“Hey,” I say as she opens the door dressed in her robe. Her hair is in two long braids, and she is fresh-faced like she’s just out of the shower.
“Rhett? Is everything okay?” she asks, brow furrowed in concern.
“Yeah, I’m sorry for just dropping by, but I wanted to talk to you if you have a few minutes.”
“Of course,” she says instantly, opening the door wider to welcome me inside.
And here is the woman who is one of my best friends. She’s always been there when I need her, and even now when we aren’t on good terms, she is still here for me.
I follow her inside and we both sit down in her living room. “Can I get you something to drink?”
I shake my head. I need to get this all out before it eats at me from the inside out. “No thank you. I just need to be honest with you about everything, and I know you’re going to be fucking angry...”
She gives me one of her Seriously, Rhett? faces. It’s a mixture between a smirk and a frown. “What else could there be? If I’m still talking to you after you cheated on me and then slept with my sister, I don’t think there is much more for me to get angry at.”
I shift on her leather couch. “I first want to say that I never knew Con was your sister. I’d never purposely hurt you, Cara, or do something so low.”
She stays silent, and I know that she must be thinking about me cheating on her, and how much that hurt.
“I also need to admit something else about our breakup...”
She stays silent which is probably worse because that just means I have to keep talking.
“I never cheated on you.”
Her eyes widen, confusion filling her brown eyes. I know she’s thinking about the kiss she saw. And now that I look at her, I realize she and Con do have the same eyes. I honestly didn’t even remember what Cara’s eyes looked like until now, probably because I was avoiding looking at her in the eye for months as I let my ruse play out.
She opens her mouth, but I continue before she does. “I mean, I did kiss Trisha, but only because I knew you were there. I know that it doesn’t make it any better, but that was the one and only kiss we ever shared, and the only time I’ve ever done something like that. I was dealing with some things, which caused me to be out more. You’ve accused me of cheating in the past and I decided to use that to push you away instead of telling you how I really felt.”
I can tell she’s processing everything I’m saying, so I keep going. “When they told me they wanted me to be president of the MC, I was happy, but I also knew you did not want to be stuck in the same clubhouse for the rest of your life. I knew you were made for a different life. And you deserved that.”
She wraps her arms around herself in a protective position, making me feel like even more shit. “You have got to be shitting me. This is too much to process.”
“Take your time.”
“Don’t you dare tell me what to do.” Her words are like a whip, slashing at my skin. I feel the sting. “Let’s take this one thing at a time. So you decided, on your own, that because you didn’t think I wanted to be the president’s old lady, you’d sabotage our relationship?”
Shit, that does sound bad when she phrases it like that. I just nod.
“I think that was my decision to make, Rhett. Not yours.”
“I—” I try to respond, but she just holds up her hand so I don’t say another word.
“And then, instead of having the balls to just break up with me, you let me believe you were cheating on me so I’d break up with you?”
Fuck. This is not going the way I planned. I nod again, staying quiet this time.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
I don’t know whether I should start talking yet, so I just look at her.
“You can talk now!” she says, obviously exasperated with me.
“I don’t know what I was thinking. I just remember back to that time we were hiding out together when all that shit went down, and you said you didn’t want this biker life and you didn’t want our future children to have to do this either. I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“The right thing? First of all, you didn’t even give me a choice. There was no conversation, no asking my opinion. You made a decision for me.” She holds up a second finger, which means I’m in for a list of things. “Second, and I think this is more telling than anything, you chose the MC over me!”
At her scream, Decker, who I forgot lives here, comes into the living room looking between the two of us. He must have just come out of the shower at that moment, because he’s butt fucking naked. “What the hell is going on?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to show up at your house, but I needed to talk to Cara...” I avert my eyes to the ceiling.
Well, we now know what Cara sees in him.
“I’m not embarrassed, but I’ll put on clothes so you don’t get a crick in your neck.” I hear him leave and then he comes back shortly with sweats on.
“Go ahead, tell him. Tell him what you just told me.” Cara swings her arm from me to him.
“Please tell me you did not sleep with Natty,” he says, a look of horror on his face. But in that moment, both Cara and I crack up laughing.
I shake my head. “No, never.”
Cara tries to control herself. “No, babe, basically he just told me that he never cheated on me and wanted me to break up with him so he didn’t have to break up with me, all because he wanted to be president of the Wind Dragons and knew I wouldn’t be happy as an old lady.”
Decker gives me a what the fuck look, and honestly, I’m right there with him. “Okay, don’t hate me here, but isn’t that true, Cara? You never wanted to really be ingrained in the MC. You told me that very early in our relationship,” he says. I give him a mental fist bump.
“That’s not the point! He didn’t talk to me about it and he didn’t let me make a decision. And he was a coward and made me break up with him.”
“Okay, okay.” Decker holds his hands up in surrender. “While that was not a great move, Cara, didn’t it work out the way it was supposed to? You and me would have never gotten together if he didn’t make that decision.” Okay, maybe he isn’t that bad.
She takes a deep breath. “Look, I get what you’re saying. Rhett and I were drifting apart, hanging on to what was and our history. He was too busy with the club and not coming home, and I was just alone most of the time. But I wish we’d had this conversation instead of him letting me think that he cheated on me. That really hurt me.”