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Brett didn’t want her. She wanted to know why. She needed to know what it was that kept him from taking that one final step to commitment.
“You still have to get your painting from him,” Lissa suggested. “It’s finished, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Then go get it. And see what happens,” Shannon urged. “You’ll kick yourself if you don’t at least try to figure out where his head is.”
They were right. Pride told her to leave it alone, that he’d only hurt her again.
But when had Kait ever let pride stand in her way?
Chapter Nine
Brett sat at the bar in his studio, his hands caressing the cool glass bottle of whiskey. The dark amber liquid had a voice of its own, calling to him to open it, to take one drink, maybe two at the most.
A most familiar voice. It still haunted him after all these years. How many days had he sat here staring at that bottle? Two? Three?
Hell, how many years?
He removed his hands from the bottle and stared at them, willing the trembling to stop.
It wouldn’t. It hadn’t. Not since he’d gotten that call three days ago from his AA sponsor, telling him the bad news about Frank.
He and Frank had entered AA at the same time. They’d been friends for six years, calling on each other when one needed to talk about how much they wanted a drink. They’d seen each other through the fires of hell and had come out the other side. They’d survived.
And neither of them had taken a drink in six long years.
Until three days ago. Three days ago, Frank fell off the wagon. Only he hadn’t just taken a drink, he’d taken a lot of drinks. Then he’d gotten behind the wheel of his car with his girlfriend in the passenger seat and had proceeded to roll his SUV right off the highway embankment.
Frank was fine, just a few bruises. His girlfriend wasn’t. She’d be in the hospital a long time. Her leg was shattered.
He hadn’t even been able to go to the hospital to see Frank, to ask about him, to be there for him. The whole scenario was way too close to his own life, his own mistakes the night he’d killed Amanda.
It didn’t even matter what happened to set Frank off. Brett knew the same thing could happen to him at anytime. On any day, he could open that bottle of whiskey and drink the whole damn thing down in one sitting.
He could hurt Kaitlyn.
God, he missed her. He could still smell her on his sheets when he tried to sleep at night. The studio even held her sweet lavender scent. Not that he’d even tried painting the past few days. The life had gone right out him the night Kaitlyn threw him out of her house. She’d done the right thing. He only wished he could have done the same long before he ever touched her.
The doorbell rang but he ignored it, wrapping his hands around the bottle and holding tight. It was a test. If he didn’t touch it, he was somehow perversely comforted.
Or at least that’s how it used to be. Nothing comforted him anymore. What he really wanted was to screw off the top and pour a huge glassful, feeling it burn its way down his throat. Then he wanted to keep drinking until he found that oblivion he searched for.
He ignored the persistent knocking. Whoever it was could go away. He hadn’t even been to the gallery for the past three days, let alone opened his door to anyone. The last thing he needed or wanted right now was company.
Besides, he wasn’t really alone. The demons were here with him. Always here, always a part of him, trying to lure him back to that dark place where alcohol numbed reality and made it so much easier to cope.
He wanted a drink so damned bad it hurt.
But something was different this time. Before, drink had always won out over everything he cared about. His life, his job, his friends, even Amanda. This time it was different.
Yeah, he wanted that goddamned drink. But he wanted Kaitlyn more.
“Brett.”
He snorted. Now he even heard her voice. And he wasn’t even drunk.
“Your door was unlocked. I hope you don’t mind that I just came in but I was worried when I saw your car and you didn’t answer.”
Ah, Christ. He didn’t need this right now.
Kaitlyn read the tension in Brett’s shoulders, wincing at being so forward that she would walk in his house. But dammit, her senses told her something was wrong.
He turned around and glared at her. She was shocked at seeing his unkempt appearance. Several days’ growth of beard peppered his face with dark stubble. His uncombed hair drifted over his forehead and she had to fight the urge to sweep it away from his face.
“Go away, Kait.”
He turned his back to her, wrapping his hands around a bottle of whiskey.
Undaunted, she stepped forward and slid onto the barstool next to him. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Go out the way you came in. I’m not in the mood for company.”
“Something’s wrong, Brett. Please tell me.”
He turned his head toward her, pain evident in his tired, hollow eyes. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days.
“I’m too busy to deal with you right now. Just leave.”
Pushing back the hurt at his words, she said, “You don’t look busy. You look upset. Let me help you.”
He shoved at the bottle until it slid all the way to the back of the bar. She reached over and grabbed it before it fell onto the floor. Brett shot up and raked his hands through his hair. “Look, dammit. You can’t help me. No one can help me. Get the hell out of here, Kait. I mean it.”
Now she knew something was wrong. Something serious. Brett had never acted this way. She touched the sleeve of his denim shirt. “I can help you if you’ll talk to me.”
He jerked his arm from her grasp and walked away, pacing the length of the bar. “You’ve never understood how it is with me. You just don’t know. I’m poison, Kait. I tried to keep you away but you just wouldn’t listen.”
“I care about you. I’m not leaving.”
He paused, the hurt in his eyes like a pain in her belly. “See? That’s what I’m talking about. I could insult you ten different ways and you’d still stand there and take it. Why? Because you’re good. There’s a light of goodness shining around you that everyone wants to soak in. Your sweetness, your generosity, all those things you are that I’m not. You have no business wanting to be with a man like me.”
Her heart tore just listening to him, the urge to offer him comfort stronger than any anger she might have had. “You’re a good man, Brett. I don’t understand what you’re telling me.”
He sighed and leaned against one of the pillars, crossing his arms and leveling a glare at her. “No, you don’t understand, because I never told you. Hell, I never told anyone. Only Aidan knows.”
Whatever secret he’d been keeping was eating away at him. It hurt her to watch him tear himself up like this. “I can take anything you want to tell me.”
“Can you? Let’s see if you can handle this. I’m an alcoholic, Kait.”
Shock turned her blood cold and she shivered. An alcoholic? How could that be? That wasn’t true. She’d have known…somehow she’d have known. “What?”
/> “You heard me. I’m a drunk. I’ve always been a drunk and I always will be a drunk. I have been since I was fifteen years old.”
“I…I didn’t know.” Oh, God, how could she have not known this? She was supposed to be close to him, yet she never made the connection between him drinking water and tea and coffee all the time to being an alcoholic. Some people didn’t drink out of personal preference. She’d never thought twice about it.
How could she know? She’d never seen him drunk. Ever. She looked up at him. “I’m so sorry, Brett.”
His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Sorry? Oh, you won’t be sorry when you hear the rest. You’ll hate me, like you’re supposed to. I was drunk the night Amanda died. Too damned drunk to drive, but I did it anyway. The accident wasn’t a faulty brake line like everyone was told. I killed my wife, Kait. Now tell me you can take it.”
His words were flung at her without caring, yet she knew what it cost him to say them, how much pain he hid behind his statement. He thought he’d killed his wife. God, had he lived with this all by himself for all these years?
She stepped toward him and reached for him, but he jerked away. She stood her ground, refusing to let him push her away this time. “I’m so sorry, Brett. Sorry for you and for Amanda. It was a mistake, and one that cost you dearly. But it doesn’t make you less a person.”
He snorted but didn’t say anything.
“And you stopped drinking. That counts for something.” It didn’t make her love him less, either.
“You don’t understand,” he said, advancing on her, his eyes nearly glowing with the pain rushing through them. “I stopped drinking when Amanda died. That’s true enough. But I still want that drink. I crave it more than anything. Every morning I get up, I walk in here and take that bottle out, wondering if today will be the day I’ll open it up. Because I want that drink more than I want to paint. I want it more than I want a successful gallery.”
He stopped and pressed his palms on either side of her, his face only inches from hers. “I wanted that goddamned drink more than I wanted you.”
