His gaze hardened. “That’s not all, is it? There’s more. Something you haven’t told me.”
She hung her head, but she couldn’t hide her disgrace. “I fought it.
I swear to you, I didn’t want to feel anything for him…” Her voice trailed off. Oh Lord, she had to tell him. Her hands shook and she hated herself, again. “But l-last night I, uh, I stopped fighting.”
Steve’s voice was very, very soft. “You slept with him.”
Her shame and desperation expanded exponentially, suffocating her. “Yes.”
The betrayal echoed through his hollow laugh. “I guess I should be happy you didn’t wait two years to tell me.”
She struggled to find air.
Steve shoved his hands in his pockets and started to pace. He reached one wall of the lounge room, kicked it, turned around, took several measured steps and kicked the opposite wall. “You know, sweet Katie” turn, pace, kick, “Tyler told me today he’d come back for you.”
His use of the endearment stung, but she let it go. However much he hurt her, it was nothing compared to what she’d inflicted on him.
“Know what I did?” Turn, pace, kick. “I came home and drew up battle plans. I decided I wouldn’t give you up. Not without a good fight anyway.” Kick. Kick.
Kick!
Katie stared at him, stunned.
He pointed behind her, and she twisted and followed his finger, only to find an enormous bouquet of delicate peach roses lying on the table. “I bought you flowers. I also got a bottle of red wine and some fresh pasta and sauce. I was about to phone and invite you over when you arrived.”
The air was pungent with the mixed aromas of fresh herbs, garlic and tomato.
She hadn’t even noticed it. Any other time it would have made her mouth water. Now it just made breathing more difficult. Every time she sucked in oxygen, she inhaled the scent of her failed engagement.
“I thought we could have a romantic dinner together. Just the two us. We could iron out our problems.” He gave her an empty smile. The hostility and the antagonism had drained out of him. “I thought I could make peace with your past and we could move forward together.” He stared at the roses. “I thought I stood a chance with you, Kate, but I don’t. There’s nothing left to fight for, is there?”
She wanted so much to tell him yes. To put the light back in his eyes. She’d watched Pen extinguish his fire over two years ago, and now it was her turn.
She’d destroyed Steve’s second chance at happiness. The need to weep was overpowering, but she wouldn’t. Tears would be a cleansing process, and she did not deserve the reprieve she’d get from them.
She’d hurt him too deeply and she never wanted to feel okay with her actions.
“I wish there was,” she said.
“Did we ever stand a chance?” he asked in a curious, detached kind of way.
“Yes.” She believed it with every fiber of her being. “If Tyler had never come home. We would have made it, and we would have been good together.”
“But but he did come home, and he took our future away.”
He sighed. His shoulders sagged with dejection. “The passion was never there.”
She shook her head. “The love was, not the passion.”
Steve slumped on the back of a couch. He pushed a tired hand through his hair. “You and I were not meant to be.”
Katie closed her eyes against the sorrow that cloaked her and shook her head again.
“Go and be with Tyler, Kate.” His voice was sad.
She tried to say his name, but a dry sob overwhelmed her. “Steve,”
she said after gaining the tiniest bit of control. “I am so, so sorry. You did not deserve this.” He deserved to have the best woman available, and she was not that woman. “You didn’t deserve any of this.”
“Sometimes life doesn’t work out the way we want it to.” Though he was talking to her, he had a faraway expression in his eyes. He blinked, refocused and said, “Go to him, Kate. Go and be with the man you love.”
She stared at him, desolate. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“I can’t just leave you like this.”
“You can’t stay with me either. You don’t belong here. Not anymore.”
“But…”
“When I asked you to marry me I knew there was someone you loved more. I never guessed who it was, but I always knew he was there. We could have been good, Kate. We could have worked if he had never come home. But he did.” He smiled despondently. “I was never your first choice. You’re supposed to be with Tyler.”
She walked over to him. “You must hate me.”
He sighed again, deeply, and then put his arms around her and pulled her close. “I love you too much to hate you.”
She hugged him back, resting her head on his chest. “I’ve betrayed you.”
“Yes, but you also stayed faithful to your heart.”
“I love you, Steve.”
“I know you do, babe. You just love Tyler more.”
Tears welled in her eyes. She forced them back. “Not more. Just differently.”
“Maybe that was our problem all along. Maybe we just loved each other differently.”
“So where do we go from here?” she asked, knowing she didn’t want to hear his answer. “I don’t want to lose you.”
Steve rested his chin on her head. He smoothed her hair. “Maybe we can be friends again. Someday.”
“Just not now?”
“Just not now, Kate.”
The grief overwhelmed her. She was losing her best friend.
“What…” She stopped, sniffed, wiped uselessly at her eyes and tried again. “What about work?”
He shrugged, shook his head. Her heart stood still. “Steve…?”
“I’ll look for another practice. Maybe open something in Coogee or Bronte.”
“No.” Her voice was little more than a squeak. God, no. The practice was as much Steve’s as it was hers. he’d helped build it. “It wouldn’t be the same without him. It’s yours. You can’t leave.”
“I can’t stay, Kate. I’ll take my patients. You’ll keep yours. We’ll work something out.”
She clung to him, burying her face in his chest. “I’ll miss you.”
Every single day. How would she get through even twenty-four hours without him? The most solid force in her life was crumbling.
“I’ll miss you too, babe.”
He pulled away from her, lifted her chin and kissed her. A sweet, gentle, harmless kiss. A farewell kiss.
Then he opened the front door. “Go and be with Tyler.”
She nodded, sniffed, took a deep, useless breath and walked out of the flat.
She paused in the doorway for just a second, and looked at him one last time.
“Bye, Steve.”
“Bye, Kate.” He gave her a poignant smile. “Be happy.”
Katie didn’t go home. She went to her spot on the cliffs. It was foolhardy to visit it in the pitch-black, but she didn’t care. Her life had just changed permanently. She’d just lost her best friend and she needed time to mourn.
Her choice had been the right one. While she loved Steve dearly, her heart belonged to Tyler. It always had. It didn’t make the pain of her loss any easier to bear. No amount of crying could make it easier.
Tears would never fill the hole that Steve’s goodbye had created. Her wall of strength was no longer there. This time, if she tripped, she’d fall.
Worse than her sorrow was the knowledge that she’d hurt him.
She’d caused him intolerable sadness, and she’d destroyed the future they’d built together.
Katie stared sightlessly into the dark. Below her, the ocean roared and smashed against the cliffs. Around her the wind whistled through the bushes.
She didn’t take notice of any of it. She simply grieved.
In one fell swoop, she’d lost her best friend, her work partner and her fiancé. The pain was unrelenting. It burned her stomach and her lungs and her heart, and she knew she’d never recover from the scars.
Whatever else happened from here on, there’d always be a substantial chunk seared from her life.
He’d been so damned decent about the whole thing. So understanding. She didn’t deserve it. She deserved his anger and bitterness but he’d given her none of it. Instead, he’d offered her freedom and sent her to find Tyler.
She couldn’t stop the tears now. She wept for herself, and she wept for Steve. He’d lost one woman to a horrible disease and another to her brother.
She wept for Tyler and for Penelope and for the inheritance that had destroyed their lives. Tyler had triumphed over his legacy, but what about Pen? And Steve?
Katie stayed in her special spot for a very long time, and then she stood and walked back to her car. It was time to go home. The tears might finally have run dry, but the pain would always be with her.
Without that pain, she and Tyler would never be able to start their relationship afresh. Their new future was borne of Steve’s heartache.
At least now she had a future with him. For two years she’d had nothing. Now he was back, and she was his. Finally. There were no more obstacles in their way. She and Tyler could be together. They could lead the life she’d fantasized about for a very long time.
This was a momentous night. She’d lost her best friend and her fiancé, but she was about to gain the person she’d longed for eternally.
Tyler.
The one thing she never counted on was that when she arrived home, he wouldn’t be there.
“Oh, hon. I’ve never seen you like this.”
Katie looked at her mother. “I’ve never felt like this,” she said hollowly.
Losing Steve may have been unbearable, but Tyler’s disappearance was nothing less than catastrophic. His first departure had devastated her. His second was insurmountable.
“I’m not even sure how to describe you now. You’re beyond sad.”
Brenda clucked her tongue in sympathy.
“Sorry, Mum,” Katie said. “I know… I promised we could shop for dresses today, but…” The words wouldn’t come. “There would be no wedding.”
“I’m sorry too, hon. I’m sorry Tyler’s left again.”
She shook her head. “Don’t blame him this time.” He didn’t know all the facts. Because she hadn’t told him.
He must have assumed she’d wanted Steve. She’d stormed out the house hell-bent on easing Steve’s pain, without stopping to consider Tyler’s. If she’d just taken one minute, to tell him she’d chosen him it had only ever been him none of this would have happened. She and Tyler would be off somewhere celebrating each other. Instead, Tyler was off somewhere, incommunicado, and she was crying on her mother’s shoulder.
“He left because he thought I chose Steve. He did what he thought was the right thing.”
“Still haven’t gotten hold of him?”
Katie looked at the table in the entrance. Upon it sat Tyler’s mobile phone.
“No. I don’t even know if he’s aware he left his phone here.”
“He hasn’t collected his clothes yet?”
Katie shook her head. Most of his stuff was still at her house. Just a couple of suits, jeans and tees were missing. And some of his toiletries and papers.
Obviously Ty couldn’t fit it all on his damned bike. “I guess he’ll come and get it when he finds a place to live.” She shrugged. “He still has the front-door key. He can come and go at will.” When she was at work, most likely.
“Does Steve know where he is?”
Katie snorted. “I doubt it. The last time Tyler saw Steve, his eye had been blackened.”
“You doubt it?” Brenda’s eyes were troubled. “Oh Lord, Katie, you still haven’t spoken to Steve?”
She sniffed. “He doesn’t want to speak to me, Mum. I have to respect that.”
“So how do you know he’s been making calls and visiting other practices?”
“Tina.” She slumped into her couch. Pathetic. She had to learn about Steve’s actions through their receptionist.
Her life was falling apart. Two weeks ago, she, Tyler and Steve had sat in her kitchen celebrating their friendship. Now Tyler was gone again, Steve was leaving, and Steve and Tyler’s relationship lay in tatters.
The bonds that had held their friendships tight and strong for so long, lay in ruin. Katie had lost her best friends and her true love. Their circle of three had fractured irreparably.
“It’s over, Mum.” She had that hollow, empty feeling to prove it.
“I’ve lost them both.”
The tears came again, and Brenda sat beside Katie and held her hand while she wept.
Tyler tapped his fingers on the table in his hotel room. He couldn’t pretend to be interested in the casino any longer. He’d spent seven days immersed in facts, figures, negotiations and talks anything so he wouldn’t have to think about Katie and he’d finally decided. It would go against every moral fiber of his being to invest in the hotel. His partners agreed.
Which meant it was time to move on. He’d been offered accommodation here when he’d needed it, but staying longer would be taking advantage. Late Saturday afternoon he’d found a furnished apartment to rent in Belleview Hill. Today, he’d meet the agent at five and sign for a one-year lease. It was only two p.m. now. Which gave him just enough time for a final meeting at the hotel and a final meeting at the Maroubra Medical Practice.
He had to go there. He had to acknowledge defeat and congratulate the victor.
The best man had won Katie had chosen Steve. The challenge was over.
The problem was, he was not the only loser in this fiasco. Penelope had lost as well. Steve had no reason to fight for her he already had his prize. Tyler had failed his sister and himself. The only thing he’d accomplished by coming home was to destroy his relationships with his two closest friends.
He wasn’t expecting warm hugs of welcome at the practice. Hell, he wasn’t even expecting a conciliatory handshake, but he would do the right thing. He would go to Steve and offer his congratulations.
Then, he would go to Katie, and he would offer her his congratulations.
Right after that he’d sign the lease, and then he’d go the hell to the closest pub and drink himself into oblivion. He’d pour so much scotch down his damned throat, they’d have to peel him off the floor just to get him out of the bar. At which point he’d go to the next pub, and he’d pour another bottle of scotch down his throat. And then another, and another. Until he couldn’t feel the pain anymore. Until he was so wasted that the idea of his friend with his woman no longer affected him. Until he just did not give a damn.