“I felt like I had a good feel on him from our dates and his show too, but I guess that’s all façade. Love Whisperer, my ass. God, I should’ve known better, hell I do know better! Guys are always out for themselves and a piece of ass. But he made me believe, and I played right into his hands. This hurts so much worse than before, because he made me . . . hope.” The tears come, hot and burning as they roll down my face, and I cry my heartbreak out for Elise, who strokes my hair and kisses my forehead.
“I promise you Kat, I don’t care if the whole gender of men is going to hell, I’m right here with you.”
“I guess I need to get this over with,” I whisper. I reach into my bag, grabbing my phone. It hurts to see his name in my recent contacts, surrounded with little heart-eyed face emojis, but I need to get this over with before I lose my nerve. And I need answers.
The call rings . . . and rings . . . and rings. “Hey, you’ve reached Derrick King, leave me a message. Or, as this is the twenty first century, send me a text. Bye.”
The phone beeps, and I clear my throat before speaking, but my voice is still wavering. “Derrick, it’s Kat. You need to call me.”
As I hang up, I look at the time and I realize the show is over. He should be able to pick up his phone if he wanted to, just like he has countless times before. He’s avoiding my call. Ignoring me after what he’s done. He doesn’t have the balls to face me.
The ice in my veins freezes. He’d systematically broken down all my defenses from the beginning, one by one pecking away at them to get me to open up to him, and make me think he was one of the good guys. But he lied. This is so much worse than Kevin or my other boyfriends cheating on me, this is a public betrayal at a foundational level. I loved him, truly and deeply, and I thought he loved me. But obviously not if he can air our private life without even asking me. Fuck, he even joked and laughed about it, like it was no big deal.
I don’t know why he’d do this, but fuck him if he thinks I’m some fuck toy he can screw around with.
I’m done with him, done with men.
Forever.
I turn my phone off and hug Elise in tight as the tears roll down my face. I’ll cry out every last tear so that there’s nothing left and then I’ll turn my heart off and never risk loving some backstabbing asshole again.
I’m done, my heart shattered into unfixable shards in my chest.
Chapter 23
Derrick
The sun is just creeping over the horizon when I can sneak out of the hospital and down to my car to grab my phone.
It was a long night. Once Dad was transferred, he’d woken up a little, but was disoriented. I was uncomfortable leaving him alone, even with nurses twenty feet away and watching the monitors.
I stayed by his bedside until he fell into a fitful sleep. I drifted off soon after, uncomfortably perched in a chair beside him until the shift-change nurse woke us both to take his vitals.
Turning on my phone, I see it’s been blowing up all night. I’ve got several missed calls from Jacob, one from Kat . . . but more worrisome, at least two dozen calls from Susannah and the station number.
I rub the back of my neck, not sure what I’m going to do. I knew I’d likely get shit for bailing on the show with no notice, but what the hell did they want me to do? My dad was having a heart attack.
If Susannah couldn’t handle things, there’s plenty of archived shows they could air if need be. We already do that on our two-night off each week and listeners seem to like the classics. If Suz was in a lurch, she could’ve just punched play on one of those.
Yeah, shitty on my part to duck like I did, but a necessary deal when there’s a medical emergency. I decide to give Jacob a call first. He doesn’t call often so it must have been important for him to call multiple times. Kat was probably just checking in to tell me everything was going okay and she was being safe. I won’t wake her up with the bad news just yet.
Besides, Jacob will want to know. He and Dad got pretty friendly back in my college days, and Jacob really took a liking to my father, often hanging out at the house when the lifestyle of being a superstar student-athlete with a professional future got to be a bit too much to deal with.