turned to Vashti. “You had no right asking her to stay here after the party to do anything, Vashti. I don’t want her here. The only reason I even invite her is because of you.”
Kaegan had seen fire in Vashti’s eyes before, but it had never been directed at him. Now it was. She crossed the room, and he had a mind to take a step back, but he didn’t. “I’m sick and tired of you acting like an ass where Bryce is concerned, Kaegan. When will you wake up and realize what you accused her of all those years ago is not true?”
He glared at her. “Oh? Is that what she told you? News flash—you weren’t there, Vashti, and I know what I saw.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. So you can believe the lie she’s telling you all you want, but I know what I saw that night.”
Vashti drew in a deep breath. “Do you? Or do you only know what you think you saw?”
Then without saying anything else, she turned and walked out of the kitchen.
VASHTI SLID INTO the car and snapped the seat belt in place. Before starting the ignition, Bryce said, “I cherish our friendship, Vash, and I know why it’s important to you that me, you and Kaegan remain friends. After all, it was your idea that we do this,” she said, holding up her finger that bore the scar of the nick the three of them had made years and years ago. They had been in the first grade together.
“But not even this matters to me anymore. I heard what he told you after I walked out of the kitchen. He deliberately said it loud enough for me to hear. It really wasn’t anything I didn’t know already. He does not want me to come to his parties, so let me go on record as saying that tonight will be my last time attending one of Kaegan’s parties, Vash. So please don’t ask me to ever come to one again.”
Vashti didn’t say anything, and Bryce didn’t expect her to. Vashti knew her and knew when she’d reached her limit about anything. Tonight she had with Kaegan. There was no way she could stop him from coming into her parents’ café each morning as a customer, but she could continue to ignore him. And she would.
“Okay, Bryce,” Vashti finally said when Bryce started the engine. “I honestly thought that being around each other would make you and Kaegan realize how much the two of you mean to each other.”
“It did. It made us realize just how much we dislike each other.”
“But it doesn’t have to be this way. You can tell him the truth about that night.”
Bryce didn’t say anything for a minute as she put the car in gear. “I did. Or at least, I tried to.”
“What! When? You never told me that.”
No, she hadn’t, mainly because after telling Vashti what had caused her and Kaegan’s breakup, she’d been too emotionally drained that night to tell her the other part. “What I didn’t tell you was when I got that call from Kaegan letting me know why he was breaking up with me and that he intended to block my number, I used every penny I had in my savings account and caught the bus from college, all the way from Grambling. That meant crossing four states and enduring an eighteen-hour bus ride to reach North Carolina. And because he had blocked my number there was no way for me to let him know I was coming.”
“What happened when you got there?”
“Well, for starters, I couldn’t get on the military base. But the soldier at the gate checked his log and told me that Kaegan wasn’t on base anyway. That he was on a two-day pass and chances were he would be at the Mud Hole that night.”
“The Mud Hole?”
“Yes. It’s a hangout for the marines and located close to base. I checked into a hotel, freshened up, and that night I went to the Mud Hole.”
Bryce paused a moment and then said, “More than anything, now I wish I hadn’t.”
“Why? What happened?”
Bryce tightened her hands on the steering wheel as she remembered that night. “Kaegan was there that night and he’d been drinking.”
“Kaegan? Drinking?”
Bryce knew why Vashti was surprised. Because his father had been an alcoholic, Kaegan had sworn never to touch the stuff because it turned fairly decent men into assholes.
“Yes, he was drinking and had a barely dressed woman sitting in his lap. I approached him, and when he saw me, the look in his eyes was one I’d never seen before. He proceeded to say some not-so-nice things to me in front of the woman and the friends he’d been with. I tried to get him to go outside with me so we could talk privately, but he refused to do that and said he didn’t want to hear anything I had to say. He said his father had been right about me all along. He told me to leave and that he hoped to never see me again.”
Bryce paused again, and then she said, “When I refused to leave, tried to make him listen to what I’d come all that way to say, he got mad and left...with her. That woman who all but had her hands inside his pants. He kissed her right in front of me and then they left together. I went back to my hotel room and cried the entire night.”
“Oh, Bryce, I’m so sorry you went through that.”
“I am, too. But even on the bus ride back to Grambling, I kept telling myself it wasn’t the Kaegan that I knew who’d said those awful things to me. It had to have been the liquor talking. I even convinced myself that I could forgive him for sleeping with another woman if he’d done so that night.” Bryce felt the knot in her throat when she said, “I loved him that much, Vash. I’ve always loved him. I told myself I could wait for him to come around. That he would regain his senses and would eventually call me. Days became weeks. Weeks turned into months. Months into years.”
She was quiet for a moment, then continued. “I ran into Mr. Chambray at one of the festivals a year later and he accused me of being the reason Kaegan refused to come back to Catalina Cove, even for a visit. He said that I had hurt his boy and that he was glad Kaegan found out what a slut I was.”
Vashti drew in a sharp breath. “Mr. Chambray said that to you?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Bryce.”
She could hear the trembling in Vashti’s voice and didn’t want her pity. “It’s okay, Vash. That day I finally accepted that Mr. Chambray probably had the same opinion of me that Kaegan had.”
She pulled the car into Vashti and Sawyer’s driveway. When she brought the car to a stop, she turned to Vashti. It was then that Bryce felt her tears. She hadn’t realized until that moment that she’d been crying. “I’ve gotten over him, Vash—honest, I have. But it still hurts knowing he had so little trust in me after all we’d been through together. I had loved him so much, but I promised myself years ago that I would never let Kaegan hurt me again. And that’s a promise I intend to keep.”
KAEGAN MOVED AWAY from the window when Bryce’s car
