Bait: The Wake Series, Book One(129)

I rushed to add, “It will make me do this faster if I have to leave you alone. Does that make sense?”

Reminding him of how I felt about being without him had to work in my favor. It was all I had left.

“So what? You want to quit talking again?” He huffed a sardonic laugh. “No f*cking way, Blake. I shouldn’t have let you go.”

“It’s a means to an end. Don’t you see that?”

“So no talking again, until this is over?” his voice calmed, but not in a good way. “Damn you, Blake. God damn it!”

I begged, “Please, Casey. Please trust me.”

“Trust you?” he repeated, like hearing it back would make me grasp exactly how outrageous I sounded. Like I didn’t already know.

“Trust. Me.” I stood and nervously paced, my index finger taking a mauling.

“Promise. Honeybee, promise me you’re telling the truth.”

“I’m telling you the truth, but I will not promise. I’ve already made promises. And I’ve broken every single one of them. My promises aren’t worth much these days.”

We were both silent, like my fresh tears, for empty minutes.

“Then what?” He sounded so defeated. “What can you give me? How do I know? Fuck! How do I know this is real this time?”

“Because. Because it’s true. I want you. I need you. And I want to really be yours. It’s true.” The pitch of my voice, while trying to keep my volume down, only came out squeaky and shrill.

“Don’t take too long,” he said. “You said a year the other night? So here it is. Your year. I hope, God I pray, that it doesn’t take that long. And if not talking to you helps you move this shit along, so f*cking be it. Don’t call me. Don’t text. Honeybee, my trust in you has an expiration date now. So do whatever the hell it is you think you have to do to make this right.” He let out a resigned breath. “God, I can’t believe this.”

“I’ll miss you so bad.”

“Sometimes it feels like I started missing you the moment we met. I hate this.”

He didn’t say anything for a little while. I listened as his breathing slowed and I think he made his peace with my plan, at least enough to agree to it. Then he said, “Hurry back to me,” and hung up.

I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. Maybe that was his intention.



Days passed.

Weeks fell away.

I made good on my word. When Grant worked late, I told him what I thought about it. Or what I should have thought about it if I wasn’t hell bent on getting out of our marriage.

I’d confided in my father again on Thanksgiving while he was having a cigar, frying a turkey, and quite frankly ruining a beautiful bird.

He got me good and drunk, too. I thought that maybe he knew I needed to talk and it was no secret that a little hooch was good way to go about it.

Grant went to his parents, but I didn’t, choosing to spend our first Thanksgiving with my folks and apart from my husband. Yeah, that might have been a flag for my old man.

He was understanding, but surprisingly sided with both Casey and me. Telling me that I was dumb for putting him through all of that again, but he commended me for not running away simply because I wanted to.

He told me I was a smart girl and that he had my back.

I slept on their couch and flipped my mom off when she tried to wake me up at two in the morning to go shopping with her. Shane, who still lived there, wasn’t so lucky.

It had been almost a month without him. Something that, sadly, I’d been through before. Too many times.

I’d spoke to Micah a lot, I told her the truth, too. She was supportive, but pretty much warned me that if I didn’t get my shit together, and in so, that if I hurt Casey again, she would be the one whooping my ass.

I thought that was fair.

Micah and Cory decided to get married, which was kind of like an engagement, but in their own weird way, and they’d set the date for New Year’s Eve. Only about a month away.

I tried not to ask her about Casey, I didn’t want her to think that the only reason I called was to get the latest on my Godson and my year-plus-long one-night stand.

Even still, she always made a point to mention what he’d been doing. I was grateful to have a friend like her.

Reggie called me every day.

“You know you can come visit me anytime you want to get away, Blake. It would be nice to have you here. I could use a distraction myself,” he’d said during one of our evening chats. He sounded stressed and I hoped everything was okay. I hoped Nora was there for him.