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Chapter Thirty-Six

Jake waited until the door was properly locked before turning to Kate. “What the hell happened in here?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” she said, finally letting loose the laugh she’d been holding in. “Did you happen to scrounge up any snacks while you were out? I think I got a contact high just sitting next to him.”

“He was high, wasn’t he?” Jake looked back at the door in bemusement. “What was he doing in here?”

Kate shrugged as she pulled on the clothes Jake had brought. “He said he got lost.”

“And you believed him?” Jake said incredulously. He turned away from her, his voice dropping to a mutter, but it didn’t keep her from hearing him. “Of course you did.”

“Why wouldn’t I believe him?” Kate asked. “Jake, he was high as a kite. He’s like a Sims right now, I’m positive he’d get stuck in a corner if there wasn’t someone there to turn him around. And believe me, he was just as surprised as I was that I was naked.”

“You let him in here while you were naked?” Jake asked.

Kate pointed at her recently acquired clothes. “I didn’t have much of a choice. And technically he let himself in, so.”

“Because you were supposed to lock the door behind me,” Jake said, annoyed. “And you really think, of all the dozens of rooms in this haunted hell house, he just happened to find yours? What if Spencer is the murderer and I hadn’t come back when I did?”

Kate snorted, collecting the suspect sheets Jake had brought with him and shuffling Spencer’s to the bottom of the stack. “Spencer can be a lot of things, but he’s not a murderer. We have plenty of other suspects with much better motives to focus on right now. Besides, he’s got an alibi for the window of the poisoning.”

Jake crossed his arms. “And what is this alibi?”

“That’s… not important,” Kate said. His alibi didn’t exactly exonerate him, and the last thing she needed was to give Jake more ammunition against Spencer.

“I don’t understand your obsessive need to defend him,” Jake said, and Kate could practically hear his teeth grinding together. “The guy is a complete twat. He cheated on you, left you to marry the other woman, and yet he keeps finding all kinds of ways to be around you this weekend. He’s clearly still hung up on you.”

“That’s not what’s happening here,” Kate said, her own jaw clenching. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

“Understand what?” Jake asked, crossing his arms and staring her down.

“My relationship with Spencer is… complicated. Our lives are entwined. He’s my editor, for pete’s sake! I can’t just… abandon him.”

“Oh, you mean like I abandoned you? That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?”

“Maybe it is, yeah,” Kate said. “I mean, come on, you’re not exactly Mr. Stick Around Guy. You’re only here this weekend because your business partner got sick, and I’m sure you’ll be jetting off somewhere else as soon as the boat reaches the docks in Seattle.”

“Except I won’t!” Jake said, throwing his arms wide. “I’m trying to sell my share in the business. I’m sick of living out of a suitcase, catering to Wall Street bros and their egos. I’m sick of literally being sick, getting twenty different shots and vaccines just to catch some new strain of what’s going around. That’s partly why I even came to this fucking wedding. I needed to talk to Simon about a new book. Something that would make me enough that I could afford to quit.”

“You mean another Wandering Australian book?” Kate said, stung. “Without me?”

“It’s not like you were willing to write it with me, now, is it?” Jake’s tone was bitter.

“It wasn’t like that,” Kate protested. “I told you. I mean, I was busy with Loretta, and you were talking about gallivanting off on some trip, and I didn’t even know what the future was for the Wandering books! You didn’t want to work with me anymore, and Spencer said that Loretta could really be something, and I—”

“And that’s why you chose Spencer, isn’t it? That’s why he was worth breaking all your dumb little rules about maintaining professionalism and I wasn’t, isn’t that the truth? Because he was reliable, nothing like Jake of All Trades.”

“He is reliable,” Kate said quietly. “And, yeah, that does matter to me. I know what it’s like to be alone, abandoned. That’s nothing to sneer at.”

“Except he wasn’t reliable, when it came down to it. He proved to be just as much of a fuckup as you seem to think I am.”

“I never said that,” Kate said in surprise. “I’ve never thought you were a fuckup.”

“Oh sure, I’m just the bad decision, right? The one-night stand you get out of your system. No strings attached, you said that last night. And two years ago. I can never win with you, Kate. I’ve always been Jake the Wandering Australian to you, some… fantasy idea you built up in your head, based on stories I told you about my life a decade ago! You were always trying to make me sound like something more myth than man. Making me look like Tarzan, or a fucking Ninja Turtle. It doesn’t matter how much I’ve tried to grow, or change, or prove I’m not that idiot anymore. Everyone’s gonna see me that way. You, Charlie, my dad, even Simon treats me like a party boy. That’s all I’ve ever been, my whole life. Jake of All Trades, Master of None. The Wandering Australian, never good enough for a home. The second son.”

“Jake,” Kate said, heavy and heartbroken. She’d never seen him like this, laid so bare, and it wrenched her apart to know she’d caused it. “None of that is true, you have to know that.”

“Then why does everyone keep saying it?” Jake snapped. But under the anger, she recognized the root emotion: self-loathing. She raised a hand, hoping to bridge the divide that had opened up between them two years ago—that had always been between them, maybe—but Jake wasn’t finished.

“That’s the only reason you hit on me that night two years ago, wasn’t it? Because I was the bad decision before you settled down. I knew Spencer was into you, I knew it from the very first meeting we had with him about the Wandering Australian books. He was so obvious, and you were typical Kate, completely oblivious. But I knew. I was the kind of guy you hooked up with when you were drunk, and Spencer was the kind of guy you married. But you managed to fuck that up, too, didn’t you?”

Kate shrank back as much from his bitter tone as from his accusatory words. “You have no idea what happens in a long-term relationship. All the ways it can go wrong.”

“Maybe not, but I know you,” Jake said. “You’ve always lived in your own head. You’d rather fantasize about Geoff and Blake and Loretta than live your own damn life. Because then you can control all the variables and tell everybody how to feel without their pesky emotions getting in the way. You think I’m the one who runs away? I’m the thrill seeker? Why don’t you admit the truth—you’ve never fully committed to a person in your life. It was always no strings attached with me, and you always had one foot out the door with Spencer. Neither of us could ever live up, no matter how hard we tried.”

The accusation hit a little too close to home, considering the conversation she’d just had with Spencer. Maybe if she’d had more time to think, to process, to eat at least a portion of her feelings in ice cream form, she might have come up with a more adult response. But Kate was never good at dealing with big emotions in the moment, and this emotion was so big she couldn’t even feel the edges of it.

“I want you to leave,” she said, wishing she wasn’t trembling, wishing it wasn’t so obvious in her voice. “Now.”

“I thought that was my big flaw, leaving,” Jake said, staring her down. “Which is it? Should I stay or should I go? I’m fucked either way, aren’t I?”

“Get out,” Kate said, vibrating now. With anger, and that big emotion. What a fool she’d been, considering this some new incarnation of herself. It had been the adrenaline and shock talking; she was still plain old Kate Valentine, and she always would be.

Jake gave a growl and stalked toward the door. He paused with his hand on the handle, and Kate’s traitorous heart leapt like it always did with him; like maybe things could end differently this time. But when he turned to her, his face was like stone.

“Good luck catching your murderer, Loretta,” he said, before jerking the door open and disappearing.