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I’m pretty sure I’m breathing out stress and breathing in vengeance, but following fifty percent of her instructions is better than none.
“Set your intentions for your time on the mat today,” she tells us with a beneficent smile.
I close my eyes and set mine:Figure out how Kayleigh can ruin Lucie for me.
10
KATE
“Ihave a favor to ask.”
Beck sets his fork down and waits, his eyes light.
“A favor beyond letting me live here rent-free and putting up with my shit all the time, that is.”
I get the tiniest, grudging movement out of his mouth—victory. When I’d bring some new client to the firm at my first job, my boss would act like I was Joan of Arc and Eleanor Roosevelt combined. This is better.
“I need to get some stuff out of storage.”
Any hint of a smile fades completely, and his gaze grows more focused. Beck is always assessing me, reading my expressions, parsing my words. It’s a bit tiresome, the way he always suspects I have an ulterior motive. Especially since he’s usually right. “Why?”
I huff in exasperation. “This isn’t some diabolical plot. Why can’t I say anything without you assuming I’m trying to fuck with Caleb?”
He acts as if he hasn’t even heard me. “What do you need?”
“I have an interview Friday, and showing up in a tank top and cut-offs is frowned upon. I might need some help lifting boxes. If it’s a problem,” I add with my sweetest, most patently fake smile, “I’ll just ask Caleb.”
It occurs to me too late that maybe Ishouldhave asked Caleb. Maybe going through our old stuff would have triggered something for him. Lord knows we had sex on pretty much every piece of furniture we owned.
Unfortunately, my threat appears to have worked. “We can go tomorrow. Mueller can open the bar for me.”
My heart starts to race, and not in a good way. I liked the idea of going to the storage unit better when it was something I wasn’t doing within the next twelve hours.
Shit.
* * *
The next morning,we climb into his truck and drive toward Santa Cruz. I was too sick to eat, which I hid easily enough, but I can’t control the jiggling knee, the fidgeting fingers that twist my hair as we turn on to the highway.
His gaze cuts over to me, curious. For once, he just leaves it alone, thank God.
We arrive, and I force myself to move, one step after another, to the first of the two storage units, the one Caleb thought my clothes were in. Beck’s watching me like a hawk the whole time. As I enter the code, I force a grimace—it’s the closest I can get to a smile—but I’m holding my breath as I flip on the light.
The room is unnaturally still, slightly surreal. I recognize our stuff and yet I don’t. It no longer feels as if it’s mine, outside of our home. I wish Caleb hadn’t rented out our place. Even if I couldn’t stay there, I’d like to have seen everything the way it was, revisited the days when I’d felt like I had something, like I belonged somewhere.
I’d never had that before. At that fancy private school Mimi got me into, I’d be ridiculed for hand-me-down uniforms from the school store and my off-brand sneakers. And then I’d return to the foster home, where they treated my attendance at private school as a slap in the face.“Since you’re so smart,”my foster mother would begin every acidic criticism while the other kids snickered. My books would be defaced while I slept, the school-issued laptop hidden.
I’d dreamed of college, of a time when the playing field would be level, but it was never fucking level. Ever. Not until I got pregnant with Hannah. I’d thought, maybe, that God had finally decided to give me something of my own. But then He snatched that away too.
“This mostly looks like books and furniture,” Beck says, placing a hand on my elbow.
I take one more cursory glance around the room, and we move to the second unit. The tall wardrobe boxes that hold my clothes are off to the left, but I don’t move toward them. I instead move to the other side, toward white wood slats that rest against a wall, railings that curve, still smooth to the touch. A crib we didn’t end up needing. I slide between stacks of furniture and reach my hand through, gripping one of the slats. That ache, the one that always rests in my chest, blooms until it’s all I can feel.
The pregnancy was an accident, but I’d wanted her fervently from the instant those dual pink lines appeared. Before we even knew the gender, I was dreaming of a daughter with her little hand in mine as I walked her to school, a big Christmas tree loaded with gifts beneath it, camping at Shelter Cove.
Every bit of darkness seeped out of me when Caleb and I decided to get married, replaced by light. For months afterward, I felt like I was made of it.
Beck is behind me suddenly, resting his hand over mine before he gently pulls me to his chest, his mouth pressing to my hair.
