Page 1 of Fate

ChapterOne

Kathleen

Regrets are wishes unfulfilled.After thirty years on this earth, I have more regrets than fingers and toes, and most of them are connected to one man. The one I pushed away. And now I’m alone. No man, no children, no hope formore.

They say loneliness is a choice, and I guess that’s true. People flit in and out of my life like buzzing bees sipping the nectar from my sweet spot, leaving emptiness behind. He used to fill that space with joy, laughter, and what I thought was love. Believed in it, even. Until it was gone. Now, there’s nothing left but an empty husk, a shell of the woman I used to be. A woman I wish I could be again.

My therapist says I have PTSD from the fire and resulting injury, and maybe he’s right. Everyone else seems to have the answers to my problems, but I’m the one stuck in hell. I’m the one who wakes to pain shooting up my side, down my right arm, and out my fingertips each and every night. And that’s when I realize, once again, how alone I truly am. There’s no man to wake up and hold me close, murmuring sweet nothings in my ear until I relax and fall back into a peaceful slumber.

The days I could count on a man to hold me within the warmth of his embrace are over. One of my many regrets. Still, I wouldn’t change my decision. He’s better off without me. Or at least the broken, hollow shell I’ve become.

Not that it matters. He didn’t love me when I was physically and mentally perfect. He definitely wouldn’t be able love me now. So why can’t I let go? Free him from my mind, my heart, and my life. Why does my happiness hinge on the one that gotaway?

Three years is a long time to pine for someone you purposely forced out of your life. Three long years of burn treatments, grafting, rehabilitation, and therapy. Therapy. Such a joke. Dr. Madison can’t fix me. Nothing can. Every new procedure gives me hope I will look and feel like I did before the night my entire life changed. They never do. Sometimes I get patches of smoother skin. A little less scarring here, a little more there. The grafts leave their own scars, but those are better hidden. Still, I’m notme.

Kathleen Bennett, the real Kat, was figuratively burned to a crisp in the fire. Everything that made me the woman I was, the person I was proud to be—happy-go-lucky, in love with life, in love with Carson Davis… That woman died. In her place is a bitter, scarred woman with a chip on her shoulder and an unquenchable desire to disappear.

Maybe my answer is to leave, become someone else. But I could never leave them. My soul sisters are my lifeblood. They are the roots that grew this tree into something I was once proud of. Now, this tree of life feels like a shriveled-up mess of dead leaves and scrawny, unattractive branches. Still, the roots binding me to those three women go deep, far deeper than an outsider could imagine. Our connection was born of love, laughter, sacrifice, hardship, pain, and rebirth. They understand me, even the screwed-up version I am today. And they won’t stop trying to bring back the person I used to be—the one hiding under the abraded flesh.

Three years and I haven’t been able to find her. I worry I neverwill.

“Kathleen, are you ready?” rumbles the voice I’ve come to count on. The one person I’ve been able to be completely honest with, Chase Davis, my soul sister Gillian’s husband, knocks on my bedroom door. “Are you decent? We’re going to be late if you aren’t ready.”

“Hold your horses. And yes, I’m decent. Come in.” I sigh and fluff my bangs. Not that it matters. Nobody will be looking at me. And if they do, all they will see is a disfigured monster.

He enters just the threshold of my bedroom, pushing open the door. His navy suit is tailored to fit his frame perfectly. I made sure of that. My new men’s line is coming together nicely. The only thing in my life actually going well, considering I’m unable to use my right hand for more than squeezing a stress ball in therapy. I will concede the hand is getting stronger, but I’ll never be able to do the detailed work I was known for in my past life as a costume designer. That ship has long sailed, never to return again.

“Kathleen, you try my patience.” Chase lifts his arm and taps his Rolex silently.

I smile and grab my purse from the nightstand with my left hand. “And your wife and children don’t?”

His brow furrows, but his lips tip up at the edges. Speaking of Gillian always makes Chase smile. He can’t help it. My feisty redheaded bestie and their adorable twins rule his world, and he loves every second ofit.

He puckers his lips, a small smirk still present. “Be that as it may, we have to go, or we’ll be late for the test results. I’m eager to hear what this new technology has to offer.”

Chase Davis, my optimist. Ever since the fire, he’s made it his personal responsibility and goal to fix me. Well, not just me, but all of his wife’s soul sisters. He helped Bree with her yoga studio and Maria with her apartment for the first year, until she hooked up with Eli. But for me he’s been more. My own personal hero, though I’ve never said those words to him. For the most part, I pretend what he’s doing is putting me out. Then I don’t have to cop to what I reallyfeel.

Relief.

He’s there in ways I can’t accept from my girlfriends. I don’t know why. Chase has wormed his way into my broken side, and for him I allow the invasion. With the girls, no way. I need them to see me as the strong woman they think I am. The illusion of strength is one of the only things I haveleft.

In the beginning, when I was first released from the burn center, I refused Chase’s assistance, wanting to do it all on my own. Until I realized I couldn’t. He stopped in to visit me at my ramshackle apartment across town after my second set of treatments. Thank God he did. He found me on the floor, unable to move. The pain in my arm and side was excruciating. I had been fading in and out of consciousness. Turned out one of my grafts was infected. He pulled me off the floor, took me to the hospital, and stayed with me until I was discharged. Upon release, I found out Chase had pulled a fast one. He’d moved me into the building across the street, where he had planned to move Maria after her apartment was trashed by her ex. The apartment she ended up not needing because she moved in with her new husband, Elijah Redding.

Chase Davis, billionaire, alpha, and ferociously protective of those he considers “family,” had put the smackdown on my life. He was not leaving me to fend for myself. The new place came with a shiny new set of in-home nurses who stopped in several times a day to dress and redress my wounds, masseuses for muscle therapy, and weekly appointments with Dr. Madison, my shrink. The same psychiatrist Gillian and Chase had gone to during their own ordeal with the madman who put me in the position I’m in today.

“Really, Chase, they aren’t going to say anything we haven’t heard before. The tissue is too damaged. You’ve had too many surgeries. There’s not much left to work with. Blah, blah, blah. More tests, more trials…” I mimic a person talking using my goodhand.

Chase grips my elbow and leads me out of my apartment, down the elevator, and into the waiting limo with a firm, unrelenting hold. He’s irritated. Big whoop. Nothing newhere.

“Hey, Austin, how goes it?” I ask the bodyguard holding open the door of the pristine black stretch limousine.

“Perfect as a peach, Ms. Bennett,” he says in his kind southern drawl, tipping his head formally.

I chuckle and slip into the car, sliding over to the side so Chase can getin.

“Where’s Jack?” Iask.

Chase adjusts his cuff links and tugs the cuffs of his dress shirt. “With my wife. Playdate.”

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