Wicked Need (The Wicked Horse Series Book 3)(24)

I lock my jaw and make busy work cutting up the rest of my meatloaf. Cat doesn’t say a word.

Finally, the phone stops ringing, but within just a few seconds, it’s starts again with that vile song I used to love but now hate because it reminds me about the worst of Tarryn.

“Christ,” I mutter, dropping my fork to the plate and rubbing the bridge of my nose in frustration.

Raising my face, I see Cat looking at me with her head tilted and faint worry in her eyes.

“Maybe you should get that.”

The phone stops ringing and for a blessed moment, I think maybe she’s done. I even reach back for my fork, but then it starts back up again.

“Son of a bitch,” I curse as I push up from the table and stalk to the bathroom where I’d left my phone before I got in the shower. I stab at the Accept button and growl, “For f*ck’s sake, Tarryn.”

“I was worried since you hadn’t called me back from this morning,” she says in that clipped New England accent that hasn’t faded much after living several years out west.

“Here’s a f*cking hint,” I tell her as the anger continues to rise within me. “I didn’t call you back because I have nothing to say to you.”

“Come on, Rand,” she says in a soothing voice. “You don’t really mean that. Regardless of you being angry right now, we shared too damn much for you to just disregard me.”

Closing my eyes, I drop my head in resignation because she is right about that. I could never disregard Tarryn. In fact, my problem was always that I regarded her too much. One of the reasons I tried to avoid her now was because she always seemed to say the right thing to suck me back in. My need to nurture and develop inherently kicking in. It makes it hard to completely let go sometimes. It is also probably proof of why she has a specialized ring tone to alert me to her call, so I have the choice to talk to her or not versus just blocking her number completely.

And as if to prove that sentiment, she strikes fast and hard. “I’ve started training again. Going to take a shot at the giant slalom. There’s an event at Copper Mountain in November.”

Gritting my teeth, I hold back the flurry of curses I want to spew at her. Instead, I force myself to say in a calm voice, “That’s great. I’m sure you’ll do great.”

She’s silent a moment, but then she prods. “Could use a good coach.”

“Plenty around this area,” I say.

“Interested in the job?” she asks with an awkward chuckle.

“You know I’m not, Tarryn,” I say quietly, sneaking a peek toward the kitchen. Cat’s eating silently, her face lowered in an attempt to give me privacy, I think, but that’s impossible in an apartment this small.

“Come on, Rand,” Tarryn cajoles. “No one knows my skiing better than you. No one pushes me the way you do.”

I try hard not to snort at that because there was a time in the not so distant past that she hated the way I pushed at her. In fact, the way memory serves, and according to Tarryn, I pushed so hard that she fell right into the arms of another man.

At least that’s the way she tried to excuse her infidelity.

My eyes flick to the bathroom mirror, and I take a good look at myself. I’m not the same man I was eleven years ago when I started dating Tarryn. Not the same man I was four years ago when we broke up.

My gaze focuses in on Cat’s reflection at the kitchen table behind me.

Hell, I’m not the same man I was two nights ago when I found her sleeping in her car.

“Look Tarryn,” I say with a firm tone as I turn and walk out of the bathroom toward Cat, who looks up at me. “I’ve got company, so I need to get off the phone. But if you’re looking for a training coach, check in with Jake. He’ll hook you up.”

“But I don’t want—”

“Sorry, but I really have to go. Take care,” I say into the phone just before I disconnect.

As I reach the table, I look down at Cat… her big, brown eyes swimming with focused curiosity.

“Ex-girlfriend… Tarryn,” I say by way of explanation. “She has phases where she gets lonely and reaches out to me.”

“How long did you date?” she asks hesitantly. Possibly feeling the need to explain her question, she adds on, “When you meet people within the confines of The Silo, it’s sometimes hard to picture them in real relationships.”

I laugh and sit back down at the table, picking up my fork. Food wasn’t getting any warmer, but I was still hungry. “Seven years. Started when we were seventeen. We met at prep school. She was a competitive alpine skier too.”

Cat’s eyes flare wide in a holy shit type of way. “Seven years is a long time. Which begs the question… how old are you?”

“Twenty-eight,” I tell her before taking another big bite of the meatloaf. It really is pretty good. “And you?”

“Twenty-four. I was twenty-one when I married Samuel.”

“And you’ve got the best of your life still to come,” I tell her.

Cat gives me a faint smile, pushing some macaroni around on her plate before asking, “Why did you two break up? That’s a long time to be with someone.”

“Well, if you ask Tarryn the reasons, she’ll say it’s all my fault,” I tell her with a wry grin.