Page 46 of When You Got a Good Thing (Misfit Inn 1)

But he only stared at her, his expression unreadable. “Would you ever have told me?”

Well, he’d asked for honesty. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

Xander nodded once, as if that was the deciding answer he’d needed, then headed for the door.

Kennedy scrambled up, running after him. “Where are you going?”

“Home. I can’t talk about this anymore. This was a mistake. This was all a mistake.”

“Xander!”

He rounded on her. “You lied to me! I thought for years that it was my fault. I blamed myself for what you put your family through. What I thought I put you through. I told you that at the bluff. I apologized for it. And you just stood there and let me. You didn’t say a goddamned word.”

She flinched back. It was all imploding. Everything she’d feared from the moment he’d walked back into her life was coming to pass. Desperate, sobbing, Kennedy held out her hands toward him. “I didn’t know how! Not without breaking my agreement with your father.”

“And getting involved with me again? That wasn’t a breach in that agreement?”

She’d been trying to justify this to herself, hadn’t she? “I thought… My mother was already dead. My relationship with my sisters is already damaged. I thought, maybe he wouldn’t act. Because there was no way he could tell you the truth either without revealing his role in all of it. Mutually assured destruction.” But even to her own ears, the excuse sounded thin.

“Well congratulations. You both got exactly what you didn’t want.”

Before she could reach him, he’d walked out, slamming the door shut. She fumbled to yank it open, losing precious seconds before she realized he’d engaged the lock on his way out. By the time she raced onto the porch, he’d cranked the Bronco and peeled out of the drive.

Breath heaving, heart breaking, Kennedy dropped to her knees where she stood and wept as his tail-lights disappeared into the night.

~*~

When the doorbell rang, Xander considered leaving it. Then he briefly considered shooting whoever was on the other side. If he couldn’t drown himself in whiskey due to the possibility of being called in to handle an emergency, he should at least be able to be left alone to drink his beer and mourn the life he should’ve had—would have had, if not for his father. He’d taken a fucking vacation day for it.

The bell rang again.

He thought about hurling his bottle of Corona, but that’d be a shameful waste of beer.

If it was Kennedy, he wasn’t ready to see her again. His stomach turned at just the thought of the look on her face when she’d said she didn’t matter. How the hell could she believe that? He’d told her flat out there’d been no one else.

If it was his father, he had a fist he’d happily plant in the old man’s face.

If it was anybody else, unless they brought more beer, they could go the hell away.

On the third ring, he hefted himself out of his chair. Clearly his unwelcome visitor wasn’t taking the hint. Prowling across the room, he yanked open the door. His mom stood on the other side, face drawn, worry in her pretty brown eyes.

Bracing an arm against the door frame, he struggled to reel in a little of his vile temper. “I’m not in the mood for company.”

“I’m not company, I’m your mother.” Ignoring him and his entirely craptastic mood, she ducked under the arm he’d been using to block her entrance.

Resigned, Xander shut the door.

She scanned the room, taking in the carry out containers from Jade Palace and the nearly empty six pack.

“I know you’re upset with your father—”

“If you’ve come here to beg for clemency on his behalf, don’t waste your breath. He engaged in conduct unbecoming an officer. He used his position of authority against an innocent girl. And he fucking sent the woman I love away because of some personal vendetta. I’m not going to forgive that, Mom. I can’t.”

“I didn’t come to ask you to forgive him. I came to check on you. What he did…” She shook her head, expression pinched with pain.

“Did you know?” Xander wasn’t sure if he really wanted the confirmation that someone else in his life had betrayed him, but it was too ingrained in him to seek the truth.

“I knew he’d done…something. I never pressed him for the details. I don’t know what I would have done with them if I’d known.”

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