Finding West (20 page)

“I’m not going to ask you to stay, if tha
t’s what you’re hoping.”

He nodded then held o
ut the envelope. “Then I wanted to give you this.”

I took it and threw it onto the table. “Is that all?”

“You’re not even going to look inside?” he asked.

“Nope.”

He sighed. “I couldn’t sleep—”

“So you already said.”

His nostrils flared. “Like I said, I couldn’t sleep, so I went downstairs to the hotel’s business center and printed that out for you.”

“How nice of you,” I said, my voice thick with sarcasm.

“It’s information about the Fashion Institute of New York,” he said. “Please think about it. Don’t just disregard it because of me.”

“I wouldn’t live in the same city as you even if it was the last place on earth.”

He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. When he looked up, he said, “Kat, I think you have raw talent in fashion design. Don’t sell yourself short. Even if it’s not New York, there are plenty of other schools in the U.S.”

“I’m fine here,” I said. “I have my dog and my house and my dad nearby. That’s all I need. That’s all I want.”

His eyebrow rose. He knew better than to believe my blustering.

“I hate
that smug look on your face!” The words burst out of my mouth, and once started, I found I couldn’t stop. “And I hate that you know so much about me. I hate that you’ve kissed me and made love to me. I hate that you look like that, that you used it to get under my skin. I hate that you use women, that you think we’re just here for your pleasure. I hate—” I threw my hands against his chest and pushed him. “I hate you, Luke!”

I stood before him, breathing hard, fighting against the tears. “I wish I’
d never met you,” I said, wishing my words were acid so that they could etch into his skin and never be forgotten.

His face
registered the shock and hurt, but I didn’t feel satisfaction in his pain: quite the opposite actually. Love’s a bitch that way. “Well, forgive me for not sharing that sentiment,’” he said quietly, his gaze holding me in place. “I’ll be forever grateful for having met you.”

I straightened my spine and lifted my chin, even if every cell in my body wanted to sag from the weight of his
words.

“Is it really
so hard to forgive me?” he asked. “Does it really matter
why
I came to Alaska? Can’t we just remember what we have between us and focus on that?”

I shook my head. “Of course it matters. I don’t even know you.”

“Fine.” He took my hand and shook it, desperation tainting his face. “My birth name is Luke Nicholas Harrington. I’m twenty-nine years old. I’m the only child of Angelina Kohl and Desmond Harrington. I’m an account executive at Kohl Media. I like to do outdoorsy things. My favorite color is blue. My favorite flavor is strawberry. I went to a boarding school in upstate New York. I’ve loved singing and playing guitar since I was ten. I enjoy working out and sometimes take those ridiculous pictures in front of the mirror. I think Oprah is overrated. I secretly love the Star Wars prequels—”

“Stop,” I said, pulling my hand away, but he kept hold and continued talking.

“I’m a night owl. I secretly think Stephen Colbert is more entertaining than Jon Stewart. I like listening to rap and hard rock, but I write songs about love because it’s the one thing I’d never experienced.” He paused, catching his breath. I knew what was coming next. “Until you.”

“Stop saying
until you
!” I cried, slapping a hand against his mouth. “Stop pretending your whole life changed when I came along because we both know that’s just some bullshit line to make me forgive you.”

He placed his hand over mine and pressed my palm in
to his lips. I closed my eyes and steeled myself against the frantic pounding in my chest as he pulled my hand away and held it above his heart. “We both know that’s not just a line, Kat,” he said in a voice hoarse with emotion. “I was lost long before I flew to Alaska. I was wandering through life without aim, and then you found me and it was as if everything slid into place. In a tiny house in Alaska, I found my true north.”

I felt his heart beating under my palm, thumping hard along to
the beat of my own. My face crumpled in the face of his confession and, in that moment, nothing seemed insurmountable. The only things that mattered were the two people in this room and the love that pulsated like a living, breathing thing around us.

The washing machine
beeped and jarred me out of my trance. I took a step back before I lost myself completely. “You need to go back to where you belong.” He opened his mouth to speak when I added quickly, “And no, it’s not with me.”

He didn’t say anything for
long minutes, just looked at me with those nearly translucent grey eyes. I didn’t know it was possible to reach inside someone and squeeze their heart with one look, but somehow this man in front of me was doing it.

He bridged the gap between us, crowding me with his body like he was so fond of doing, and took my face in his hands. “
You take care of yourself, Kat,” he said and pressed a long kiss to my forehead. He took a deep breath before letting me go. “You’ve made me a better man.”

A flood of emotions
coursed through me, all anger and love rushing together, and though forgiveness was trying its hardest to surface, I held it down and drowned it. Even if I could stomach his past, the fact was that we belonged in two different worlds. He was a big city playboy and I was a small town loner.

And
even though it hurt like hell, even though the tears rushed out of my eyes as if chasing after him, I let West walk past the door and out of my life. Loving him had been the first time in my life I’d felt truly alive, but all of that was over now. It was time for me to get my head out of the clouds and go back to the way things were, back before I even knew what it felt like to fall in love.

West
was returning to his old identity. It was time I went back to mine.

22

WEST

“So what now?”

I turned to Decker
and shrugged as we made our way back into the Hotel Captain Cook. I had no plans, no direction, nothing.

“Back to civilization,” he said.
“Back to reality.”

But the thing was, this was my reality now. That old life I left behind, that was a place
I’d rather not revisit but ultimately had to. There was no choice; I had to be Luke again.

Decker stopped in the middle of the
grand foyer. “What the hell happened to you, man?” he asked with a deep frown.

I wanted to say that
she
happened to me, but that wasn’t the Luke he was expecting. “Nothing. Just forget it.”

Decker shook his head. “Never thought I’d see the day
you got played by a girl.”

“I didn’t get played, okay?” I asked with more anger than was necessary. “I just don’t like the way things ended.”

“Forget her. There are many other pussies in the sea.”

I walked aw
ay in disgust. Once upon a time I’d talked and acted like Decker—hell, I might have even influenced him—and the thought made me sick.

“Where you going?”

“I need some air,” I said, pushing against the glass door and getting a face full of cold.

Decker followed me out. He grabbed my elbow and steered me towards the parking garag
e across the street. “Come with me, I know just the place to cheer you up.”

“And where might that be?” I asked though I had a hunch.

“To a magical place called the GABC,” he said, tracing an invisible marquee with his hand.

“The hell is that?”

“Come on,” he said, leading the way. “You’ll love it.”

The “GABC” as the locals liked to call it, was actually The Great Alaskan Bush Company, a Western-style log building that housed Anchorage’s fanciest strip club.

I
understood why Decker brought me here—we’d spent many hours and many dollars ogling naked female bodies in the past—but that didn’t stop me from feeling like a complete heel.

The doubt must have showed on my face because Decker thumped me hard on the back and asked, “Don’t tell me yo
u’re not in the mood for some T-and-A?”

“I’m just trying to remember if I have ones in my wallet,” I lied and followed him inside.
I probably shouldn’t have gone in—I don’t know why I didn’t just walk away—but a part of me wanted to keep up the façade of the old Luke if only to keep Decker off my back.

The room was large
but dark and seedy like any other strip club. Decker was about to take a seat at the circular stage but I motioned for us to sit in a booth a little further away.

“You don’t want a first row seat?” he asked.

“We can’t get a lap dance up there,” was my reply. I disliked myself in that moment; I was still pretending to be someone I no longer was. But I didn’t want to argue or discuss what had changed with me. All I wanted was some time to drink everything away.

We ordered
beer from a leggy redhead who wore little more than a bikini and sat back, watching the action onstage. Decker’s attention was no longer on me, which came as a relief. With unseeing eyes fixed on the stage, I thought about Kat, my mind retracing our steps from the very beginning when I’d awoken on a cold floor with a blanket over me and a woman’s socked feet in my line of sight. She didn’t know it but even in that disoriented moment, when I saw her sleeping form on the couch, I’d felt immediately at ease. I might have even been slightly impressed with myself for finally picking a girl who was different from the rest. I thought that maybe I was finally evolving.

Yet here I w
as again, back to the kind of place I’d visited often back home, back at the site of my arrested development. I wondered if maybe my old habits would return with my memory. Maybe I was only different around—or more accurately,
because of
—Kat. Maybe I would always be a reprobate and maybe it was time I started to accept that.

When a dancer came up to us, Decker didn’t hesitate
to buy me a lap dance. “To remind you of what you’ve missed out on the past two weeks,” he said with a smile, winking at me from between the woman’s outstretched legs.

A part of me wanted this, w
anted to reach out and touch the mocha skin that was shimmering from glitter—hell, a part of me reacted like a normal hot-blooded male—but my brain wouldn’t stop comparing this woman’s body to Kat’s, wouldn’t stop reminding me how she had felt under the palm of my hand, all hard and soft at the same time. And being inside her… there were no words that could do that feeling justice.

The stripper reached around to undo her lacy black bra, but I
couldn’t bear to watch. I could no longer keep pretending that I wanted to see what she had to show. “Stop, please.”

She shot m
e a confused look but shrugged. After she left, Decker shook his head at me, staring as if looking at me long enough would yield all my secrets.

I drank my beer, trying to ignore him and every sparkling, gyrating
, artificial thing in this club.

“You really love her, man?” he asked.

“Just drop it, okay?”

But Decker wouldn’t let it go. Despite his asshole tendencies, he had always been
a good friend. “If you love her then why the fuck are you leaving?”

I glared
into the nearly empty beer bottle in my hand. “She told me to go,” I said, dropping the farce for a moment. “I didn’t exactly come here with the noblest intentions.”

“You want me to talk to her?”

I snorted. “You’re probably the last person she wants to hear from. She hated everyone from high school.”

“Why? She shut us out.”

“She said people made up rumors about her and made her life a living hell,” I said.

“Not all of us were like that,” Decker grumbled. “I left her alone.”

I picked at the label on the bottle and peeled it off in one piece. “After that picture of her surfaced, the one with the ripped dress, she tried to kill herself. Did you know that?”

Decker swiped a palm over his eyes. “So that’s why she disappeared. I heard rumors that she’d tried to off herself; I didn’t know it
actually happened,” he said and looked up at me. “I didn’t take part in any of that.”

“Yeah but you didn’t exactly step in and defend her, did you?”

“What could I have done? She would have just told me to mind my own business. She always acted like she didn’t need anybody’s help.”

I didn’t want to preach to him about the
damage that standing aside and doing nothing could do because it was all in the past now. The damage had been done. That angry, depressed girl had grown into an even angrier woman. And whether I liked it or not, I was now included in that crowd of tormentors.

I stood up,
unable to stand this place—hell, this entire state—one second longer. “Let’s go. I still have to pack.”

Decker and I flew out of Anchorage that afternoon without issues or delay. Even the line through security was short, as if Alaska itself couldn’t wait to give me the boot. I looked for Kat at the airport but, deep down, I knew she wouldn’t show. She was too proud and much too hurt.

I only wished we could have ended it on a better note, if it had to end at all.