Sparrow

But it was true.

I’d felt guilty. Guilty because I couldn’t give her what she’d wanted. What we both wanted. Our engagement didn’t mean shit, and we both knew that. I was going to marry Sparrow Raynes, the poor little girl down my street. The money, the clothes, the restaurants, the fancy-ass vacations. Lies, lies and more lies. A pile of distractions to make us forget we were never going to get married. In a sense, a part of me—the puppy-love part—thought Cat screwing someone else was my punishment. I couldn’t be hers exclusively. Why should it be any different for her?

I remembered after we broke up, going back to the apartment Cat and I used to share. I’d wanted to take some of my shit, mainly clothes. I wasn’t surprised to see the guy who knocked her up had taken a trip to Boston just so he could have another dip.

She was beautiful, broken and willing to do anything the man at her side wanted. It was a lethal combination for most men, something that was too hard to turn down. I fucking knew that first-hand.

Brock ended up staying in Boston, and I let him work for me. Gave him a job a few months before my father’s murder, thinking I’d help her—and him—build a family. I’d thought it was my way to compensate. We were done, but I still had a chance to redeem myself in the eyes of the only girl I’d ever fallen in love with. Even if I couldn’t have her.

“We should have stopped this fucking years ago,” I told Cat, who was struggling for breath, her face blotched with tears and older since I’d last seen her.

“I love you. He was always just a plaything. I love you, Troy.” Trying another strategy, she arched her back away from the stone fence, her hips meeting my groin.

I pulled back immediately. Jesus, she thought I was going to take her right then and there. How could I have loved someone so weak?

I sucked in a breath. “You don’t love anything other than danger and cock. There’s an abyss between us, and it swallowed every positive feeling I’ve ever felt toward you. Because even after I tried to help you and your husband, you had the nerve to go and spill every secret I ever told you to him.” I let go of her wrists in disgust. “And that was the ultimate betrayal.”

Catalina told Brock everything.

About the promises my dad made me make.

About Sparrow.

About fucking everything.

She put me in a vulnerable position, and jeopardized everything I’d ever worked for.

I wished Cat had never told Brock about it. I wished he’d never told me that he knew. On a drunken night when the two of us got back from the cabin after detoxing one of my client’s daughters, Brock had revealed that Cat had spilled every single secret I let her in on. Brock had promised to keep mum.

Because it wasn’t a friendly promise—it was a threat.

“So here’s the deal.” I rested my arm above Cat’s head as I locked eyes with her. “I’m going to walk away from here. Next time I see you, it’ll be on Brock’s arm, playing the dutiful wife. You will never speak to me, mention this, or try and reach out to me again, got it?”

I admit I’d taken my revenge too far. Fucking Catalina under her husband’s roof just to feel better about myself? About everything I had lost? Making her one of the endless women on my speed dial? Reducing her to nothing but a warm pussy to bury myself in occasionally? Below the belt, but I’d needed to rebuild my ego. I’d needed to make sure I was leaving her just as broken as she’d left me when she cheated, married someone else and spilled my secrets in his ears.

“She knows,” Cat said, smiling a crazy, hateful smile. “I told Sparrow about us. Your wife knows.”

“Go near her again, and I will kill you with my bare hands.” I took a step back, watching her slide down the wall and collapse on the grass as she wailed.

I’d played this scene over and over in my head for years. Me leaving Catalina for good. Stepping away from this mess while I had the upper hand.

I’d imagined feeling triumphant and elated as I dumped her, breaking her heart, but as I left the graveyard, all I felt was incredible emptiness and an unbearable fury about her talking to Red.

I hoped Cat wasn’t coked up again. Poor Sam didn’t need two fuck-ups for parents.

And as thunder cracked the sky open above me, another downpour on its way, I slipped into the Maserati and turned on the stereo all the way up. “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me” by The Smiths blasted through the speakers. I knew that this time the rain would wash away most of my memories with Cat.