Page 77 of Double or Nothing

Her orgasm shudders through her, her forehead resting against my chest.

“You’re going to be the death of me.”

“Pretty damn good way to go, though, isn’t it?”

“You’re an idiot.” Her body trembles with laughter.

While she might tease me, I know deep down she’s right—I am an idiot. Only an idiot would have left behind a woman like this.

*****

She’s sitting with her legs crisscrossed on the couch, a hunk of cheesecake on a plate in her hands.

“So… where do we begin?”

We’ve transitioned from an intimate start to her being unable to look at me. I’m not sure if it’s because she regrets what we did, or she’s afraid of something.

“Foremost, you need to know, I never wanted to leave you, never wanted us to end up like this.”

“Then why did you, Sutton? Why did you refuse to make things work? Why did you force me to choose between you and her?” Tears well in her eyes, and the plate with her dessert on it trembles in her hand.

“I don’t have an excuse, not a good one. I was a stupid kid. You turning me down, telling me you couldn’t go with me… it hurt.”

“It wasn’t because I didn’t want to. I couldn’t. You knew that.”

She’s right, I did, but it still doesn’t change how my eighteen-year-old mind reacted to her rejection. Looking back, I know I was wrong, but then?

“I know, but I was a kid. A fucked-up kid at that. My mom leaving and losing Grandma Virginia, I felt like I was cursed. I lost everything good in my life. You were the only thing left. Then you told me you couldn’t go with me, and… I snapped. I heard nothing that came after that no. The words didn’t register. The anger and hurt consumed me, and I reacted… badly.”

“Yeah, you did,” she says, not pulling any punches, then softened. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this? I would have understood. I would have tried to make you understand.”

“Again, it’s not an excuse, but you know me. You know I react first and think later. Shit, look at the stunts I’ve pulled since I’ve been back, all because I saw you talking to men. Men who were nothing more than clients and co-workers.”

“You always had a jealous streak,” she says with a slight smile.

“Only when it comes to you.” Her face turns somber, and I can tell there’s more, so much more she wants to say, but she’s hesitating, and I’m not sure why. I don’t know what else I did to her, but whatever it was, it wasn’t intentional.

“What is it? Tell me.”

“You leaving was bad enough, but you…” She shakes her head. “Never mind.”

“No, don’t do that, Kat. I what?”

She blinks away the tears in her eyes, trying to stop them from falling.

“You didn’t even reach out when my mom died. You didn’t come to the wake, not even so much as a phone call. I needed you.”

“I should have been here, Kat. I… I tried to be here, but the label had a show booked, they wouldn’t let me out of, and…”

“And there was someone else.”

“Someone else? Kat, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I promise you there was no one after you for a long, long time.”

By long time, I mean a long, lonely time. One year to be exact. I may have been the one to walk away, but I sure as hell didn’t want to. Being away from her killed me. Until the one-year anniversary of the day I left, I was never with anyone else. I broke that day. The emotions flooded back to me—the hurt, the rejection, how much I missed her. To drown it out, I drank, caused all sorts of trouble, and fucked Val, but not before then and certainly not when her mother died. I was trying desperately to get back there, back to her. I knew what her mother’s death would do to her, how it would tear her apart. But I couldn’t. The record company wouldn’t let me, and the back-to-back shows didn’t allow for it.

By the time I could come back to see her, it would have been too late. At least, that’s what I thought. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I fucked things up even more than I thought.

I shake my head, renouncing her accusation.

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