Page 88

“Yes,” I tell him. Lifting the glass of water, I drink half of it before setting it down on the counter between us. “I’ll be right here when you get back.”
FIFTY
Wentworth
Like she promised, Kait was here when I got back from my run—in the kitchen, measuring and scooping what looked like flour into a large mixing bowl, earbuds plugged into her ears, wearing nothing but one of my T-shirts and a pair of cotton panties. Every now and then she sings a few words to the song she’s listening to, out loud, her barely covered ass swaying suggestively to a beat only she can hear.
Darling Nikki.
She’s a Prince fan.
Suddenly, the inexplicably hot puzzle of Kaitlyn Barrett makes a little more sense.
Laughing out loud, the sound of it quickly dies when I get another flash of her, doing exactly what she is now in some unfamiliar kitchen, baking something sweet for a man who isn’t me. In my imagination, she isn’t dancing. She isn’t singing. She’s miserable and trapped. Hates the mold she’s been forced into. The man she married.
She doesn’t have to marry him.
Not if she marries you first.
I wait a beat—expecting to feel crazy for thinking it like I did before. Even crazier for wanting it.
I don’t feel crazy. Not even a little bit.
That’s what scares the shit out of me.
I was seventeen years old when I met your grandmother and the second I laid eyes on her, I knew it was gonna be her until the day I died.
It was something my grandfather said to me once, a long time ago. My father was in the middle of divorcing Camilla, his last wife. I was fourteen and taking it harder than I probably should’ve. Not because I was particularly fond of Camilla but because every time I watched him cut and run, I felt like I was getting a glimpse of my own future. That I had nothing but broken promises and neglected children to look forward to because that’s the kind of blood that runs in my veins.
Weak and selfish.
Fickle and unfaithful.
It doesn’t have to be that way, Wentworth. You don’t have to make the same mistakes they did. You can do better—be better—if you want to.
Even though my grandfather believed it, I’ve never been so sure I was capable of loving the same woman for the rest of my life.
Until now.
The realization of that scares me more than anything. The only thing that scares me more is the thought of fucking it all up.
Leaving Kait to her baking dance party for one, I sneak past her unnoticed. Upstairs, in the master suite, I start the business of getting the fuck out of here.
When I come back downstairs, an hour later, she’s sitting at her laptop again, earbuds still plugged into her ears while she writes something important in one of her notebooks. A plate with a half-eaten blondie next to a glass of water sitting in front of her.
Catching me move in her peripheral, Kait lifts her head and smiles. Dropping her pen, she reaches up to pull an earbud loose. Her mouth opens and I wait for her to ask me if I want her to make me something to eat. Serve and please me in some way because that’s how it works in her world. How her father has bred and conditioned her to behave—to not only put her own wants and needs last but to ignore them altogether. Like someone who doesn’t deserve happiness.
A life of her own. Freedom. Love.
She doesn’t have to marry him.
Not if she marries you first.
The thought tightens the hinge on my jaw and Kait must see it, because she drops her gaze as soon as she looks at me. “I’m almost finished with this lecture.” She plugs the bud back into her ear before picking up her pen again, going back to her studying without waiting for me to answer.
I’m around the island and standing over her before I can stop myself. Reaching out, I hit the pause button on her laptop and pull out her earbud again.
She doesn’t have to marry him.