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“Just checking in,” he says. “You’ve been quiet.”
“I’ve been here.” The way I always fucking am. Day in and day out. Except now it’s with the admission that I’m not needed. This bar runs itself. I’d already largely outsourced the management to Mueller over the past two months anyway. Unlike me, he actually enjoys it.
Caleb’s fingers are tapping on the bar. I come out of my self-indulgent funk long enough to notice that his eyes are light. He’s excited in the way he used to be when he was a kid.
“Something’s up with you,” I say.
A sheepish smile crosses his face. I never thought I’d see the day when Caleb in his thousand-dollar suit would lookgoofy, but he looks goofy as fuck right now. “Well, I’m getting married. So there’s that.”
That frozen thing in my chest takes its first fledgling beat. “Don’t you need to be divorced for that to happen?”
He shrugs. “My divorce will be finalized in February, but it’s just a formality, and Lucie’s got a court date in April.”
I swallow. My heart takes another tentative beat. “Kate signed the papers?”
He straightens as his smile fades. “Thought you’d already know. She signed them last week. And the stuff she gave Lucie is giving us all the leverage over Jeremy we needed.”
Another beat. Another tiny, hopeful impulse I need to fucking crush before it takes over. “I don’t know what you think Kate did for her, but I’m telling you right now that anything she gave Lucie was probably laced with anthrax, or it’s a trap.”
His eyes narrow. He’s never allowed anyone to badmouth Kate. I normally wouldn’t either.
“What did you do?” he demands. “If you hurt her after everything else she’s been through, you and I will have a serious problem.”
I glare at him. “Why the hell are you assuming thatIdid anything?”
“I’m not. But you’re in here now, sour as fuck, and from what I hear, driving like a fucking maniac when you’re not here. So one of you did something, and all I’m saying is it better not have been you.”
My mood is bad enough that I’d welcome a fight right now, too, and—unfair or not—Caleb’s high on the list of people I’d like to punch.
I close my eyes, breathing through my nose.He’s just defending Kate. I guess it’s good there are still people looking out for her.
“Believe me, I did nothing wrong. So how did she purportedlyassistLucie?”
“She met Jeremy for coffee or something and recorded this crazy plan he had to get the kids. He wanted Kate to plant something in Lucie’s car. He’ll probably just get his hand slapped, but he’s never getting custody now.”
Maybe I was unfair to her that morning she met with Jeremy. Maybe...
No. No, it’s still not enough. It doesn’t change what she said outside—“Just because we’ve been fucking around doesn’t mean you get to dictate how I spend my time”—as if everything we had was meaningless.
Caleb and I shoot the shit for a few minutes, trying to leave things on even ground. But he’s long gone before I finally ask Mueller to take over so I can go to the back and read her email at last.
Beck,
I set up all your financials on the computer at work (beckfinances.xls) so that if you decide to sell, it’s all ready to go. There’s also a PowerPoint to present to investors in case you don’t want to sell but would like to share the burden (beckstopbeingapussy.ppt).
You said I needed to move on and maybe you were right, but I’m not the only one.
K
It’s not an apology. It’s not a change of heart. I suppose I expected that butfuck. It still hurts.
I review the spreadsheet and presentation she created. The research and level of detail must have taken her weeks, and she did it without ever saying a word. There are notes everywhere that make me smile against my will. “Please start saving some money,”she’s written in the assets column. “This is ridiculous.” In the debts column, which is empty, there’s a note that says, “You have the financial profile of a human trafficker.”
My smile flickers, and then fades. She made me so fucking happy until she didn’t. I’ve got questions, but I remain certain about the most important thing—if I was what she wanted, she’d have fucking tried to fix it.
45
KATE
