“Then stop being an asshole!” Because they were in a private room, she was free to let the words explode like a grenade.
Except…now that she looked around, it wasn’t like any room she expected to see in a resort. It was smaller than the ballroom, more like a conference room. But it was lacking typical conference room furniture. In fact, the room had more of an IT setup with long folding tables, laptops, weird-looking light contraptions, lots of wires running around, and an enclosed glass booth at one end. There appeared to be a camera hooked up in one of the corners. There was also a large dog crate, but it was empty with the door ajar. They definitely shouldn’t be in here.
“Don’t you think I’d love nothing more than to do the right thing, say the right thing,” Trey said. “Whatever magical combination of words that would take everything back and get you on my side again, please tell me. Just give me a hint, Cat. But it’s almost as if you want to be mad at me. You want things to blow up, to get away from me.”
Did he think she enjoyed the failure of their relationship? The problem was Catalina couldn’t forget how his accusation made her feel—like he’d stripped off her clothes and declared her repulsive. Her husband should have been the one person who didn’t make her feel that way. She hadn’t been having an affair, but work had been a stressful shitshow lately with her coworkers being downsized or leaving, putting more strain on her. Except when things were falling apart in her career, she used to think,At least I have one area in my life going well. At least I have Trey.
But it wasn’t true anymore because she was disappointing him as well. She’d been feeling guilty about how much she’d ignored him even before their fight, but he brought everything to the surface where she could no longer sweep it away. The guilt she’d failed him too had become magnified, along with her hurt, and once all that oozed out, like lava from a fissure, she was pretty sure there wasn’t any way to get it back in. They were both going to get hit with third-degree burns.
Be self-reliant, she reminded herself. She didn’tneed him. It would make her life easier, less complicated, if she only had herself to consider.
Cat adjusted her bag’s straps as they kept sticking to the silly name tag sticker on her chest, the same one handed to her in the ballroom. She ripped off the sticker in a fit of annoyance, tossing it to the ground. “There’s not much for us to discuss. I’m miserable. I’m sure you’re miserable. I think we’ve just hit a wall that’s too high, and I’m too exhausted to climb over this one. Also, I don’t think we’re supposed to be in here. It looks like a lot of expensive stuff, and we’re probably going to get in some kind of trouble if someone comes in and sees we’re in here.”
He stared at her a moment, hands on his hips, before looking around the room. His arms dropped to his side, making his shoulders appear as if they fell in defeat. “Okay,” he said, and she was disappointed at how easy it was to convince him to give up. Catalina hated there was a part of her that wanted him to continue fighting her.
At the sound of loud voices approaching the hallway, their gazes zipped to the door. The handle started to turn but then paused due to the continuing conversation on the other side. Her heart may have stopped beating at being caught.
“Come here.” Trey grasped her by the elbow, moving her further into the room toward the weird booth.
“What are you doing? I’m not going in there.”
“Do you want to get caught or not?” he asked in an urgent whisper.
She did not want to get in trouble, which was her justification for following Trey into the booth. It would be a tight fit, but if they slid down, the lower half of the booth had an opaque textured fabric-type covering and not clear glass like the upper half. It would at least give them some coverage for hiding. But before they ducked down, the door handle returned to its original position, and both voices continued down the hallway.
“Okay, I think they’re gone. Let’s get out of here.” She reached for the booth’s door before he grasped onto her elbow.
“Or we can keep talking about this,” Trey replied.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“And I don’t want a divorce.”
Her strange heart lifted at this. What a fickle, annoying organ she had. Catalina crossed her arms. “Do you really think this is going to change anything?”
“I don’t know. Let’s see if you can convince me.” The sentiment could have come off as cocky. Instead, he sounded beaten down, desperate for a reprieve.
As much as she also wanted this, a reprieve wasn’t coming for either one of them. She studied a small sticker stuck to one of the booth’s walls. It was about waist level and read,What happens in Cancun, stays in Cancun. That wouldn’t apply to her and Trey because their problems followed them no matter where they went.
“Hey.” He tilted her jawline until her eyes met his as his body crowded into her space. His breathswept across the exposed areas of her skin, making her hot and tingly, which had to be a bad sign. Her body’s natural reaction to him didn’t bode well for her plan to have the emotional depth of a penny. Maintaining eye contact was near impossible. It was even worse when he brushed his hands across her arms.
“You hate me, right?” he murmured in a low voice. “Prove it to me.”
This was a trap. Whatever evidence she had gathered until this point was nowhere to be found. “I don’t hate you. This has nothing to do with hate.” She was hurt, sure. Even really angry with him…and with herself. But hate was a different emotion altogether. Hate would make things easy, and everything about this was hard.
“Okay.” He dropped his head closer to her left shoulder, and she almost lifted this part of her body in the hopes it would connect with his lips, to revel in the contact. It was all a tease. “Then why don’t you love me anymore?”
Did she not love him anymore? The real question was, how could he love her and not trust her? If he didn’t love her, trust her, how could she bear being with him? Therefore, how could she continue to offer him her heart? And if she couldn’t give him her heart, then she must not love him anymore. It was all so cool and logical when she didn’t feel either one of those things.
What Catalina wanted was to feel nothing. She still felt too much, like there was a chance it could explode from her chest in an emotional mess. One whereshe’d be able to beat her fists against his chest in consuming frustration, letting him experience as much physical pain as her emotional one. But this sounded a bit like surrendering, and wasn’t self-reliant at all. Instead, Catalina kept things bottled up, wanting to stay in control.
“I don’t know how to answer that,” she replied. “I don’t know what I feel for you.”
“You really think this is it? We can’t work past this?” He was imploring her more than asking a simple question.
“I don’t know how.”
“If you don’t know how, then I don’t know what I can do. Your mind is clearly made up. You’re dead set against me, and I feel I’ve already lost.” Except, if there was a winner here, it wasn’t her either.
