Page 5 of Sweet on Her

Her slim shoulders hunch and she turns away from me to stand up. “I’m moving back. For good. I’ve started paperwork to invest and co-own Cassidy’s bakery.”

My heart sinks and yet I feel light as a feather. It’s the strangest feeling. Like I’m sucking in helium and floating to the ceiling.

“Really?” How does my voice actually go up? I sound like I’ve just been punched in the nuts. Which I guess I have.

She glances around. “Is your wife around?”

My shoulders straighten and I clench my teeth so hard I hear my jaw crack.

“My wife died when my daughter was little.”

Her eyes jump up to me and she looks stricken. “I’m so sorry, Hank. That must have been hard for you.”

Not as hard as knowing you weren’t coming home to me.

I push that thought away. There’s no good coming out of letting her find out what she meant to me. I’d sooner eat nails.

But I hate the thought that she hurt me worse than anything and my tone is biting when I answer her.

“Not as hard as some other things in life. We all live and learn, Katrina.”

“You used to call me Kat.”

“You used to respect me enough to tell me the truth face to face instead of in a fucking letter.” Oh, shit! I mentally facepalm myself. “Times change and so have I.”

Why the fuck couldn’t I keep my big mouth shut and just keep on walking?

She flinches but to give her her due, she lifts her golden-brown eyes and looks me square in mine. “I regret that, Hank. I regret it a lot. You know how my mom was. She thought it would be the best way to break things off. Give us both a little space.”

“And you believed her?” I huff. “Your mother hated me and she hated us together. Why would you listen to her opinion on something that should have been between us?”

Her slim shoulders slump. “I suppose it was the immaturity in me. I was scared to tel you the truth. Scared to hurt you. We were so young and when she brought it up, it felt like it would just be easier on both of us not to be face to face for that conversation.”

Eyeing her cynically, I respond, “You mean it was going to be easier for you. That conversation was never going to be easier for me…on any level. It was always going to hurt. But you found a way to make it hurt worse so congratulations.”

“I am really sorry, Hank. I don’t think you even know how sorry.” There’s sorrow and guilt in her glorious gaze and I want to wallow in it like a pig wallows in mud. I like knowing that she hurt almost as bad as I did.

And that scares the hell out of me. “How long are you really here for, Katrina?”

She growls under her breath. “I meant what I said, Hank. I’m moving back for good.”

“What about your fancy-schmancy lifestyle overseas? All those rich people and big names that throw their money at you?”

“Yeah, I’lll really miss that.” She rolls her eyes and glares at me. “You know, I admit that I messed up with you, Hank. But I was young. Everyone deserves a second chance.”

My eyes are stone. “Everyone but you with me. I don’t do second chances with people who…”. I stop talking. But she’d have to be an idiot not to know what I mean and I wish once again that I’d kept my feelings to myself.

“People who hurt you?” Her words are so soft it’s almost like the wind sighing in my favorite pine trees around here. “I’m sorry, Hank. I really am. But I have to move back here and hopefully one of these days, you’ll forgive me because I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Do me a favor and just stay away from me. That’s all I ask, Katrina. Just leave me the fuck alone.”

She nods her bright head and I sigh, running away. Yeah, I know it’s not manly but right now I don’t feel like a man. I feel like that young guy who just read the worst thing he’d ever read and feels like he took a gut punch. Those words.

“I’m sorry that I can’t stay here with you, Hank. But I need to work on my career and I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to settle down with any one man. I want bigger things than you can give me.”

The damn words are ingrained in my head. “I want bigger things than you can give me.”

Those words from the woman I trusted more than anyone on this planet gutted me…and I never fully recovered.

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