a swift exit. “Sorry to drag you away, baby.”

“It’s not a problem,” she said, letting me guide her to the car. “I’m sorry you don’t feel well.”

“Must be something I ate.”

“Everything tasted great to me.”

“Sam’s one hell of cook.”

“She’s fantastic.”

I ushered her into the passenger seat and slipped inside to start the engine, sighing in relief when we coasted out onto the highway. “Thanks for coming with me tonight. I’m so glad you got to meet her. Jess is great, too.”

“I recognized Amy from somewhere.”

My fingers gripped the steering wheel, and I tried in vain to relax the tension in my body.

“From your class, I think. You slept with her, I take it?”

Damn it all.
“Yes.”

“It seems Ian has, too.”

“Yes.” Shit, where was she going with this?

“Just once?”

“No. Kate, can we not talk about this?”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to talk about my past.”

“I already told you how I feel about your past, Ryan. Who you were doesn’t matter. I care about who you are now.”

“Then why discuss this?”

“Because it obviously bothers you. There was no mistaking the stress rolling off of you back there. You looked as if you were about to explode just being at the same table as her.”

“I just wanted to protect you.”

“Protect me from what?”

“Amy was never one to mince words.”

“So?”

I shifted, adjusting my foot on the gas. “She doesn’t hold back. She’s manipulative and bold, and I just didn’t want her to say anything out of line to you. I could tell she was about to.” There, I said it. The truth. Well, at least partially.

“If you think some trouble-making bimbo you used to screw is going to scare me away, you’re sorely mistaken. Don’t you know me better than that?”

Of course I knew her better than that, which was exactly why I didn’t want Amy digging her claws into her. It was no secret that Kate had trust issues. She had a whole slew of them, and while I believed her when she said she didn’t care about who I was before her, I didn’t doubt for a second that the minute she caught a glimpse of just how morally bankrupt I’d been with Amy, she’d think twice about trusting me. Hell, I wasn’t sure I trusted myself. What if I was operating on some invisible switch? What if it snapped some day and all I’d worked so hard to change backfired in my face? I had this sinking feeling that I was defective. Permanently broken. What if all it took to blow that gasket was one little crack in my already-shaky foundation?

This was what Kate didn’t seem to grasp.

My foundation wasn’t the only shaky one here. Hers was still shaky, too. As much as she loved me, a few reminders of my past habits would thrust her running shoes right back onto her feet, and I couldn’t risk that happening. I couldn’t risk losing her.

“Look, I just want my past to stay in my past, okay? So can we talk about something else?”

She glanced out the window, going quiet. Finally, she spoke again. “Melanie Carpenter is very beautiful. Was she a good date?”

“Kate.”

“Ryan.”

“We talked about this. I already told you everything about that night.”

“I know that. I want you to understand that we can talk about these things, Ryan. I’m not going to freak out. I understand women like Amy are a part of your past, and that women like Melanie are a part of your career right now. You have to trust me to trust you. I won’t run from you again. I made a promise and I intend to keep it.”

“Thank you.” I smiled and squeezed her knee, keeping my gaze on the road ahead. It was a good thing she had so much confidence. Maybe she’d have enough to carry the both of us.

***

“Ryan!” Kate’s voice powered through the apartment, waking me from deep sleep. I jolted upright and rubbed my eyes, looking around to get my bearings. A mild hangover was already brewing across the back of my skull. It must have been from the bottle of champagne we drank when we got home the night before. I squinted and studied the floor, my eyes landing on a trail of clothes. Kate’s dress, bra, and panties from last night.
Oh, yeah,
I smiled, remembering my favorite part of the evening.

The boots never came off.

“In here.” It came out as a dry croak.

She appeared in the doorway, her eyes brimming with tears and hands shaking. “I can’t believe you.”

Her trembling expression sobered me up immediately, and I rose from the bed, moving toward her. She backed up. “Don’t touch me right now. Just don’t.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I just had breakfast with Carter. He told me about your talk, told me everything.”

“What talk?”

“The talk I told you to have with him, to ask him to stay in Seattle.”

Oh, damn.
Carter tattled on me? It was his idea to keep the conversation between us in the first place. “Baby, calm down and tell me why you’re so upset.”

“You know why. I get that leaving Seattle is his decision, Ryan. But you lied to me. You told him to go for it. Just like that.”

“I didn’t lie to you, Kate. I told you what you wanted to know. I told you what he told me, why he was thinking about leaving.”

“You didn’t even try to convince him to stay.”

“I told him he’d be leaving a lot behind here. What else was I supposed to say?”

“You’re threatened by him, aren’t you?”

“What?”

“Don’t lie to me, Ryan. Just tell me!”

“Where is this coming from?”

“He told me.”

“Told you what? Fuck, Kate, you’ve lost me, here.”

“That he loves me.”

My arms fell to my sides and I stumbled back an inch. The back of my neck suddenly felt cold as I recalled Carter’s confession.

“Answer me. Are you threatened by him? Is that why you told him to leave?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why would you think so little of telling him to go to Florida? You know how important he is to me, Ryan. Carter has been there for me, we’ve been through so much shit together since I met him. I...he’s my best...I can’t, I just can’t.” Her bottom lip quivered and I wanted to reach out again, wanted to comfort her, but her arms covered her chest protectively. Her guard was up the second she sensed me advancing forward again.

“Nothing I could have said would have changed his mind, Kate. It was made up before I even showed up at his place.”

The tears welling up against her lids fell, streaming down her cheeks in quick, heartbreaking rushes. “You don’t understand...you never will.”

“Tell me. Tell me what I don’t understand.”

“I know he’s not abandoning me. Not like…the others did. But it still feels like it. And I need him here with me. In the midst of all this,” she reached into her bag and shoved a tabloid magazine into my chest, “this change, I need him here. He’s my rock. The only one I trust.” She averted her gaze, the quiet, steady flow of tears continuing to roll down her cheeks.

“Just last night you said—”

“I know what I said. And I meant every word. I do trust you, Ryan. But it takes effort. It’s not without pain.”

I dropped my gaze to the magazine in my hands. Melanie and I were on the front cover, her arms braced around me firmly while we smiled for the cameras. The fact that Kate had serious trust issues wasn’t new to me. She’d been abandoned by both of her parents, been abused by men before me, and forced to make her own way very early on in life. It was the reason she’d run from me so many times when I first met her, the reason she’d met me with such resistance.

But for the first time since we’d been together, we were on unequal footing, and Kate was beginning to realize it. The magazine she handed me was proof. She was in a vulnerable position, and God knew I wouldn’t want to swap places with her.

“Photographers aren’t following me around,” she cried. “I don’t have male models on my arm or gorgeous men at every turn, telling me all the things I want to hear. You need to understand something.” She stepped closer to me, her tone flat and deadly serious. “I’ve been with someone who took advantage of me in ways...” She swallowed, struggling. “I’ve seen things I can never un-see, felt things that can never be reversed.”

The torment that crept onto her face seized me with razor sharp claws, anchoring in the center of my chest. I couldn’t breathe. She’d told me a lot, but not everything. Hearing her acknowledge those parts of her life made what happened between her and Mark and Eric all the more horrific.

It made me all the more insane with fury.

“I’m broken, Ryan,” she said matter-of-factly. Her shoulders jerked up and down with a shrug. “I may never work right, and I can admit that. And here we are, house hunting, picking out wedding dresses, making plans...and it’s all so fucking perfect and it makes me so happy, I can’t breathe. All it makes me want to do is trust you, to take this shot at happiness. You have no idea how much I want that, Ryan. So I make the effort. Even when I see your life taking this new direction,” she pointed to the magazine, “even when you’re around this and I’m halfway around the world, I make the effort. I’m willing to fight. As unnatural as it feels to trust you, I’m giving it everything I’ve got. But with Carter?” She shook her head and started to pace, swiping at her cheeks. “There’s no effort. He’s the one person I don’t have to worry about hurting me.”

“Because he’s better than me.”

“Because I don’t love him.”

I reached back and found the bed, sinking until I met the edge, prompting me to sit.

“My love for him is different. He could never break me. Disappoint me or betray me? Yes. But I could survive his blow. Yours...it would destroy me. Which is why, when all else fails, I need my best friend. I need him here. He’s steady, and reliable. Constant. Your new world is a whirlwind. He’s my anchor in all this.”

“I want to be your anchor.”

“I want you to be. But right now, Carter is, and you told him to leave. I needed your support, don’t you get that?”

“You have my support, Kate. I went and talked to him, didn’t I?”

She let out an exasperated rush of breath, deflating and sinking in defeat. Damn it, what was I thinking encouraging Carter like that? Kate was right, I barely gave any thought to how his decision to move would affect her. I might’ve bounced the thoughts around a bit, but I could’ve tried harder. I could’ve lied to Carter for Kate’s sake, or at least made a plea for her case. Maybe I was threatened by Carter. Kate admitted it, after all: He was her rock, not me.

Nothing hurt more than that knowledge, and God, I’d do anything to pretend I hadn’t heard the words that had just come out of her mouth.

I opened my mouth to respond, but a knock on the door halted me, turning our attention to the front entryway. Kate wiped her cheeks once more and straightened as she walked over to answer the door. I was on her heels, wearing nothing but boxers and a bare chest.

Dean and Crystal greeted her. They glanced at Kate’s face, and immediately looked to me.

“Bad time?” Dean asked, handing Kate a coffee.

“We’re here to take you to look at that restaurant venue,” Crystal said, clearing her throat. “You still wanted to check it out, right?”

Kate moved to the kitchen counter and reached for a napkin to wipe her runny mascara. “Oh. Yeah, can you guys just give me a few minutes?”