Coming Home (Only Time Will Tell #1) (25 page)

The door is ajar and the lights are off. I start to wonder if he’s already fallen asleep. I push against the door quietly, and peek my head in. “Kyle?” I whisper but don’t get a response.

I open the door wider and go in, planning on just sliding into bed beside him, but something catches my eye.

Squinting against the darkness, with the only light coming in from the hallway, I notice he’s in bed, completely conked out.

He has a blanket covering him from the waist down and Josie lies across his naked chest, barely covered.

A wrecking ball slams into my chest
—
well it feels like it has. I wish it had! Maybe then, I’d be dead and this wouldn’t hurt so much, seeing both of them, like this. Sleeping with their arms around each other…just like me and Kyle had been only last weekend.
 

To think I was actually considering telling him about Kody. I actually thought that me and him were getting somewhere and I felt like it was okay to tell him the biggest, life changing event in my life…our life. But no, he has to prove me right, and everyone else for that matter. I was stupid and I don’t know why I let my heart get so involved with him. Why did I set myself up to be hurt by him? He’s taken my heart and my soul and trampled all over them, stamping on them both. The sight of them is making me want to go over to them, tear them apart and scream at him. Tell him everything I feel and felt. How can someone play with your feelings so much when they said they loved you?

It’s quite clear from where I’m standing that my feelings and I meant shit to him.

Life doesn’t seem real. I’m there, but my body feels like it’s free falling from space, waiting for the impact of my body to come crashing back to earth. I’m such an idiot.

I’m standing there shaking, cold sweats breaking out everywhere. Tears start streaming down my cheeks. I cover my mouth to stifle my sob as I turn and run.

Grabbing my shoes I run straight into the waiting elevator, angrily punching the number into the keypad.

On the way down I repeatedly bang the back of my head against the wall. I was so stupid. I am just like everyone else. I’m no one special. I have a pulse and I’m female, that’s all that matters to that son of a bitch.

I hate him! I hope that one of these days, he’ll actually grow another heart and fall in love with someone who fucking tears it out his chest and feeds it to wild dogs!

What was the point in asking me to go over? What was the point in coming to England? What was the point in anything?

Did he think it would be easier to just find out rather than tell me? Did he think that at least this way it was him hurting me rather than the other way round? Come to think of it, I don’t think he thought at all because he just doesn’t know how to. He’s thinking about himself.

God! This hurts! My heart feels like it has a million stab wounds to it.

I don’t know if I’m sad or angry. If I’m angry, who is it with
—
me or him? Either way, my heart is being locked up from now on. I’ve been hurt by him too many times and he doesn’t get to keep doing it, even if the first time it was unintentionally. As far as I’m concerned…he’s dead to me.
 

“Cat, you okay?” Nadine asks warily over her desk. It’s the first time anyone has spoken today and it’s almost finishing time.

I look up at her over the desks, practically ready to growl at her for disturbing me. Needless to say that I’ve kept myself busy since I got here. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? You’ve beaten the crap out of your keyboard and worked through your lunch. I’m concerned about you, that’s all.”

I look at her as she gives me apologetic smiles. “I said, I’m fine I’m just not in the mood for useless gossip that’s all.” Looking back at the monitor I continue tapping away.

Nadine however, doesn’t give up. “Has something happened between you and Kyle?”

Sighing heavily I rake my hand through my hair before slamming it onto the desk with force that actually makes it tingle in pain, which is something I actually enjoy. It makes a change for pain to be elsewhere in my body other than in my heart. “Ya know what, I don’t want to talk about it,” I grit out through clenched teeth. “In fact I don’t want to talk about him, or me, or us for that matter. As far as I’m concerned he’s dead to me.”

I’m not looking her, but I can see out the corner of my eye that she’s staring at me, playing with her pen nervously.

After that she just keeps quiet about it…and anything else she might ask or say.

Part of me feels guilty because I’ve created such an atmosphere. I must be radiating with all things bad in the world right now, like I could create the damn apocalypse. But then the other half of me thinks…fuck it. People have their bad days, it’s swings and roundabouts. If they want the good one day, they’re going to get the bad the next.

I continue working, almost breaking the keyboard and calculator with each key punch and keep myself occupied so I don’t keep going over everything in my head from last night. Anything that will keep the image of those two at bay. Not even the sound of those three clearing away and saying their goodbyes stops me, well it didn’t until Nadine slammed her hand onto mine as I moved the mouse.

“Seriously Cat, stop! It’s time you left.”

I slowly move my head from the monitor to her face, scowling at her, which she matches. “Let go of my hand.”

“No,” she shouts. “I know something has happened and I want to know.”

“Why?” I shout back. “So you can go blab to Ryan, who will ask Kyle? And for what, so he can tell Ryan his bullshit? I’ll tell you about it when I’m ready to, because at the moment it still hurts like hell.”

Her expression slowly softens as she pats my hand and removes it. “Okay. But I can keep it a secret from Ry, he doesn’t have to know.”

I nod and give her a tight-lipped smile, which for me today is a bonus. “Thanks. Sorry about today, I’ll try and get it out my system by tomorrow.”

She attempts a smile too, pats my shoulder and then leaves. I have no right to make her life hell because mines up the shitter.

I finish off what I’m doing before I leave for the day. While I’m on a roll, I might as well keep going.

I grab my purse as the computer shuts down, and while my head’s down, I hear footsteps behind me. “I’m leaving I swear,” I say, assuming it’s Nod, who’s come back to check that I actually leave this place tonight. Swinging round on the chair however, I find it’s not her but one of the people I hate at this point in time. “What do you want?” I ask, my tone irritated and bitter.

Josie gives me an awkward smile as she sits down in Nicole’s chair, delicately and femininely in her navy blue shift dress. If it was me doing that, I’d have sat down like a sack of potatoes. I’ve never mastered the art of elegance.

She rubs her hands over her legs, removing invisible wrinkles. “I know why you’re annoyed at me and I’d be the same if I were you. I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

I give her an eye roll, “Oh, really?”

“Yes, really,” she sighs. “I’ve been in your shoes before, the amount of women I’ve seen him with is a lot compared to what you have. It’s killed me for years having to witness that.”

Save me the sob story.
“Okay well, thanks for that, but I really don’t want to talk to you just as much as I don’t him.”
 

“I’m just saying,” she snaps, “I know what it’s like to be in your shoes.”

Clutching onto the handle of my purse I say, “You have no idea what my shoes feel like, so don’t come here claiming that you do.” How anyone can tell someone else that they know how your life has been is beyond me. The only person who knows how much I’ve hurt is me.

She glares at me annoyed, “Fine. Kyle asked me to give you something.” Josie digs around in her purse that she collected from the floor to search through on her knees. Eventually she takes out a white envelope and hands it over.

Tentatively I take it. “What’s this?” I ask, giving it the once over.

“Open it,” she instructs.

I run my tongue over my teeth as I look at her and back to the envelope, my heart punching my ribs a couple of times as I try to think of what’s inside. A letter telling me I have an infection—which I could totally see happening—or maybe a letter from him filled with apologies.

Biting the bullet, I tear it open and take out the paper contents. I hold it in my hands and stare at it. I’d have preferred an infection. “A check? What the fuck is this for?” I shout.

“He said that he was really sorry for what happened,” she tells me quickly, clearly my shouting has unnerved her. “He didn’t know how else to help you, said that you could use it to treat yourself as a way of getting over him.”

Come again.
One, does he think money solves everything? Handing me ten thousand dollars does not mend a broken heart. Two, it shows how much of a man you are when you get
your thing
to do your dirty work. Three, he thinks a lot of himself. But I knew that already.
 

My thumb runs over the indentation that is his name and my shoulders sag. I can’t believe he would do this to me…ever. I shake my head in disbelief, “Do me a favor, give him this back. I don’t want his money I don’t want anything to do with him and the sooner I get rid of everything that reminds me of that rat, the better.” As I try to hand it back to her, she holds up her hands like I’m holding a gun at her. I wish I was.

“I can’t take it back. I was under strict orders to make sure you got it.”

I shove it her way again, “I got it, but I don’t want it.”

Her eyes are wide as she shakes her head at me, her hair falling onto her face and it reminds me of the scene I saw last night.

“Josie,” I whisper, “can you explain why he asked me to come around? Did he want me to find out like this? When we talked he said that you two were just friends, it’s hard for me to understand.”

She stops dealing with her hair and looks at me gob-smacked. “You want to know? Most people are too pissed to care about the why’s and how’s.”

“I do,” I tell her, squirming uncomfortably in my chair because I’m not sure if I just lied. I do want to know but I don’t. I’m so confused about everything at the moment that I just need a starting point so I stand a chance of dealing with this crap.

Josie blows out a long breath as she places her purse back down on the floor. “It all happened quickly. We were sat talking about his trip that he made to see you, drinking wine. He went quiet and started tapping away on his phone. I’m guessing he asked you to come over at that point. We’d drank quite a bit and we both said we were getting tired and got up to go to bed. Anyway, we went our separate ways, he went to his room and I went to mine but I found a huge spider and screamed.”

I sit there listening, wondering how the hell this can lead them to his bedroom. Naked.

“He caught it and got rid of it, but I refused to go back in, I was a childish wreck. He tried to persuade me to go in but I point-blank refused,” she says, laughing at the memory. “Eventually he kind of gave in and came over to me and gave me a huge hug. I looked up at him, wanting to say thank you—but he kissed me instead. I was shocked but I couldn’t stop him, so I didn’t.”

“The next thing I knew, it was morning. He wasn’t in bed so I got up and started to go back to my room, but I found him in the kitchen looking slightly distressed. We talked and he said that he’d asked you to come over and that you would have seen. I told him to come and speak to you but he wouldn’t. We had a good talk, about us too, and he said that he wasn’t sure what came over him but he strangely felt something and that he didn’t want to admit it at the time but, while he was gone he missed me.”

“We decided to see how things went with us though, but he felt bad for leading you on and so he wrote the check. He knew he’d hurt you and for that he’s sorry, but I guess love turns up sometimes in the strangest of places. It can be unexpected or under your nose.”

By the time she’s done I’ve screwed the check up in my hand and gripped the chair so tightly it hurts. He missed her? I’m staring at her with all the anger in the world right now, my eyes are like slits and my teeth can’t clench any tighter. I’m like a Staffordshire bull terrier with lock-jaw. “Thanks for that. Now if you don’t mind, I have a life to get on with,” I grit out, sick of the sight of her and her happily ever after.

Josie has a nerve to smile at me like she won the lottery, but she does, then gets up and leaves. God help Nod tomorrow.