Home to You (2 page)

“Don’t you dare try and turn this around on me!” My hands clenched at my sides, my nails tearing into my palms.

“We’re a team, Katie. We’ll get through this. We look good together, honey—”

“Is that all I am to you? A pretty face?” My gut twisted; I couldn’t breathe.

He shook his head. “You know that’s not true.” He ran a hand through his thick hair, scanning the boxes that cluttered the room. “Don’t move out. I’ll go. We’ll work on things. I’ll win you back, just give me a chance.”

“I don’t trust you anymore.” My voice was raw, my hand settled on my throat. “I’ve already resigned. I have an interview in LA on Monday.”

“LA?” His blue eyes narrowed. “Are you going to Jake?” His words boomed like thunder, and his gaze locked on the picture that lay in the center of the coffee table.

He yanked the frame off the table and threw it against the wall with a crash. “Are you fucking him?”

“The only one fucking other people is you!” I rushed toward the picture and dropped down on shaking legs to pick up the broken frame that held some of my most cherished memories. “You need to leave.”

“You can’t kick me out of my own apartment.”

I stood, walked across the room, and opened the front door. “Get out.”

He laughed, one that was haunted and held no humor.

“Get out or I’ll call the police.”

The corners of his eyes crinkled with amusement, but I knew he wouldn’t risk it. His reputation meant more to him than anything.

He turned slowly around the room—taking in the empty walls and stacked boxes. “This is what you really want?”

I nodded, though it wasn’t true. What I wanted was to go back to Monday morning, to
not
find that note in my inbox, to have none of this nightmare be true—but that wasn’t an option.

He came closer, stopping only inches from my face—so close I could see the blond stubble on his usually smooth cheek. “You want to know why, Katie?” He whispered in my ear. “Why I went to other women?” He trailed a hand down my bare arm and a shiver of disgust ran up my spine. “Because you’ve never satisfied me. You just lay there like a dead fish—what’d you expect?”

I closed my eyes as bile burned the back of my throat.

“No man will ever be satisfied with you.”

I swallowed, not allowing him to see how much his words tore me up inside. “The movers come in the morning. I’ll be gone by noon.”

“You’ll regret this.” He looked me up and down, and for a second I thought he may say more, but he remained silent as he walked out to the hall.

I didn’t hesitate before bolting the lock behind him. The invisible barrier offering me the limited closure I craved so much. I pressed my back against the door, my body so weak I practically melted into the wooden floor.

No man will ever be satisfied with you.

The broken frame was gripped in my left hand and I brushed fragments of shattered glass to the ground. All the faces I’d loved so much but hadn’t seen in years stared up at me.

The Gang
.

The photo was taken twelve years earlier, the summer after Dad passed. My brother, Dave, and his friends Jake and Justin were all high school seniors, shirtless, and shamelessly flexed their biceps for the camera. I was there too—my friends Sarah and Megan by my side. We all stood in our practiced supermodel poses that were supposed to be slimming—and me…I still wore a training bra even at fourteen.

I’d only been five foot three then, soft around the middle, and a little girl in both body and soul. I was the shortest of the bunch and hated it, but now at five foot ten I wished I could knock off a couple of inches—or five.

It was a time of innocence, a time of discovery, and my whole world had been wrapped up in that handful of people. I thought we’d be together forever. But that was when I trusted people with my secrets—when I trusted them with my heart. When I was young, full of hopes and dreams, and so in love with the boy who lived next door.

Jake Johnson.

The first boy I ever loved—the man who still held a piece of my heart. I let out a breath and pressed my head back into the apartment wall as memories of a fourteen year old girl flooded me. My pink bedroom, the sweltering heat of summer, and the AC Mom would never run…

Twelve Years Earlier

I threw the covers from my sweaty legs and rolled in the direction of my closed door. Muffled voices seeped through powder pink walls and I wondered if that was what awoke me. I considered getting up to turn on the air conditioner, but Mom’s stressed face filled my mind and I couldn’t do it. No matter how uncomfortable I was, I didn’t want to make her worry any more about money than she already did.

It was nearly two in the morning, and even in the dark I could see that Sarah was no longer in my room. She was supposed to be my best friend, but lately she’d been spending more time with the boys than me. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

I turned to my side, trying to find a comfortable spot, but it was too late. That familiar sadness had already begun to creep over my skin like a thick blanket. If I lay there much longer, it would suffocate me like it had the first few months after Dad passed.

Stumbling out of bed, I walked down the hallway running my hand along the textured paper walls. I heard more laughter and followed the voices until I stopped at the living room. Their backs were to me, and my heart instantly sank.

Sarah was on the ottoman holding an old guitar, and Jake was so close she practically sat in his lap. “Like this?” she asked, her hands positioned at the neck of the old Fender.

I thought about clearing my throat to tell them I was there, but I was too shocked.
 

He’s only teaching her how to play. That’s all this is.

“No, no.” He laughed. “Here, let me show you.” He wrapped his arm around her, then helped position her fingers on the frets. He was shirtless and his dark hair damp. They must have gone swimming.

“Is this right?” she asked.

“Mmmhmm.” He nuzzled her neck, humming his response against her skin.

My breath caught. A burning sensation tickled my nose. Sarah? Why Sarah?

She giggled, “Stop it, Katie likes you.”

He moved closer. “No, she doesn’t.”

Sarah giggled again. “She’ll be so mad if she finds out.”

“Katie’s like my sister. She won’t care.”
 

His words came on a whisper, but I heard them like they were meant just for me. All the air left my throat and my chest heaved.
 
I always knew Jake felt that way about me, but I’d never heard him say the words before.

Sarah leaned back and placed a hand on his strong jaw. “I guess she never has to find out.”

Twelve years later, and I could still feel the sting of finding them like that. Ironic, considering I was facing a whole new kind of betrayal, and the first person I turned to for comfort had been Jake.

I pressed my head against the door and rubbed slow circles at my temples with my thumbs. Sarah had snuck back into bed that night around three in the morning. She never did say anything to me about what happened, and I never asked.

The photo still rested in my lap—scratched and flawed from the broken glass, and I bushed broken pieces to the floor with my thumb. My muscles were so tense they felt bruised. Bruised and battered—what I imagined my heart to look like. I pushed myself from the ground, removed what remained of the broken frame, and deposited the picture to an open box.
 

Not bothering to change, I crawled into my unmade bed and pulled the covers up to my chin. I was broken and weak—shattered—just like the glass covering my living room floor.

No man will ever be satisfied with you.

Kevin’s words played in my head again and again, and eventually I cried myself to sleep.

THE EARLY AFTERNOON SUN STREAMED through the windshield of the moving truck, and I pulled down the visor hoping to block out some of its harsh rays. The movers had come right on time that morning. Eight a.m. Exactly eight hours after Kevin walked out of my life forever, only three after I relaxed enough to fall asleep.
 

It was surreal really. Knowing that every earthly possession, everything that mattered to me, was now contained within a twenty-four-foot moving truck and the car that trailed behind it. In hindsight I should have paid the money and had someone drive the thing. I’d never done anything like this before, and all that could go wrong kept running through my mind faster than a freight train. A flat tire, a pothole, a gust of wind that would blow me over, taking my Ford Focus with it. But my rapidly deflating bank account told a different story. I needed to do this. I only had a few thousand dollars left to my name, and I needed that for an apartment, to set my feet on the ground—to start over.
 

I took another sip of my caramel macchiato, and my eyes locked on the sign that read “Los Angeles: 126 miles.” After all these years, I was finally going back.
It was the place of my childhood, the place that held a thousand memories, and my heart picked up speed just thinking about it. But that seemed to be my normal these days. I walked through life with that tight ball of panic settled between my heart and throat waiting for the next thing to happen.
 

I couldn’t quite figure out how I found myself in this position. My life, usually so predictable, had turned into a blur. A blur that was more like Lifetime television than of my own reality.
It just wasn’t like me to storm into the office and give my resignation without notice. I was the responsible type. The one who was never late, the one who didn’t break promises and always paid her bills on time. I didn’t cheat, always sent thank-you cards, and had never smoked a day in my life. I was the
good girl
, the one you’d bring home to your mother. The type who saved her virginity until the age of twenty-three—for the man who never wanted it in the first place.

It wasn’t that I never had the opportunity. I had many boyfriends, and lord knows they all tried. I just always wanted something more. Something special. There was always that one man I held everyone else up against. Jake.
 

When Kevin came along, I thought things had finally changed, that I’d finally gotten over the boy I’d loved my whole life. It was six months after my move to San Diego; I’d been assigned to cover a local food drive, and Kevin was the brand-new reporter in the office. He was the type who could sweet talk his way into any situation, and it only took two weeks to talk his way into my pants. I didn’t even tell him I was a virgin until months later... I’m not even sure why, maybe to save myself from having to explain the reason.

Three months after our first date, Kevin and I moved in together. I thought he was my forever, that he was the one. But now, two and a half years later, I realized I couldn’t have been more wrong. I trusted the wrong person. Which unfortunately, seemed to be a pattern in my life. But as the miles ticked by, I was filled with both fear and longing for what awaited me. Jake. My Jake. The Jake I hadn’t seen once in three years. What would it be to like to live with him again?