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The second I step out into the living room, Cara appears from the hallway, stopping awkwardly as we stare at each other, neither of us knowing where to go from here. “So, umm . . . You’re back, huh?”
“Observant,” I mutter, swallowing over the lump in my throat and continuing to the kitchen.
She glances away, and just when I think she’s about to slink back to her room, she moves across the living room and plonks her ass on one of the stools beneath the kitchen island. “I, umm . . . I just wanted to say that everything that happened, you know, it wasn’t personal. I was trying to save my brother.”
I scoff, gaping at Cara as though she’s lost her mind, and honestly, yeah . . . I think she has. “Not personal? Are you kidding me? Of course it was personal. I thought we were friends, Cara. You lied to me about who you are since the moment I got to Faders Bay, but then giving me up to Hartley Scott? How the hell can you sit here in front of me and act like it doesn’t mean anything?”
“I was trying to save my brother,” she throws back at me. “Maybe if you had siblings or a real family, you would understand.”
“Oh, I understand,” I tell her, grabbing a mug and turning back to fix her with a hard stare. “I understand you did everything you had to do to save his life. I get it, and I sure as hell would have done the same thing if I were in that position. But the difference between you and me is that the second he was safe, I would have done everything in my power to make it right. Instead, you allowed it to go on. You continued to give me up to Hartley, continued to betray your people.”
She shakes her head. “You don’t know me, Oakley. Don’t start pretending like you have any idea how it was for me. I did what I had to do to keep my family safe.”
“No, you did what you had to do to keep you safe,” I tell her. “You’re a coward, Cara.”
Her gaze falls away. “I just . . . I wasn’t coming here to start an argument with you. I feel like shit about everything and so I was trying to apologize.”
“You were trying to clear your guilty conscience,” I mutter. “And unfortunately for you, it’s not my responsibility to bear the burden of your betrayal. I’ll be dead in six days, and honestly, I don’t give a shit if your conscience is cleared or not. If you want to make it up to me, then do that, but it’s not going to happen by coming to me with bullshit excuses for what you did. Admit your errors and learn from them so you can become a better person.”
“I’m trying,” she tells me. “Ever since being initiated into The Circle and having nearly every member of Empire actively wanting me dead, it’s starting to open my eyes to just how shitty this is. I really don’t know how you do it. I know the guys want to find a way to save you, and that’s great and all, but I understand why you ran. Hell, if I had half a brain, I would have run with you.”
I shrug my shoulders. “I mean, you could have, but I would have been paranoid you’d give me up the whole time.”
Cara scrunches her face with a cringe. “Yeah, I deserved that,” she says as a small smile pulls at the corners of her lips. “Do you think you can find it within you to forgive me? I know I don’t deserve it, but I swear, I have your back now. You can trust me.”
Letting out a heavy sigh, I turn and find a second mug. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to forgive you,” I tell her, being as honest as I can. “But considering I only have six days to live, what can it hurt to try? The last thing I want is to have to spend the last six days of my life living in misery. Despite everything going on around me, I want to enjoy what little time I have left, not lingering on the bullshit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m really hurt and betrayed by what you did, but for Sawyer’s sake, I want to find a way to move past that.”
“Yeah?” she questions, hopeful.
“Yeah,” I say, sliding a coffee across the counter to her. “Just don’t fuck it up.”
“Cross my heart and hope to die,” she says with a beaming smile before realizing what she just said and cringing again. “Sorry, I umm . . . bad choice of words.”
“Ya think?”
I watch Cara as she gets up with her coffee and moves through the penthouse to the dining table. She lets out a heavy sigh before putting her mug down and bracing her hands on the table, looking over the array of papers before her. My brows arch, never having seen such a mess of papers in my life, but the frustration in Cara’s eyes tells me that whatever these papers are, they’re important.
