At First Hate (Coastal Chronicles)

She whipped around, her hair flying. “Someone knocked.”

“We’re done here.” His eyes passed Kasey in the doorway to find me slowly backing away. He looked panicked and then furious. “Marley, wait…”

Ah, wait. That wonderful word that had ruined me time and time again.

Kasey turned back to face me. Her eyes were now scrutinizing. “You’re Marley?” She’d heard my name before. Oh great. “Seriously, Derek?”

“Leave,” he shouted at her. “Just leave. Christ.”

Kasey crossed her arms. “Fine. Just… think about what we were talking about.”

He glared with fiery hatred on his face as she walked away. I’d never seen him look at anyone like that. Not even people he actually disliked. He’d always been so good at hiding his emotions. But he couldn’t do that with Kasey.

“Uh… I guess I should go too,” I said.

“No, no, no, no, no,” he said quickly, stepping in front of me. “Kasey and I are so far past over. It wasn’t what it looked like.”

“What did it look like?”

“Like my ex-wife answered the door,” he said slowly.

“That is what happened.”

“Yes, but it’s not…” He sighed. “We’re divorced for a reason. A damn good reason at that. Can I at least tell you what happened and let you decide?”

I arched an eyebrow at his offer. He’d been purposely reticent with information about the divorce. Amelia had been more forthcoming than Derek ever had been. I’d wondered, but I wouldn’t push. Finally, my curiosity won out.

“Okay.”

He breathed out a sigh of relief because I’d agreed. I had no reason to. Not after all the shit we’d gone through. Not after the way he’d first told me that he was getting married. It had been years since that day when I’d stood on the riverfront and he’d told me he was marrying someone else. It felt like a lifetime ago… and also just yesterday.

I followed him back inside his house. I’d never been inside the three-story mansion he’d purchased and renovated downtown. It was walking distance to his office and had to have cost a small fortune. It was also one of the most perfectly elegant homes I’d ever seen. It outshone the giant monstrosity that was his father’s house by a long shot. This had clearly been done with love, and I could feel it in every stone and painted wall and carefully curated art collection.

“Your house is beautiful,” I whispered softly as I followed him into a sitting room. I took a seat across the small room from him.

“Thanks. My, uh, mom helped me with it.”

I blinked at him. “Your mom? She’s back in Savannah?”

Last I’d heard, Margie Ballentine had been cheated on by his father. Doug had taken his mistress, a young Kathy, as his wife. Margie had taken a sizable chunk of money and moved to Charleston to be around her brother and his kids. Derek had spent a few summers with his cousins Daron, Tye, and Marina. They were still close, but he never had been with his mom.

“We reconnected,” he said with a shrug. “She apologized for leaving the way she did after it all went down, but I don’t really blame her. I’d want to get the hell out of Dodge too. But she’d been an interior designer before she left, and she began to pursue her real passion—art.”

“Well, it sounds like she got the better end of the deal.”

“Yes. Though it has little to do with Kasey.”

“I figured you were stalling.”

He laughed softly. “God, I’ve missed you.”

My heart warmed at those words. It was so easy to forget all the baggage when I was with him like this. Even after just seeing that his ex-wife was somehow still in his life, I wanted his praise.

“So?” I prompted.

“So,” he repeated, “I met Kasey at a golfing event for the company. She played in college, and we played a round together. We dated for two years before we got married. She was old country-club money, and her dad works in the shipping industry. She went to St. Catherine’s. We ran in the same circles.”

My throat closed at those words. All the ways that Kasey was something that I was not or ever would be.

“After we were together for two years, I thought that I knew her. I was wrong.”

I held my breath, waiting to hear that she’d cheated on him. It felt like that had to be the explanation. Him reliving what had happened to his mother when he was a child.

“So, who was he?” I asked.

Derek narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Did she cheat on you?”

He laughed sardonically. “I almost wish that she had. But no, she was faithful, as far as I know.

“Kasey was a successful real estate agent when we met on her way to opening her own firm. She had big dreams. And then we got married, and every single one of them disappeared. She quit her job without telling me and began to spend the hours she should have been at work shopping. At first, it was just designer clothes and shoes and bags. Expensive—obnoxiously expensive—but not a drain. Since she hadn’t told me that she quit, I assumed she was mostly spending her own money on it.” He shrugged and looked distant. “I was working eighty to a hundred hours a week at the firm. I wasn’t around enough then to pay enough attention.