Bait (Wake, #1)(64)

Honeybee: I get it. I'm sorry.

Honeybee: You didn't answer your door so I guess you're asleep. See me in the morning? Please?

Honeybee: I said I was sorry. I meant it. You're being a little dramatic, Lou.

Honeybee: My flight leaves in an hour. I'm in the lobby.

Honeybee: This hurts. Stop it.

That was the one that got me. I think her plane left at eight that morning, ours didn't take off until two. She was long gone.

Me: Why didn't you tell me you were engaged? When did it happen?

I got a coffee and put my ear buds in, she was still in the air somewhere over Colorado I was guessing. I sat there for a few more hours. I tried not to think.

I just listened. But I'll be damned if every single song I heard didn't sound like it was written specifically for what was running through my mind. Fast songs, the slower more melodic ones, they all related.

Was that how my life was going to be from now on? Could I even take what she had to give me at face value anymore?

Did I even have a choice?

Later that night, I finally started to make some kind of peace with it all.



Something fowl had died in my refrigerator while I'd been on the road and I'd spend the better part of the evening aggressively cleaning out the putrid appliance. When I was walking in from taking the trash out my phone rang.

It was her.

I looked at the ceiling for the answers, but then I realized they weren't there. They were on the other end of that call. I connected the call, but my voice didn't kick in in the normal way it should.

“Casey? You there?” she asked not knowing if the call had gone through.

I walked to my recliner, sat down and leaned back. “Yeah. I'm here.”

“I didn't think you'd answer. I'm really sorry.” That was all good and well, but her apology didn't fix anything.

“What do you have to be sorry for, Blake?” I ran my hand through my hair and sighed in exasperation. “The whole thing sucks.”

“I know.” Her voice cracked, something I hadn't heard before. “For me, too. I don't know what I'm doing anymore.”

“When did you get engaged? How long ago?”

“July,” she said quietly. “The day Aly messaged me and told me I was a nobody.” She sounded liked she'd been scolded for stealing cookies and was trying to plead her case.

My head pounded.

My eyes shut and tightened.

The day Aly messaged her? Wait. I'd seen her after that.

“I saw you in July.” My voice was cool, my emotions were anything but. It had to be a coincidence. The two couldn't be connected. “Why didn't you say something then?”

“I don't know,” she bellowed through the receiver.

I couldn't hold in my frustration any more. “Yes, you do. Why? Why didn't you tell me?”

“I didn't want it to stop. I didn't want you to, I don't know, ignore me.” She sighed.

“What do you want? Because you're confusing the f*ck out of me.”

The line was quiet, but I could hear her moving on the other end. It sounded like she was tapping something. It was the only tip I had that told me she was still there.

Tap-tap-tap.

Tap-tap-tap.

“I told you. I don't know,” she said.

Again it sounded like the truth, but what did I know about her truths? What did I know about her at all?

I knew her nose lit up when she was turned on. I knew she had a temper to rival the one I was growing into. I knew that every time I was around her she consumed me. I was back at square f*cking one.

“Are you really going to marry him?” I had to know. If she was, then what was all of this for?

She sniffed. “Do you want this to end, Casey? I know it's messed up and that I'm messed up. But for now, can't we just have fun? I don't know what I want.”

“Then why did you tell him yes?” I'd lost my temper.

“Because! I did! You had a girlfriend. We had a one-night stand, for Pete's sake. I've been with Grant a long time. He had just bought me a damn house! That day, when Aly said those things, I didn't know what to think. She obviously knew we were talking. I didn't know what to believe, then Grant took me to the house and proposed. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.” Her voice had escalated to shouting, but then it lowered again when she continued. “But now…now I don't know.”

It was messed up. She was right. If I would have just dead-bolted my hotel door. If I would have told Marc that I wanted to take the trip alone. If she would have called me like she said she would and told me about what happened.

If.

If.

If.

IF!

Still, she wasn't married yet and she was talking to me. And she didn't know what she wanted. There was still hope. Still a chance that maybe she wanted me. We still had time.

“It's okay.”

“It's not okay, Casey.”

“It will be. We don't have to talk about that. Not now.”

“We don't?” She sounded hopeful, relieved.

“Well, you're not off the hook yet, honeybee.”

She mock-laughed, a small nervous chuckle vibrated through the phone. Then Blake said, “I feel awful.”