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CHAPTER 27
Katrina wasn’t theleast bit surprised at the knock on her door early the next morning. She knew that Justin would show up, ready and waiting for her to spill on her date with Lorenzo, unwilling to wait until she’d had her coffee and was ready to call. She was smiling to herself as she closed her robe and secured it with a tie.
“Just a sec,” she called out as she made her way to the front door, unlocking its deadbolt and the lock on the knob itself before opening.
And there she saw Lorenzo, leather jacket open revealing his white t-shirt, faded jeans with holes in them, and his riding boots.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he said, his voice ragged, his stubble grown in a little more than it had been the night before.
“I tossed and turned,” she replied, stepping aside so that he could enter. “Are you all right?”
“No. I mean, yeah, but...no.” He slipped out of the leather jacket, and she held her hand out.
“I can hang that up.”
“Thank you.”
She chanced a glance over her shoulder at him as she hung his coat in the closet, noting the way the t-shirt hugged his body, but also the tension in his shoulders. “I was about to start some coffee. Would you like some?”
“Hmm? Oh...yeah. Yeah, that would be great.”
She walked past him to get to the kitchen and motioned for him to follow. “I could make you some breakfast.”
“You don’t have to.”
“What, you haven’t missed my scrambled eggs?”
“I’ve missed everything about you, Trina.”
She paused, refrigerator door open, to look at him and found his eyes sad. “I’ve missed you, too,” she said. He nodded and turned to where she could no longer read his expression, and she pulled the coffee along with some eggs out of the fridge.
“I rode last night. My bike, I mean. I just took her out in the country and rode,” he said, his eyes looking everywhere but at her. “I just kept asking myself...what the hell am I doing, you know?”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t know.”
He continued on as she prepped the coffee maker. “I’m just like this overgrown kid who has a bar and does some construction on the side. Hell, I pummel people in a makeshift ring just so I can feel a little bit better. What am I doing, thinking I should disrupt this little girl’s life?”
“She’s yours,” Katrina said. “It’s the right thing to do.”
He began to pace. “I mean, is it? She’s going to learn the truth, and I mean the ugly truth because I can’t tell her that I loved her mother. I can’t even tell her that I liked her a little bit. I can tell you that she was a conniving, manipulative, power-abusing bitch, but how do I say that to her daughter?”
“That might be a question for your therapist,” Katrina suggested, and he shrugged.
“And that’s another thing. I’m in therapy to keep from losing what’s left of my mind. They’re going to use that shit against me, Trina, I know they will.”
“What about the fact that he’s not her father? What about the fact that he couldn’t even see what was happening?”
