“What are you doing here?” she asked. She wanted to scream, cry, tell him to jump into the nearest volcano, but shock and humiliation were two heady emotions that left her in a stunned daze, desperate to hold on to any kind of pride she could manage.
What were her options?
Throw a fit.
Scream the fact that he’d been cheating on her for a year.
Shout that he’d stood her up.
But none of those things would make her feel better, and Kevin was not the kind of man who cared. So she couldn’t care, either.
Kevin glanced at the woman he was with, then back at Carrie. He just shrugged, not bothering to look embarrassed or ashamed. He did, however, look Blake up and down. That was a small comfort. Blake was the polar opposite of him.
Did Kevin just shudder in fear?
It was then Carrie saw Blake’s expression. He had a look of murder on his face. Was he going to kill Kevin? He could. Easily. A thought that kind of thrilled her. Blake took a step toward Kevin, and yep, he was definitely going to kill him. But she grabbed his arm.
“Please let me handle this,” she whispered softly. “I can’t take any more humiliation. Please…just go with this.”
Blake looked at her for a long moment, and she silently begged. She didn’t know what she was thinking, feeling, or doing. But she was overwhelmed and knew Kevin well enough to know that any kind of scene or show of sad emotion from her would only make him smirk and make her feel lower.
One fact she had to keep in mind was that Kevin didn’t care that he hurt her. Didn’t care about much beyond himself. So she had to play this to her advantage, anything to preserve any shred of dignity he’d left her.
She had to not care right back.
Or at least try not to.
Which meant she’d fake it.
Fake it…
“Look, Care Bear,” Kevin said, “It’s been a crazy few days for me. Wendy and I are staying here. You knew I wanted to come here. I couldn’t find the tickets, so I used the money from the painting sale I just made. You understand?”
She understood? Yeah. She understood everything now. That the woman he’d been cheating on her with the past year—AKA Sports Illustrated, AKA Wendy—was now in Hawaii with her ex-fiancé, staying at the place they were supposed to have their honeymoon.
Fury rose inside her. She couldn’t see straight.
“I’ve never been able to stop or understand you, Kevin,” she said honestly, trying not to let her heart show that it was in pieces.
“I could ask you the same thing,” Kevin said. “I know I was a shit in how I left, but we both knew it wasn’t right.” He looked at Blake again. “We’re friends, Care Bear. We were always friends. We work well together at the gallery, something we’re still going to have to do. Let’s just call this what it was and still is. Platonic. I did us a favor by not showing up for our wedding.”
Oh, he’d done her a favor all right. Wasting the past year planning a wedding for nothing. Humiliating her in front of her family and friends. There were so many things she wanted to say. To scream. But she felt Blake’s big hand close over hers and give a reassuring squeeze. She didn’t want to give Kevin the satisfaction of calling the shots any longer. What was done was done.
Kevin doesn’t care.
She’d take a page from Blake’s playbook and act on the worst/best idea she’d had so far.
“Of course we can be friends,” she said as sweetly as she could. “I’m glad you found someone you can connect with.” She wouldn’t go into detail about the gallery or how they technically still would be working together. Her brain was overly fried just handling this moment.
Kevin frowned then smiled. “Well all right!” He clapped his hands together, and the smell of Kahlúa and marijuana wafted off of him. “And ah…who’s this?”
“This is Blake,” Carrie said quickly.
“So it seems like I wasn’t the only one being unfaithful,” Kevin said, with a bite to his words. No way in hell would Carrie get lumped into the same category as him.
“I never cheated on you. Blake and I just hooked up on the plane over here,” she said without thinking.
Blake’s eyes went wide and he looked at her.