He was worried about me. He hated that that happened to me.
But maybe most of all, he hated that I’d gone to Hix, he’d taken care of it and Keith was hearing about it for the first time now when it had always been Keith who had taken care of things for me.
“I’m okay,” I whispered.
He stared at me again, doing it hard, his eyes finally flicking up to Hix before coming back to me.
“I didn’t take her calls,” he said, sounding calmer, still angry, also, upsettingly, still feeling pain.
“Keith—” I started.
“Then she sent the pictures and I took her calls.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
“You deal with this,” Hixon said close to my ear from behind me. “I’ll be in the kitchen.”
I turned to him to nod, but he wasn’t looking at me, his eyes were locked on Keith.
“I’ll be wanting those pictures.”
“Why?” I asked.
He looked down at me and he was not feeling pain. He was just feeling anger.
A lot of it.
“That, Greta,” he jabbed a finger Keith’s way, and from what he said next I knew this movement indicated Keith’s phone and the photos, “is criminal stalking. I want that evidence. I want it in front of the judge. I want that fuckin’ bitch to have a protection order slapped on her so she can’t get near you. And I want this on her record so the next time that woman pulls her nasty shit, I got as much as I can get to land her ass in jail.”
“I’ll get the photos, baby,” I murmured soothingly.
He just scowled at me before he looked again to Keith and declared, “I’m just down the hall and I hope you get me when I say I’m gonna be fuckin’ listening.”
“Darlin’—” I began.
His gaze sliced down to mine and I shut up.
He speared Keith with a look then he turned and stalked out, and that was the first I noticed he was wearing a beautiful, tailored, dark-blue suit, a sky-blue shirt and a pair of awesome brown dress shoes, all of it making him look like a linebacker-sized, male model.
It wasn’t what I’d met him in.
But it was just as hot.
Right.
I absolutely, totally hated my mother.
Doing this to Keith?
Then making me miss my dinner with Hix looking that hot?
I turned to Keith.
“Janice knows I’m here,” he announced.
I felt my shoulders fall and my heart lurch.
Janice, better known as Lawyer Barbie, Keith’s new wife.
“Keith,” I whispered.
“She knows why. It was her opinion it was none of my business. Not that she wanted harm to come to you, just that she wanted me to find a way to intervene without me actually doing the intervening. I got in my car to drive to you while she was putting suitcases in hers to leave me.”
I closed my eyes, opened them and started to him but stopped when he leaned away from my movement.
“Darlin’.” I was still whispering.
“She was right to go. Not fair on her. Me coming here to visit you and Andy and not letting her come with me and her knowing exactly why. Me racing here when I thought you were in a bad situation and her knowing exactly why that is too, seein’ as I’m still in love with my ex-wife. And that’s seein’ as I knew, just like Janice knew I knew, that I never should have let her go.”
My heart didn’t lurch at that.
It started bleeding.
“I don’t . . . I honestly don’t know what to say,” I told him.
He studied me a second before his gaze flicked toward the kitchen then came back to me.
“And I honestly didn’t think that’s what you would say after I shared that.”
Oh my God.
Keith.
I took a step to him, trying again, “Keith—”
He took a step back, forcing out a rough, tortured, “Don’t, honey.”
I stopped and swallowed in order to soothe the burn in my throat.
But nothing could soothe the burn in my eyes except, maybe, the tears I felt trembling at my lower lashes before I felt them begin to glide down my cheeks.
He watched me cry then whispered, “Fuck me, I fuckin’ blew it.”
“Now you don’t, Keith,” I urged huskily.
“She reminded me of you,” he told me.
“Stop it,” I whispered.
“Didn’t even know I was doin’ that shit to her, until she threw it in my face.”
“Keith, please.”
“Married my rebound, lost my shot at reconciliation, doin’ that dickin’ around.”
“I can’t—”
“I did, didn’t I?” he asked. “If I didn’t move on fast to prove to myself I was right to let you go, get on with my life, draw that line in the sand between us, I could have won you back.”
“It doesn’t matter now,” I shared honestly.
“Guess it doesn’t,” he bit out, jerking his chin to the kitchen.
I took another step to him, begging, “Keith, please—”
“Don’t come closer, Greta,” he warned.
I stopped again.
“I see I gotta let you go but I can’t do that to Andy so I’ll go visit him tomorrow and then I’ll leave, but he’s not part of this fucked-up shit so he shouldn’t pay for it. I’ll email you when I’m comin’ to see my guy. But I won’t bother you.”
I hated that.
I hated it so much, I didn’t think it was possible, but it made me hate my mother more.
“Maybe we can someday get to the point where—” I began to attempt to lessen the damage.
He again didn’t let me finish. “That’s not gonna happen. Not ever.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I shoulda known, I divorced you, you changed your name back to hers. The name a woman you hated gave you, not keepin’ the name of the man who loved you.”
“I did that for you,” I told him quietly. “For Janice. And for Andy. He shares that name too, Keith.”
“Right,” he stated dubiously.
“I did,” I asserted.
He jerked his head toward the kitchen this time. “You gonna give him a kid?”
My body locked at being confronted with this version of a familiar refrain, but I forced my lips to push out, “He has kids.”
“Right,” he clipped that word this time. “Greta gets to spread her abundance of love wide but do it removed so the shit of life can’t deliver another blow that will rip her apart. You orchestrated that good. Well done, baby.”
Now my heart was aching.
“Don’t do that.”
I lost his attention in a way that he was looking beyond me and it made me pivot. When I did, I saw that Hixon was indeed listening, and now he was sharing he didn’t like how the conversation had turned because he was leaning against the newel post of my stairs, arms crossed on his chest, deep in a staredown with Keith.
Keith ended the staredown by announcing, “Think that’s my cue to get the fuck out.”
I turned back to Keith to see him sauntering to the door.
For a split second, I didn’t move.
Then I found my feet rushing to follow him.
“Keith, please, God, darlin’, don’t leave it this way.”
He pulled open the door when I made it to him and he turned to me.
I halted and froze when he lifted his hand to cup my jaw.
“Fuck me,” he whispered, his aching eyes roaming my face. “But I blew it.”
A tear slid into the side of his palm and he didn’t do what he’d done time and again when he’d had a crying Greta on his hands—sweep it away with thumb, fingers or lips.