Page 17 of Promises on the Mountain

It's too late, Kay might not have gotten a good look at the details, but there's no way she doesn't realize what she just walked in on.

"You okay, baby?" Raine whispers low, his eyes seeking mine and looking far more concerned than frustrated at being interrupted.

I can't say the same for myself. I was really looking forward to feeling Raine's cock inside me again.

That's what I get for leaving the front door wide open, I guess.

"April, what's going on here?" Kay's eyes narrow as they move from me to take full stock of Raine's imposing figure standing beside me with his arm possessively wrapped over my shoulders.

"Maybe give us a minute?" I look up at him and offer my best I can handle this smile.

He doesn't look convinced, but he does bend to kiss me tenderly before reluctantly stepping away.

"I'm going to go visit gran," he tells me, but his voice is a stern warning to the woman standing in front of us. "I won't be out of hearing range."

His voice is icy as he glances at her on his way past, making it clear that he considers her a threat and that he intends to make sure she doesn't cause any trouble.

"Kay, what are you doing here?" I huff in exasperation, doing a second check of my skirt to make sure it's in place before leaving the back room and walking into the cafe.

"What am I doing here? What the fuck were you doing, Ape? I came all this way to visit you, and I find you fucking some stranger in my sister's coffee shop!"

Something snaps inside me.

"This isn't Mia's coffee shop, Kay! It was never going to be Mia's coffee shop. Mia fucking hated coffee, the only reason she didn't get fired a thousand times when we worked at Cuppa Joy was because she was fucking Joy's son."

Kay gasps.

It's not like she didn't know her sister, I'm sure that's not news to her. I think she's shocked that I'm done letting her get away with projecting her delusions onto me.

"I can't believe you would talk about Mia that way." Her voice drops to a shocked whisper but it's laced with anger. "She was your best friend. You were going to open the cafe together; she shared her dream with you and you think that you can just cut her out of the picture now? Because you moved halfway across the country and opened up this little hole in the wall without her?"

In the five years since Mia died, I've let Kay latch on to me. I've let her project her grief and loss on me because I felt so fucking bad for her. Because I've felt guilty for not going to that party with Mia-- I would have been sober, I would have driven. Mia would have gotten home safe and spent our work shift the next day hung over and telling me about whatever guy she hooked up with the night before while I did all the work.

But dammit, I worked hard to open this coffee shop. I saved for years and bought second hand equipment from going out of business sales. I lived out of my car for almost a year while I explored possible locations for my new business and for my new home.

I thought Kay would snap out of it, that she'd eventually acknowledge the truth and stop giving Mia credit for my dreams and now-- for my accomplishments.

"Stop, Kay. Just stop," I flip the sign in the window to closed, but I leave the door open, knowing Raine's just a couple doors down, visiting Mable at her little museum.

"The coffee shop was always my dream and you know that. You always knew that. You knew that Mia didn't give a fuck about coffee. She liked the idea of being included in the business and when she started attaching herself to my dream, I let her do it.

"We were friends, but we weren't best friends and honestly, Kay, if Mia was still alive, we wouldn't still be friends. I think you know that just as well as I do."

"Yeah, well, that's pretty obvious, isn't it? If you'd been a better friend, my sister would still be here, wouldn't she?"

"What the hell does that mean, Kay? Are you seriously saying it's my fault that Mia's dead?"

"You were supposed to go with her that night, right? But you had better things to do, didn't you? You're the reason she was driving herself home after she'd been drinking. If you'd been a better friend, I'd still have my sister!"

My heart aches for her but I can't do this anymore. I can't be the scapegoat for her grief.

"Mia's dead because she decided to get behind the wheel when she knew she was too fucked up to drive. She knew better. She could have called me for a ride, she could have called someone else, she could have called a Taxi or an Uber or a fucking tow truck. She could have passed out in the back seat and driven home when she sobered up, or she could have stayed put and slept it off at the house where she was partying.

"She didn't do any of those things, Kay. She made a bad decision and I'm sorry for how it turned out but it's not my fault and I am done letting you steal my life away from me to give it to someone who never wanted it."

Unloading all that might make me feel better, but apparently, it's not the moment of catharsis for Kay that it proves to be for me.

While I feel lighter than I have since Mia's funeral-- the first time Kay mentioned the cafe being Mia's dream, not mine-- Kay's face goes dark with rage.

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