CHAPTER ONE
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Again?”
Kat nodded.
“You really are telling me this, again? That there is nothing going on between us? No affair? No love?”
I looked into her eyes, as cold and dark as my dog’s water was this winter’s morning. She watched me. Her arms were folded across her chest as if to protect herself from me. Me. Who has been her sweet secret lover, for how many years now? Five? Ten? More?
Kat forgets.
Like now, when I’m no longer convenient, she forgets how much we have been in each other’s lives. How much we mean to each other. She forgets that it’s her, always her, who comes back to me, stirs it all up and then leaves once again, usually within a few weeks. She came to me in New Mexico. In Guatemala. In Spain. In Russia. She comes back to me. Always. I don’t look for her.
I waited. Kat said nothing. She simply stood there in her leggings and t-shirt. Barefoot, she looked me straight in the eye. Both of us are five foot ten—one of the few ways we are evenly matched.
But then she looked away.
“So, there is nothing going on, right? Why then do you have to shut me out? If there is nothing to hide from Mark, why act as if we’re not even friends? Why hide me on the sidelines of your life?”
How I lived with myself, being in the same social circle as this happy couple, I don’t know. I didn’t look too deeply. I simply wanted her. However I could. Whenever I could.
“Kat. Wake up. Talk to me.”
I saw movement in there. She shook loose of her own tight grip. This strikingly dark-haired feline woman shook herself free. Her arms stretched out toward me and then collapsed at her sides.
“Joey. There is nothing going on between us. I told you that last week. I’ve been nothing but extremely consistent with you about this. There is nothing going on. Now you need to leave. Mark’s coming back any minute and I don’t want to explain why you’re here. He doesn’t want you here.” She looked at me. “And neither do I.”
I watched. I waited. For more. For more honesty. Well, for some honesty. Anything but that dismissal. Sometimes it worked, if I stood and waited. Sometimes she’d remember to reassure me of her deep love, remind me of the passion that sparks and ignites between us when no one’s looking. I waited. But no. Not this time. She said nothing else.
I bit my tongue to hold back the bitter words. I tasted the rich blood between my teeth. I wanted to spit it into her mouth, to have her know the depths of how she hurts me with this oh-so-consistent rejection of hers. I didn’t. I waited. She folded her arms across her chest again.
That was it, then?
I said nothing more. I turned away, walked to the gate and let myself out, whistling for Jimmy, my Husky mongrel. He bounded up to me. I nodded toward the truck and he sprang into the bed and waited for us to drive off. He watched Kat. I knew it. He adored her, more than a casual friend of mine would usually elicit from this shy dog, but with her—Jimmy was in love.