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She crossed the room and stood beside his table with her hands on her hips. “I’m going to tell you the same thing I tried telling you ten years ago,” she said, trying to hold back her anger and failing miserably. “There was never anything going on between me and Samuel Abbott. It was lies your father made up. Lies you chose to believe.”
His jaw tightened and his dark eyes flared. “I saw the two of you together, Bryce. He was leaving your house at two in the morning. The two of you were hugging on your front porch. Do you deny that?”
She tossed her hair back from her face. “No, I don’t deny it. It was a friendly hug that you tried making into something dirty.”
“I tried making into something dirty?” he said, as if incensed with what she’d said. “Don’t you dare blame me for what you did to us.”
Bracing her hands on the table, she leaned in closer, almost right in his face. If he wanted a good fight, she would give him one. “I am blaming you, Kaegan, for not believing in me when you should have. For your lack of trust in me. I’m also blaming you for sleeping with another woman to spite me when you thought I had wronged you.”
She drew in a deep breath and backed away from him, trying to get her anger under control, but she couldn’t. “And as far as Samuel is concerned, he’s living in California and I went to his wedding this weekend.”
“So I heard.”
Had her mother told him that, too? Was that the reason he’d asked why she and Samuel had broken up? “It was a beautiful wedding.”
“Must have been pretty damn awful for you to be at the wedding. Seeing the man you once loved marry someone else,” he sneered.
She lifted her chin. “No, it wasn’t awful at all. In fact, I am very happy for him. Samuel deserves to be happy and I believe Matthew will make him extremely happy.”
“Matthew?” he asked, as if to make sure he’d heard her right.
“Yes, Matthew. The reason Samuel and I spent so much time together is because he needed a friend. He was having a hard time coming to terms with his sexuality. Since we both attended Grambling, whenever he came home he would offer me a ride back here. And he was in a number of my study groups on campus. That’s when we became close and he would confide in me.”
Kaegan glared at her. “You should have told me.”
“And you should have trusted me,” she snapped, glaring back. “That night when you thought you saw us in some kind of passionate embrace, I was giving Samuel a hug of encouragement because he’d made the decision to tell his parents the truth. He was tired of living the lie he had lived all his life and wanted to come out. And before you say I should have told you that, too, I tried telling you after I got that call from you, ending things between us. Just think of how different things would have been had you listened to me. Instead, you hung up on me and then blocked my number so I couldn’t call you back.”
She drew in a deep breath, remembering that day like it was yesterday. “But I didn’t let that stop me, Kaegan. I was determined that you knew the truth. I used every penny I had to buy a bus ticket, and I rode that bus for eighteen hours all the way from college to see you. And what did you do? Instead of listening to what I had to say, you treated me like shit in front of some brazen hussy.”
“Bryce, I—I’m sorry—”
Without saying anything else, she crossed the room and headed straight for the kitchen, ignoring Kaegan calling out to her. Duke and Ry looked up when she walked into the kitchen and snatched off her apron.
“Kaegan’s still here but that’s it for me tonight,” she said, refusing to let her tears fall. “I’m done here and going home.” She grabbed her purse out of one of the cabinets, walked out the back door, got in her car and drove off.
KAEGAN SAT STUNNED at Bryce’s words. And then, like he’d been stung by something, he bolted out of the booth and charged into the kitchen. He looked at Bryce’s brothers, who both stared at him. “Where’s Bryce?” he asked them.
Ry answered in an angry voice, “She just got in her car and left, obviously upset, Kaegan. What’s going on? What the hell did you do to her?”
Kaegan wanted to go after her but knew that wouldn’t be a good idea. Not tonight, anyway. He had a lot to think about. A lot to take in. What she’d just told him had shocked the hell out of him. It had been like an enormous kick in his gut. How could he have been so stupid? So fucking stupid? How could he have been so wrong about her? For ten fucking years he had believed the worst about her and he’d been wrong. So damn wrong, and she was right. He only had himself to blame. He’d been more than stupid, more than a moron, worse than an ass...
“Kaegan? Dammit, what did you do to Bryce?” Duke asked, raising an angry voice.
Bryce’s brothers had every right to be angry, but this was between him and their sister. “Bryce and I had an argument.” And that was all he intended to tell them about it.
“I left the money for my dinner and beer on the table.” Then he turned and walked out of the kitchen and left the café, feeling at the lowest point he’d ever felt in his entire life. He felt sick. His guts felt twisted with remorse. He had a feeling Bryce would never forgive him for what he did, and at that moment he doubted if he would ever forgive himself.
CHAPTER SIX (#u87cadfe7-46c4-56eb-b6b0-905922d3c32e)
“HEY, BRYCE. WHAT’S UP?”
Bryce adjusted her cell phone in her hand as she sat down at her kitchen table. She was still trembling, inside and out. “It’s about Kaegan, Vash.”
“Kaegan? What about Kaegan?”
Bryce sighed deeply. “He knows the truth about Samuel.”
“How did he find out?”
Bryce closed her eyes and fought back more tears. Why was she still crying? Why was she crying at all? Hadn’t she sworn years ago she wouldn’t shed any more tears for Kaegan Chambray? That he didn’t deserve them? “Kaegan came into the café for dinner and I waited on his table. When he asked why Samuel and I had broken up, in anger I blurted about Samuel and Matthew and their wedding this weekend before I could stop myself.”
She heard Vashti’s sharp intake of breath. “So now the entire town knows about Samuel, as well as knowing why you and Kaegan broke up?”
“No, Kaegan and I were the only ones in the restaurant. It was late, near closing time. My brothers were in the kitchen, but they didn’t hear anything, either.”
“I bet he feels bad about how he’s been treating you all these years. Did he apologize?”
“Good, let him feel bad. All he had to do was listen to me ten years ago. I tried telling him about Samuel then, but he refused to listen. Instead he wanted to lash out at me. Break my heart with another woman to my face. He succeeded, Vash. And as far as apologizing, I didn’t want to hear his apology.”
Bryce paused a moment and then added, “As my friend, I’m going to ask that you don’t try to change my mind about how I feel about him. I respected your wishes years ago about your baby’s father, and I’m asking you to respect mine now about Kaegan.”
Vashti didn’t respond for a long moment, and then she said, “Okay, Bryce, I will respect your wishes. Do you want me to come over? I could bring some ice cream.”
“Thanks, but I just want to be alone right now. I’ll talk to you later. Love you. ’Bye.” She clicked off the phone. Before she could put down the phone and go into the bathroom for her shower, both Ry and Duke called. She assured them she was fine but told them she wouldn’t be coming into the café tomorrow morning as usual. Although Kaegan hadn’t come into the café any mornings last week, she couldn’t risk seeing him.
She needed time to pull herself together before she saw him again. That was the only way she could move on with her life and one day find a man whom she could love and who would love her in return just as much.
“I WONDER IF Bryce didn’t get back yesterday as planned,” Ray commented when another waitress filled their order.
“She got back,” Kaegan said, staring into his coffee. He had arrived at the café early that morning after a sleepless night, only to find out from Mr. Witherspoon that Bryce had decided not to come in that day because she had a lot of things to do. A part of him knew that was just an excuse. She was avoiding him, and he’d been hoping to do just the opposite with her. He had wanted to see her. Apologize again.
More than once last night, he’d been tempted to get out of bed and drive over to her place to see her. But each time he would talk himself out of it when he remembered the look on her face when she’d said, “Don’t you dare blame me for our breakup. You can only blame yourself for not believing in me...”
Again, he could only ask himself how he could have been so fucking stupid. He had spent all those years wanting to hate her. Despise her. Believing she had betrayed him, and as a result, he’d thought all sorts of mean things about her when she’d been innocent of all of it. Totally innocent. Instead she’d been being Bryce. The person who was always a champion for the underdog, the girl who would give you the shirt off her back, a person who was that friend when you needed one.
“And you know this how?”
He glanced over at Sawyer. For him to ask meant he hadn’t heard anything. That didn’t necessarily mean Bryce hadn’t told Vashti, because he had every reason to believe that she had. It only meant Vashti hadn’t told Sawyer. “I know because I saw her yesterday evening when I came in here for dinner.”
“Oh.”
That “oh” had come from Ray. Kaegan moved his gaze from Sawyer to Ray. He might as well level with the two men who were the closest things to brothers he would ever have. “I fucked up.” There. He’d said it. He’d spelled out his torment in three words. Words he felt all the way to his gut.
“Would you care to tell us how?” Sawyer asked quietly.
So he did. He told them everything. About his father’s lies. About what he thought he’d seen that night he’d planned to ask her to marry him. About how he’d treated her when she showed up at that club near the marine base. “For ten years I believed Bryce had an affair with another man and last night I found out it had all been a lie. A fucking lie. I’ve been trying to hate her when I could have been loving her.”
For the longest time the table was quiet. Neither Ray nor Sawyer said anything. Then Sawyer spoke up. “The first step is admitting you were wrong.”
“And the second step is making the wrong right,” Ray added. “I recall when I fucked up with Ashley and you guys came looking for me. It was one of those you-better-get-your-ass-in-gearmoments and I took heed. Grudgingly, but I did it.”
Kaegan didn’t say anything as he remembered that day. It had taken all he and Sawyer could do not to toss Ray off his boat into the water to wash some sense into him.
“I’ve had one of those moments myself with Vashti,” Sawyer said. “When she tried to tell me about what had happened at the hospital. I didn’t want to listen or accept it. I refused to believe her and accused her of all sorts of things.”
Kaegan was hearing what his best friends were saying, but they’d had the sense to straighten things out with their women within hours. He’d let things fester for ten years. Ten long damn years. He took a drink of his coffee and said, “Getting things straightened out in less than twenty-four hours doesn’t compare to ten years.”
“True,” Sawyer said. “But a man has to start somewhere and usually it begins with an apology.”
“I tried to apologize but she walked off like she didn’t want to hear it.”
“And you’re going to settle for that?” Ray asked him.
No, he wouldn’t settle. He would apologize again, a thousand times more if he had to to show her how sincere he was. He had messed up, and if it took the rest of his life, he would show her just how much he regretted doing so.
A few hours later, Kaegan turned his SUV onto the street where Bryce’s real-estate office was located. He had passed by the place several times since returning to the cove. Had even done so at a time she had come outside to get into her car to leave for the day. He’d seen her but she hadn’t seen him. At the time, just looking at her had elicited anger. Now he knew whenever he saw her that he would only feel regret. Regret for being such a stupid ass for believing the BS his old man had been feeding him. But then, he couldn’t rightly place all the blame on his father. It was also what he’d thought he’d seen with his own eyes.
During his sleepless night, he had come to terms with how wrong he’d been. There had never been anything going on between Bryce and Samuel, and he owed her an apology. Hopefully she would find it in her heart to accept it.
He parked next to her car, unhooked the seat belt and got out of his vehicle. He took the steps two at a time, then sprinted toward the front door of the building and went inside. A young woman who looked to be in her early twenties sat behind a desk. She smiled when she saw him.
“May I help you?”
He nodded. “I’d like to see Bryce... Ms. Witherspoon.”
The young woman nodded. “And what’s your name, sir?”
“Kaegan Chambray.”
“Just a moment, please, Mr. Chambray.”
He glanced around when she picked up the phone to announce him. This was the first time he’d ever been here and he liked how Bryce had transformed the Cajun house into her workplace.
A door opened and Bryce walked out of it. His breath caught, as it usually did whenever he saw her. She was professionally dressed in a pair of black slacks and a short-sleeve printed blouse. Her hair flowed around her shoulders and he could tell from her reddened eyes she’d been crying. A lot. He felt a kick in the gut. He’d been the cause of her pain.
Without acknowledging his presence, she said to the young woman sitting at the desk, “You can leave for lunch now, Pia.”
The young woman nodded. “Thanks.” She got her purse out of the drawer and stood. Before walking out the door, she glanced over at him and smiled faintly. He figured it was her way of warning him that her boss was not in the best of moods today.
When the door closed behind the young woman, Bryce turned to him with narrowed eyes that were shooting daggers at him. “What are you doing here, Kaegan?”
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “I came to see you.” She crossed her arms over her chest. He wished she hadn’t done that. That drew emphasis to a pair of perfect breasts. That was the last thing he needed to think about now.
“Why?”
“I said it last night and I felt the need to say it again today. I’m sorry, Bryce.”
Her spine stiffened and the glare in her eyes deepened. “I don’t want your apology, Kaegan. It doesn’t matter. I stopped caring how you felt about me that night you walked out of that club with that other woman. Please leave.”
He could tell her that woman hadn’t meant anything to him. That the two of them hadn’t slept together that night. But that couldn’t erase the other women he’d slept with over the years. Women he’d used to eradicate Bryce from his mind and heart.
“Bryce, I—”
“No. Today is not a good day, Kaegan. Maybe one day I’ll be ready to forgive you. But not now. Not today.”
At that moment, although she didn’t say it, the words not ever hung between them. He wasn’t given a chance to ask because she turned toward her office, went inside and closed the door behind her.
He had been dismissed with a finality that he felt all the way to the bone.
“YOU LOOK LIKE crap, Kaegan.”
He rubbed a hand down his face. Of all people, he didn’t need Vashti to tell him that. Besides, he had news for her—he felt like crap, as well. When he left Bryce’s office, he’d come here to Shelby by the Sea. He needed to see Vashti because she was one of his best friends. Always had been. More than anything, he knew he owed her an apology.
Since returning to the cove and finding out about his and Bryce’s strained relationship, Vashti had, on more than one occasion, tried intervening. Now he wished more than anything that he would have heeded her advice. Hell, he wished she would have knocked some damn sense into him.
“I owe you an apology and you can go ahead and say ‘I told you so,’ Vashti.”
She looked at him over her shoulder as he followed her to her office. “Apology accepted. You have to admit I tried.”
“Yes, but now I wish you could have been a little more forceful with it.”
Vashti went over to the chair behind her desk and sat down. “It’s not easy being best friends with both you and Bryce. I felt like I was caught in the middle and at times I thought that I was the only sane person in the room. I was convinced the two of you were trying to drive me crazy.”
Kaegan could only imagine. “How could you even put up with me, knowing what you knew?” he asked, taking the chair across from her desk.
“That’s just it. I didn’t know everything. I knew about what happened with Samuel, but until just recently I didn’t know that she’d traveled all the way to that marine base to see you and tell you everything. In fact, it was the night of your party when the two of you had that little tiff. That’s when she told me. You don’t know how hard it was for me to even talk to you after that. If you noticed, I didn’t for a week.”
He’d noticed. “I’ve been such an ass.”
“Yes, you have.” She paused and then said, “She’s hurting and I believe you’re hurting, as well, because of the pain you know you’ve caused her. Just so you know, I promised Bryce I wouldn’t intervene on your behalf, no matter what. I guess you know what that means.”
Yes, he knew. He’d gotten himself into this mess and he was the only one who could get himself out of it. He met Vashti’s gaze. “I intend to earn back her trust and love.”
Vashti nodded. “Good luck. You are definitely going to need it because it’s not going to be easy. But then, I have a feeling you know that.”
He nodded. “Yes, I know it, but I am a determined man.”
“I believe you. I love you both, you know.”
“Yes, I know. Any words of advice?”
Vashti didn’t say anything for a minute. Then she said, “Ten years is a long time, Kaegan. Earning back her love sounds good, but more than anything, I think you should let Bryce get to know the man you are now, and you should get to know the woman she’s become.”
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u87cadfe7-46c4-56eb-b6b0-905922d3c32e)
BRYCE SAT CROSS-LEGGED on the floor in her home with various papers spread out around her. Since she often worked half days on Saturdays at her office, she would normally close at noon on Wednesdays. More times than not, she would help out her parents at the café, but decided not to do so today. In fact, she hadn’t been to the café since Monday, and had deliberately avoided being there the last two mornings. Because she knew her parents needed her help, she intended to shape up, get herself together and be there tomorrow morning. She had needed the last two days to stay busy and try to put things in perspective as much as she could.
In a way, nothing between her and Kaegan had changed other than he now knew the truth. It was up to him how he chose to deal with it as long as it didn’t involve her. She’d had ten years to know he’d wronged her. Now he needed his ten years.
