Chasing Second Chances (16 page)

Chapter Twenty-one

Her phone was ringing.

At that realization, Kate immediately got up, reaching for her phone on the nightstand. Her first thought was that the kidnapper was calling her but as she saw Anne’s name on the screen, she lay back down, heaving a sigh of relief.

“Anne?”

“Kate.” Anne, too, sounded relieved to hear her voice. “Thank goodness you picked up.”

Kate felt puzzled. “Is something wrong?”

“I should be asking you that. The cops called me, telling me you suddenly left town and asking me where you went.”

“Oh.” She had forgotten to inform Anne, mainly because she and Lloyd had been in a rush and because they were trying to keep their departure a secret, though she supposed it was no longer a secret now.

“So where are you? Are you okay?”

“I’m not sure I can answer the first question, but as for the second one, I’m okay.”

“You can’t tell me where you are? Geez, that sounds like something crazy’s going on. Either that or you just don’t trust me anymore.”

“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” she told her. “Why would you even think of that?”

“Because I…” There was a pause on the other end.

“Yes?”

“Does Bryan know you’re out of town? Did the two of you talk?”

She couldn’t really understand the sudden change of topic, nor did she feel like talking about Bryan, but decided to go along. “Yes, Bryan knows. We talked.”

“So everything’s okay between you both?” Anne sounded hopeful.

Kate’s eyebrows creased. “Is there something you know that I don’t?”

Anne sighed. “I guess I better come clean. I did something wrong, Kate, something very wrong and I’d understand if you never spoke to me again.”

Now, Kate was even more confused. “I think you should just go ahead and tell me what you did, Anne.”

Anne took a deep breath. “I accidentally told Bryan you kissed Lloyd.”

“Oh, that.”

“So he told you he knew about it, huh? Me and my big mouth. You can hang up on me right now. At least, I know you’re okay. You
are
okay, aren’t you?”

“I’m not going to stop talking to you, Anne,” Kate said. “I’m not mad at you.”

“You’re not.”

“I’m not,” Kate repeated. It was true. She did not feel an ounce of anger towards Anne at all, perhaps because now that Bryan knew, it didn’t matter how he found out. Besides, it was really her fault to begin with. She had no one else to blame. “And while I’m not completely okay, at least at the moment, I’m safe and I’m still sane.”

“Does that mean you and Bryan broke up?”

“Yes,” Kate answered with a sigh of her own.

“I really am a bad friend.”

Kate said nothing.

“Wait, are you with Lloyd?”

“I am,” Kate reluctantly confessed.

“You didn’t run away with him, did you? I mean, you’re not going to be with him now that you and Bryan broke up, are you?”

“No,” Kate answered. “Look, Anne, we’ll talk when I get back, okay? Right now, I…”

“I know, I know,” Anne interrupted. “I really shouldn’t let my mouth run away with me. You can rest now. Good night.”

“Good night.”

“And stay safe.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Anne hung up.

Kate placed the phone back on the nightstand, then got out of bed to use the bathroom.

The obscure hotel she and Lloyd had checked in to was small and not exactly luxurious, but at least, each of their adjoining rooms had its own bathroom.

She washed her face, frowning when she noticed how her wrinkles had seemed to worsen in the past week. Then, she headed back to the bed, stopping by the door that separated her room from Lloyd’s to listen in.

Nothing.

He was probably already asleep, even more exhausted than she was since he had been the one driving. Either that or he was on his bed, awake but quietly deep in thought, thinking about tomorrow.

Tomorrow.

At the thought that she could be reunited with her children this time tomorrow, she felt a surge of excitement but quickly quelled it. She had seen far too many suspense movies and television series to know that hostage exchange situations could easily go wrong. The kidnapper might change his mind and decide not to give them the children yet, for one, or the police might suddenly show up, since they already knew she and Lloyd were missing, which could cause the kidnapper to panic and start shooting everyone.

She shook her head. No, she wasn’t going to scare herself by conjuring the worst scenarios. If she could not keep herself from being carried away by hope or from thinking negatively, then she shouldn’t think about tomorrow at all.

Yes, she wasn’t going to think about it at all.

She went back to bed, pulling the covers up to her chin and closing her eyes, trying to distract herself with other thoughts. Now that she had decided to push all thought of her children’s kidnapping away, though, she could only think of one thing.

Bryan.

So it was Anne who had told him, after all, probably when they bumped into each other at the hospital. How Anne ended up telling him, she had no clue, since she believed Anne would never do it on purpose and she did say it was an accident, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter when she was talking to Bryan and it didn’t matter now.

All that mattered was that Bryan had found out, and that, as a result, he no longer wanted to be with her.

He doesn’t want you anymore.

Just the thought that she would never get to talk to Bryan again, never get to laugh with him, feel his arms around her or kiss him again, she felt tears form at the corners of her eyes but she quickly wiped them away with the back of her hand, shrugging the thought aside.

No, she wasn’t going to think about that, either.

Once she had her children back, she would do everything she could to get Bryan back, as well. She knew it was probably not going to be easy, but she was not going to give up, not when she still felt in her heart that the two of them were right for each other, that the two of them belonged together.

Indeed, she had wondered for a moment, during the drive to New York, if perhaps it would be better for her and Lloyd to just get back together, but that thought had left her mind as quickly as it had come. She might still care for Lloyd but she had no doubt who she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.

She stared at the ring she still wore on her right hand and tenderly pressed it close to her heart.

I’m not giving up on you, Bryan.

* * * *

Bryan gave up.

Since yesterday, he had been trying not to think about Kate, but he had failed. Miserably.

Everywhere he looked in his apartment, he was reminded of her and the whole night he lay in his bed, he could not help but remember the last time she had been in it, beside him, the memory depriving him of sleep so that one point, he wondered if he should just check in at a hotel, and he would have if only he had been certain it would allow him to forget her, which he wasn’t, since he and Kate had also spent nights in hotels before.

Even now that he was not in his apartment, each time he glanced at his watch to check the time, he thought of her, of the smile she wore when she had given him that watch the first Christmas they spent together.

He frowned.

He supposed it wasn’t strange that he still thought of her. In spite of how much she had hurt him, how she had betrayed him, he still loved her, after all. There was no doubt about that.

Even so, he could not simply let things go, could not simply take her into his arms and forgive her. He needed time, time to understand why she had done what she did and then to forget it. He needed time to heal.

But how could he when he kept remembering her? When his chest became seized with pain each time he thought that while he was away from her, she was with Lloyd, the very man whom she had once belonged to, who had tried to tear them apart by digging into his past, and who she had just kissed days ago? For all he knew, they could kiss again, especially after he had left Kate alone and hurting.

He needed to get away, he thought. He needed to get out of town, maybe out of the country even where he would not hear any news of Kate. Maybe then, he would be able to think rather than simply feel.

After making his rounds, he went back to his apartment to pack only to realize that most of the things he needed were in Kate’s house. For a while, he debated on whether or not he should go there, then finally decided to go, telling himself that without Kate or Lloyd there, he had nothing to worry about.

The moment he stepped inside the house, though, he regretted his decision. If his apartment had traces of Kate, the house breathed Kate, which he supposed was only natural, of course, since she lived there, though he had failed to consider it.

Berating himself for his stupidity but thinking he couldn’t turn back now, he hurried in getting his things, tossing them into his backpack one after another. When he finally had everything he needed, he glanced at his watch, noting that it was already past one in the afternoon.

It was then that a realization hit him. He had to get rid of the watch.

Recalling that his old watch was somewhere around the house, since Jack had been playing with it one time, he began his search, first in the bedroom, then in Jack’s room and finally, in the living room.

He couldn’t spot it, though, and he was about to give up when he decided to look under the couch, remembering that as a kid, he loved to hide things there. Sure enough, he saw the silver watch which he had bought right after graduating from medical school, along with a few coins and a small piece of cardboard.

Curious about the cardboard, he picked it up. As soon as he realized that it was one of Lloyd’s business cards, he tossed it aside but picked it up a second time when he realized there was a name and a number written at the back.

Victoria Roland—201-447-8623.

Just like that, the words Dr. Quinn had said came back to him.

I saw him in New Jersey…with a woman, no less.

Frowning, he sat down.

What if Lloyd had actually started seeing another woman but hadn’t told Kate? Could he really leave the woman he loved with a man who had hurt her once and could very well hurt her again?

A voice inside him told him she deserved to be hurt just as he had been hurt but he knew better. If he was going to leave Kate, he was going to leave her in the hands of someone who could really take care of her, not a man who could make a fool out of her again.

And there was only one way to know which category Lloyd fell into, only one way to know whether Victoria Roland was a business client or a lover.

He dialed the number.

After four rings, a woman whom he guessed to be in her early twenties picked up. “Hello. Who is this?”