“How dare you tell me what Momma would or would not approve of,” I said breathlessly. “Get the hell out, Hunter.”
Hunter clenched his jaw before he turned around and stormed out. I stood there in shock as tears welled in my eyes, my head reeling with the conversation that had just taken place. I hardly had a moment to defend myself, to tell Hunter why I had fallen in love with the brothers and tell him they had all treated me with respect. It was me who had pursued them, not the other way around. But his anger had blinded him so much that he was willing to throw our dead mother in my face to prove his angry point.
And I wasn’t going to stand for it.
“Lizzie, give me my cell phone,” I said.
“Katie, I don’t think—”
“I said now.”
She sighed and closed her eyes but did as I asked. I ignored all the text messages and missed calls, then scrolled through my contacts. My finger hovered over Caleb’s name as I drew a deep breath, then I clicked his number and held the phone to my ear.
“Privacy, please?” I asked.
Lizzie huffed as she walked outside, and the phone didn’t even ring once before Caleb picked up.
“Katie? Are you there? Is that you?”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I asked.
“You have no idea how good it is to hear your voice,” he said.
“Why in the world would you think it was appropriate for you to go tell my brother about all of us?” I asked.
“We’re worried about you, Katie. All of us are. You're holed up in that damn apartment, and we can’t even get to ya.”
“Because I don’t want you to,” I said. “That’s why you can’t get to me. It was not your place to announce that to my brother. Especially when none of us are together anymore.”
“That’s what we can’t understand, Katie. What the fuck’s goin’ on?” he asked.
“You’ve got some serious nerve asking me that question. Did you think I wouldn’t find out what you did to Lizzie? What you did to my best friend? You guys are a piece of work, and I want you to leave me, her, and Hunter alone. For good.”
“Lizzie, what the fuck are you—?”
I hung up on him and tossed my phone onto the couch. My head was throbbing. My heart was aching. And I wanted a drink. Badly. The tears welling in my eyes streamed down my cheeks as I made my way to my room. I didn’t care that Lizzie was outside waiting, and I didn’t care that my phone was already buzzing again. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I didn’t want to see anyone. And I didn’t want to go anywhere.
My dreams had been shattered. My fantasy about the brothers and us living our lives together was gone. I felt like an idiot. A manipulated, selfish little idiot. I poured myself into bed and pulled the covers back over my head, then clutched my chest as I cried.
In the span of a month, I’d had to pick up the pieces of my life twice. And the revelation robbed me of my breath.
CHAPTER 38
WYATT
None of us was getting much sleep. Caleb told us about the brief conversation he had with Katie, and we were all stuck on her comment about Lizzie. Why the fuck would she think we’d done something to Lizzie? None of us had been close to her. Hell, even back in high school when I ran with that crowd, I wasn’t close to her. What we did to Lizzie? None of that shit made sense. But it did set questions running through my mind. If Lizzie was behind all this shit, then she was feeding Katie lies. None of us had done anything to her friend. We hadn’t talked with her much once Katie left. She came around a little bit, looking for some consoling. But she wasn’t none of our types.
Had she told Katie differently?
I was tired of pussyfooting around this issue. It was wreaking havoc on everyone’s life and I smelled Lizzie at the middle of all this shit. We were moping around the damn resort trying to scramble and make up for Katie’s absence when all one of us had to do was get her alone and explain to her the lies Lizzie was feeding her. Dylan was pouting, and Caleb was still angry with a hurt jaw. Andrew was holed up in his office like some grouchy teenager, cussing and angry with everything that went wrong. I was tired of watching my brothers suffer, and I was tired of knowing Katie was suffering from some friend of hers feeding her shit about us that wasn’t true.
I clocked out of work early and headed to Katie’s apartment. I was going get to the bottom of all this shit. I knew Lizzie wasn’t going to let me talk to Katie, but I figured she might talk with me. I drove all the way across town, formulating a plan and making sure my phone would work for something like this. The only way to prove my theory was to test it, and if it went according to plan, I needed to make sure I could record it.
Without Lizzie knowing what I was doing.
The drive to Katie’s apartment was the longest drive of my damn life. Flirting with Lizzie was going to turn my stomach something awful, but I’d loved Katie for too long not to do everything in my power to get her back. I’d waited for her. I’d waited too damn long to have my hands on her, to love her the way she deserved to be loved.
I wasn’t going to let someone who called herself a friend stand in the way of that.