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“B-both.”
She smiled a little, touching her right thumb with her index finger and rubbing at the spot where her ring had been. Looking down at her hands, she said, “The short version is, I got sick of sitting around in an office all day, and I thought going out in the field would make my life more interesting.”
“Has it?”
She glanced at him, then away. She’d been doing it all morning, flicking her eyes in his direction for a few seconds at a time. Assessing him. Or reassessing him, as if she hadn’t taken his measure right the first time. He wondered how he compared to Judah. In California, Sean had never had much trouble finding a date, but in
Camelot, California didn’t count for anything. Did she even see him when she looked at him, or did she see the silent shrimp who’d sat behind her in math class?
“Sure,” Katie said. “It’s been fun, learning new stuff. Caleb took me to the firing range one day, and he’s been teaching me self-defense—how to poke attackers in the eye and whatnot. How to read a room and interrogate people. I like it.”
She looked at the window and fiddled with the missing ring again. He waited for the long version of the story, but she kept her peace, and finally he asked, “D-did you luh-lose it?”
“Lose what?”
“The ring you k-k-keep p-playing with. The sssilver one you d-don’t wear anymore.”
Katie frowned. “No. I didn’t lose it. I put it away.” She glanced at his hands on the steering wheel, then at his face, and let out a long breath. “It was my wedding band. I stopped wearing it a couple weeks ago, when the divorce came through.”
“You were muh-muh-muh—” He gave up on the word “married.” It wasn’t happening. “To who?”
“Levi Rider.”
“You’ve g-got to b-be fuh-fucking k-k-k-k—” Sean pounded the steering wheel with the heel of one hand. “You muh-married that guy?”
“ ’Fraid so.”
Levi Rider was the kind of asshole everybody loved. Good-looking, smart, and smiley, in high school he’d had a compliment for every teacher and a hundred best friends. Weekends, he and the guys he hung out with would round up some alcohol and host a party under the railroad trestle in the woods near campus. Sean had been out there a few times, a fringe participant, and he’d resented the hell out of Rider, who told funny stories about himself that always made him look good.
When you couldn’t make your own tongue work, it was irritating to be around someone who used words as well as Levi.
Rider had treated Katie like a sidekick, and once in the locker room Sean had overheard him bragging to his friends about how he’d talked Katie into giving him head when his parents were out of town the weekend before. Sean had ditched school for the first time in his life and thrown rocks in the Coshocton River, winging them as far as he could, one after another, until he couldn’t lift his arm past the shoulder anymore and the pressure in his chest had begun to ease up.
“Wuh-why would you d-d-d-do that?”
She looked at him, forehead furrowed with dismay, and said, “He asked me to.”
“Juh-Jesus.”
He watched the road and took a few deep breaths. It was all water under the bridge. What did it matter that Katie had married Levi? Probably everyone had called it the perfect match. Levi and Katie. Such a cute couple.
It was none of his damn business.
“We needed residency,” she said. “We moved to Anchorage after we graduated, but the university’s tuition was too expensive without residency. He hadn’t paid attention to how hard it would be to get it—they don’t just give it to you if you move up there. But a married couple can get it more easily than a single guy, especially if the wife is working full-time. So he said, you know, maybe we should just get married. And I said yes.” She pinched a fold in her jeans at the knee. “I didn’t tell my family until earlier this year. That’s why I wore the ring on my thumb, though I don’t know why I bothered. I bought Levi one, and he stuck it in his underwear drawer.”
“Yuh-you were only eighteen?”
“Yeah. I knew better, though. I was just … seduced, I think.”
Sean’s hands hurt. It took him a second to realize he was gripping the steering wheel so hard, his joints ached. He forced himself to loosen all the muscles in his hands and arms.
Not your concern. This was exactly the problem with Katie—the way she made him care about shit that had nothing to do with him. All these feelings she dredged up from somewhere that he’d been happy to ignore for over a decade. Lock it down, he told himself.
But Katie kept talking, her face turned toward the window and her tone faraway, untouchable.
“Levi had this grand plan. He’d always wanted to move to Alaska and live kind of wild, and he used to talk about it a lot. We’d go up there, learn to camp and hike and everything, work for wilderness people in the summers to pick up all the skills we needed, and then after we graduated we could start our own outfitters. Live the good life, you know? Commune with nature and all that.” She wrinkled her nose. “It sounded better when Levi said it. And to his credit, we did all that. I’m quite the accomplished camper, I’ll have you know. We started up an outfitting business, Wild Ride, and ran it for three years before it all kind of came apart.”
She looked over at him. Unclenched her hands in her lap. Shrugged. “So that’s the story.”
