Her Secret Betrayal (3 page)

“I think I need a cigarette,” she murmured.
“Are you ok?”

I thought briefly to the bruises, already
fading, but I knew she didn’t mean physically. The deep down
bruises were harder to describe and felt slippery and indefinable
when I tried to pin them down.

“Let’s just say I was better last night than
I was this morning.”

Maris considered this carefully. She worried
her bottom lip between her teeth and a section of hair around her
fingers. Her eyes wandered across the table top as if she might
find answers there, so I looked too, but found only more
questions.

Finally she raised her dark eyes to meet
mine, serious and unflinching.

“I love you, Kara. Always have, always will.
But you and I both know you’ve got a whole set of Chanel luggage in
your baggage claim. And it’s not all Sean’s fault. In my completely
unprofessional opinion, Sean inherited your baggage until he
couldn’t carry it anymore. He might have made them heavier, but he
didn’t create the problem. Do you understand what I mean, K?”

I grabbed my wine glass and swallowed the
whole thing back like it was a shot of tequila and poured myself
another one.

“You mean my mother.”

“I mean your whole freakin’ circus.”

I knew what she meant. I had four text
messages on my phone about my sister’s fantastic boyfriend from my
mother, all of them implying that I could have her luck if I just
tried harder.

Maris’s voice softened. “How was it being
with him again?”

I groaned. “Four times.
At
least
.”

“Holy shit, is that even possible?”

“Completely possible. Maris, he’s exactly
the way I remember him down to his smell. I mean, he’s bigger and
stronger and a lot more self-sure than he used to be, but he was
also still so
Sean
. It was like I’d been asleep for six
years and all the sudden the world was too bright to even look at.
It sounds cheesy and pathetic, I get that, but I think the way he
left like he did, I’ve just been stuck waiting. Sleeping.”

Maris hesitated before reaching across the
table to settle her hand over mine. “What now? I mean, is this
something
again?”

I touched my finger across the rim of my
wine glass and studied the way the drips of red washed along the
glass curve. “I don’t know. We didn’t talk about it. Maybe…maybe we
both needed this for closure.”

“Sweetheart, closure is once and then you
call a cab. Four times…that’s obsession. That’s staking a claim.
It’s the equivalent of him peeing on your headboard.”

“Charming analogy, Maris.”

“Did you sock him in the nose for leaving
you the way he did? I would have socked him in the nose. Maybe
twice.” Maris pulled her hand away and captured the stem of her
wine glass between her fingers, her pretty face thoughtful. “I
still might.”

“No,” I laughed softly. “I didn’t punch him.
I could barely remember my own name. If I see him again, I’ll
consider it.”

“If?” She frowned and sat up. “You don’t
know if you’ll even see him again? Did you at least exchange phone
numbers?”

The question sat uneasily in my chest. We
hadn’t. The consequences of that question caused my heart to neatly
split in two and choose different sides of the war. My body wanted
to see him again, the thought of him sent gooseflesh up my arms and
made my panties dampen. But a very dark, raw part of my heart said
absolutely not.
You’ve had your fun and now we don’t ever want
to see him again
.
Let him rot in hell with his horrible
girlfriend whom he clearly deserves, the lying coward.

Finally I shook my head. “A part of me
doesn’t want to forgive him.”

“Whatever you decide to do, Kara, I’ll
support you. You’ll make the right decision.”

“Or the wrong one.” I sighed. “Thank you for
not shaming me. I’m full up on guilt all by myself.”

“As if. We’ve all done something we knew was
wrong for a lot worse reasons than
I’m so freaking in love with
him.
Now the onus is on him to do the right thing, whatever
that may be, for him and Taylor.”

Gloom weighed me down as I sank behind my
wine glass. The sweet flavor suddenly too cloying. Along the edge
of my thoughts, fuzziness edged in, weakening my barriers.

“The last time it was on him to do the right
thing, he left in the middle of the night and never came back.”

###

We slowed as we approached the subway stop,
Maris and I crunched beneath an awning to stay out of the rain. It
didn’t really help. My shoes squished noisily and sucked against
the bottom of my foot with each step.

“I think I’ll take the train home and save
the cab fare. You good to walk the rest of the way?”

“Yes, the adult can walk the four blocks to
her apartment, mom.”

She wrinkled her nose at me, glanced at the
subway sign in front of us, then bounded into the large puddle
directly in my path. I shrieked and tried to dodge, but the spray
left a line of water running down my legs. She grinned like a
little girl and gave a spin at the deepest part of the puddle.
“Looks like this is where I get off.”

I shook the water off like a dog. The wine
made me feel loose and saucy. That was the only excuse I had for
what I said next.

“Speaking of getting off…”

Maris lit up, round eyes widening. “That’s a
hell of a segue.”

I blushed and turned with the sparse crowd
heading down the steps into the subway tunnels so I didn’t have to
say this loud enough for them to hear, not that they were paying us
any attention. I stepped out from the safety of the awning since it
didn’t seem to matter anyway and let the rain soak my skin and
hair.

“Do you think it’s weird or wrong for a girl
to be into something…
unusual
?”

“Are we talking strap-ons and
call me
daddy, you bad girl
unusual?”

“No…well, yes. Sort of.”

“Why, you want to be Sean’s pony girl or
something? Because hey, I’d never judge.”

“No, no. Not that. It’s just, I wonder
sometimes if there’s something wrong with
not normal
.” I
blushed and stammered as the confession spilled from me. I was
grateful for the dark and the rain so she couldn’t see. “I can’t
remember the last time I had vanilla sex, Maris. I really can’t and
that’s not normal, right?”

“Lots of people like lots of different
things and it’s all good stuff. Honestly? I think not normal is
pretty normal.”

Rain drops streaked my face and soaked down
through my clothes. I nodded and leaned against the stoplight, the
wine slowing my thoughts. Maris smiled and thumbed towards the
tunnel stairs.

“I should go and you should stumble home
before you get the wild urge to describe how naughty you and Sean
really are. Without getting mugged this time?”

“Right. Just say no to muggers. Thanks for a
great date.” I wrapped my arms around her neck and squeezed and she
oofed
and complained and fake struggled, but secretly she
loved the attention.

“Well, I’m no four times in one night, but I
do my best.”

“Have a safe trip. Text me.” I backed up to
the corner and waved. She backed up to the stairs and waved.

“Later, gator.”

She turned and ran down the steps for cover
and I watched her go until her dark hair disappeared beyond the
subway awning. Then I made my own way home alone. The well-lit
street of shops and restaurants in the Philomel neighborhood gave
way to the dark, flooded streets where I lived. Only half the
street lights had come back on and sewer drains all along my route
sat clogged and overfull, spilling onto the sidewalk.

Not surprisingly, I saw no one else by the
time I jogged up the steps to my front door. I checked my mailbox
first, and when I went for the door handle I noticed an
advertisement taped at eye level.

I almost ignored it, but the name on the
flyer caught my eye and I hesitated.

Columbina
. I skimmed the page and
quickly realized it wasn’t a flyer at all. It was the front page of
the restaurant’s website. Along the bottom ran a printing tag with
tonight’s date and time.

The nerves at the back of my neck tingled to
life. I glanced nervously behind me and up and down the quiet, dark
street.

A coincidence. Of course.

I shook my head and shoved the old door
open, let it bang shut behind me loud enough that Ms. Glass would
hear it and get annoyed, but at least someone in the world would
know that I’d come home. I wasn’t sure why that felt necessary, but
it did. The wine and the flyer had me seeing bad guys where there
certainly were none, but enough horror movies had taught me that a
girl who lives alone in a crappy apartment could never be too
careful.

____________

“Hey, earth to Kara. There’s some guy here
looking for you. Get your ass over here.”

“Who?” I dropped an armful of old newspapers
into a pile on a desk and coughed at the cloud of dust I’d dragged
up with them from the basement archives. I waved my arms back and
forth to clear the air. “Don’t we have all these things digital? I
get turned on by old books as much as the next library girl, but
flash drives can be sexy too. Just saying.”

“What? Kara, there’s some Hottie McHotterson
here asking for you
by name.
Forget the newspapers and come
ogle, library girl.” Daphne poked her head around the corner and
waved wildly for me to follow her, big brown eyes a little bug-eyed
behind her glasses.

“Did you just say
Hottie McHotterson
?
Wait, Daphne.” I chased her around the corner to where our library
aide, Kay, was also waiting and I immediately skidded to a
stop.

One thing was clear as he turned around and
my heart did tiny backflips inside my chest, what happened two
nights ago had nothing to do with finding closure.

He smiled briefly before eyeing the two
girls flanking me in full ogle mode. Sean crooked his finger at me
and my whole body reacted as if he’d said
Come here, now
in
that voice that commanded my body and soul. I nudged them aside,
ignored their huffs and underhanded accusations and slid out from
behind the counter. I stopped directly in front of him so that
there was hardly any space between our chests, though he had at
least a foot and a half on me and had to tuck his chin to his chest
to meet my upturned gaze. Fireworks erupted between our bodies and
had we not been smack in the middle of a room full of prying eyes,
I would likely have climbed into his arms.

“Kara,” he murmured and tucked a strand of
my hair out of my eyes. “Let me steal you away for a few
minutes.”

I nodded because I lacked the words of a
functioning human being. A sizzle ran down my arms as he lowered
his hand to my shoulder and grazed fingertips along the back to my
elbow. I ignored the girls staring at us, witnessing the intimacy
that occurred when we just stood
next
to each other.

Sean pulled me away from the desk and we
crossed the expansive room to the elevators. We stepped into the
rickety, padded car and as the doors whooshed shut, Sean closed the
distance between us, captured my face in his hands, and pressed a
hungry kiss to my mouth.

In those blissful moments his kisses burned
through the brightest part of me, soft and a little wet, he didn’t
rush and I had never been more grateful for our elevator being the
slow piece of crap that it was. We kissed blindly for minutes and
in that time I forgot anyone else bothered to exist.

“How is it,” he murmured as the car came to
a climbing stop and the doors opened, “that I managed to survive
six years and now two days away from you I forget how to
breathe?”

“Flatterer,” I teased and pushed him away.
He grinned that cocky, gorgeous smile and followed me onto the
deathly silent third floor. “Welcome to the graveyard.”

He slouched, his messenger bag low on his
hip, and gave an appreciative look over the cramped space. “The
graveyard?”

I nodded and dragged my fingers across a
dusty work table just off the elevator. “Back in the 80s some very
rich recluse donated a huge amount of money to the library on the
condition that they keep his collection of books intact for a
certain number of years. His collection, as it turned out, was some
of the most bizarre and useless books in the world, but since we
couldn’t shelve it properly with the rest of the library as per his
request, here it was banished. You’ll find such bestsellers as
The Dangers of Trout Fishing
and
How to Craft with Cat
Hair
.”

“You’re just making that up to impress
me.”

“No, it’s all true.” I grinned and pulled
down a red cover and displayed it for him. “Electric Knives
Omnibus, Second Edition.”

Sean took the book from me and flipped
through the pages. “I’m not sure what disturbs me more, that the
author felt the need for an omnibus volume or that this is the
second edition of it.”

“No one comes up here except people who get
lost, thus why we call it the graveyard.”

“No one?” He quirked an eyebrow and shelved
the omnibus back into its dusty spot.

I shook my head and smiled innocently. He
took a step towards me and I took a step back.

“Nope.”

I took another step, then another, and he
followed, the joking smile giving way to heavy-lidded, greedy eyes
and deep, quick breaths.

“Little flirt. If I didn’t know better I’d
think you were inviting me to have my way with you.”

My back hit the end of the book shelf and I
turned on the toe of my shoe to move around the stacks, hard metal
and sharp spines at my back. I glanced over my shoulder to catch
him following like a big cat, all muscles working in powerful
unison as he stalked his prey. A flutter of pleasure filled my
stomach as I led him on a slow, toying chase to the back corner
where a forgotten lounge area was hidden beyond the stacks.