“What?” Pure nerves crush into my stomach. “When did he tell you that?”
“Last week,” she answers nervously. “How didn’t he tell you?”
“How didn’t anyone tell me?” I respond, pushing my wine away.
“Cillian is coming here?” Emotions swarm through me, making every thought harder to focus on.
“I swear to God that’s what he said. He came in and—”
“Reed came in?” I interrupt her to clarify and while she’s rushing out an explanation of what happened, panic takes over.
All I can see is Cillian, standing in this small rental, taking up every inch of the place and staring back at me with his sharp blue eyes, asking why I stopped coming, why I stopped calling. My body goes cold and I can barely hear a word Lydia says.
You stopped calling too, I can already hear myself answering.
And his imagined answer makes my fingers go numb: ’Cause you stopped loving me, Hellcat.
“Are you okay?”
“What?” I snap out of it and have to wipe under my eyes.
“I’m so sorry, Kat,” Lydia says and rushes over to me but I put a hand up, stopping her.
“I’m fine.”
“I should have told you the second Reed said something but I just assumed you didn’t bring it up ’cause—”
“I’m fine,” I repeat, hardening my voice and she’s silenced by it.
“I should have told you.”
“Do you know when?” I ask her, not bothering with should haves and could haves.
Staying with me. That means staying here, in this tiny house. The one that’s meant to be a bridge away from the past. No one said a word to me. Not Reed. Not Lydia. I had no idea.
“I’m not sure … soon, though. In order to be released, he needs a place to stay. Reed didn’t tell you anything?”
“No.” No one told me anything. “Don’t I—don’t I need to sign something for that?”
“Well, Reed helped you get this place, right?” The chair protests against the floor as she takes her seat again, holding the glass with both hands.
“Yeah.” I needed someone to cosign with me. Fucking Reed. If he were here, I’d lay into him. How could he do that, knowing what happened?
A voice answers all on its own. If Cill told him to make it happen, he’d do it.
I nearly voice the thought; instead I swallow it down with another large gulp.
I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to say. I feel numb and light-headed, like I might pass out any second. “He’s coming home and he didn’t tell me. He’s coming here and Reed didn’t tell me.”
“Everyone’s been keeping secrets,” Lydia murmurs, and she gives me a look full of sorrow before taking a swig. “You want me to stay with you?”
I whisper, “Yeah. Can you just stay ’til I fall asleep?”
“Of course,” she answers, reaching out for my hand and I let her take it. A million thoughts overwhelm me. Every single one about Cillian. Every single one, a regret.
Cillian
The rumble of the bike beneath me almost broke me earlier today, when the sun was setting across the horizon and the pale hues brushed against the barbed wire of the fence I left behind me.
The grip of the handle, the rev of the engine only inches below me and the wind against my face. Four years went by in a blur, yet the life I left behind feels as if I barely know it anymore.
“You sure?” Reed questions as he parks his truck, and the alcohol swirling in my blood makes my head sway.
The idea of being released early on probation was one thing, and the expectations I had for this night were low, but tonight is anything but the celebration the men claimed it to be as beer bottles clinked and they cheered.
Longing for what used to be sunk its claws into me. As I stare at Kat, the light from her kitchen against the dark night giving me every detail, I sink deeper into the worn leather seat of Reed’s truck; regret and something else I can’t articulate weigh me down.
Who is she now? This woman I used to love and now a woman I don’t recognize. Four years and her absence changed what was once between us. I barely remember what we talked about the last time we spoke, but I know she didn’t tell me she loved me. Her calls had stopped months before, but I kept calling her.
Until she didn’t say those words back. That was over a year ago and yet somehow I thought this would be the right thing to fucking do the night I get out of prison.
“Fuck,” I say and my hand runs down my face as I lean my head back, letting the reality sink in.
“You can stay with me,” Reed states as if it’s decided, turning the key over and the ignition protests just as much as I do. He keeps telling me that. He’s been saying it for weeks trying to get me to change my mind.
“I’m going in there,” I say and my voice bellows with more anger than I realized I had.
What’s between Kat and I may be different. I’m sure as hell different; colder, meaner even. Hell, I don’t know how anyone could love me after what I’ve done behind bars. A tremor runs through my hand and I form a fist to stop it.
“I dreaded a number of things,” I confess to my best friend, clearing my throat as I do and making sure to keep my voice even. “I dreaded seeing my father’s grave, I dreaded seeing my uncle Eamon, now the pres, who barely spoke to me while I was away. I dreaded seeing the fucking club—”
“Don’t say that—” He tries to interrupt me, his voice thick with sympathy I never fucking asked for.
The leather groans as I turn to look him in the eye. “It’s the truth. Some nights I blamed the fucking club. But I never dreaded seeing you or her.” Until now.
Gripping the handle in my right, and the strap to a duffle bag with essentials in my left, I swing the old truck door open and listen to it creak as I step out. Spending the night with Reed made me certain of one thing: we’re still the same.
“Now I need my hellcat back.” A nervousness prickles across my skin as the wind creeps up my leather jacket. “Even if she doesn’t want me,” I murmur beneath my breath as I hear the slam of Reed’s door and then his heavy footsteps quickening to catch up to me. “She fucking owes me.”
All I could think about every night was walking up these concrete porch steps. As Reed races to beat me to the door, using the iron knocker, I’m all too aware of how I pictured walking right in. Not stopping or hesitating in the least. She’d stand there, her eyes wide first with shock, then relief and adoration.
Sometimes that’s what I pictured as I fell asleep on that hard bed with images of her writhing under me in my head.
Other times, my eyes stayed open as I stared at the cracked ceiling of the cell, imagining how she’d back away, how she’d tell me she couldn’t be with a man like me. That she knew what I’d done and that I was all wrong for her. That everything we ever were was a mistake.
She told me then, in these fucking terrors that kept me wide awake just like it did last night, that she regretted ever being with me and it was over.
I prepare myself for whatever it is she has to say as a voice I know all too well calls out, “Coming!”