Chapter 26

Katya

WITH COLD, STEELY determination, I stepped off that plane, made my way through customs with my carry-on rolling luggage and hit the curb to summon a taxi. Here I was, back in the hometown again after a couple years away. My gaze drifted north, as it often had on clear mornings like this. Along the horizon, my eyes traced the familiar outline of The Lions in their vigil over the city spread out below them. These two peaks in the North Shore mountains were all the sign I needed to know that I was home.

Any feelings I might have had, looking at them in any other circumstances, were currently muted by that strange numbness inside. With single-mindedness, I reminded myself I couldn’t waver until this last task was over. Until I’d cleared up that outstanding business I’d outrun almost two years before.

Perhaps I’d left this city a scared little girl, but I was stepping back into it a grown woman. A badass.

Remember how badass you are, Kat. And though it hurt to think of Lucas, his words helped get me through, running on repeat through my mind like a mantra.

As I’d planned, I got to the Crown counsel office in PoCo over an hour early. They stored my bag for me. The showed me to the questioning room, where I’d asked to be seated early. My family would no doubt come. Though Derek had the right to be in the room when I was questioned, my parents did not. I didn’t want to hear their guilt trips. I didn’t want to be subjected to the pressure they’d no doubt put on me. I didn’t want to be so deeply disappointed in them once again.

I just needed to get this out. The truth. My truth. And be done.

People trickled in and out, a court reporter set up her machine, videographer doing the same, making sure lighting and sound were optimal. The prosecuting attorney and the defense lawyer team soon arrived. I kept my eyes down and sat and did what I was told until it came time to answer the questions.

Derek tried to approach me before the questioning, but I’d kept my eyes down, hadn’t spoken to him, hadn’t even looked at him. I couldn’t. Because I knew I’d waver and my heart would hurt. And I’d want to do anything to help him. Like I had, over and over, all throughout my life.

But putting myself in legal jeopardy wasn’t the answer. And it sure as hell wouldn’t help him. So after they swore me in, I spoke my truth. Only then did I dare look at Derek. Our eyes met for just one brief second before he buried his face in his hands. It was over, finally. And he knew it.

I blinked tears from my eyes, aware of the shakiness, though whether it was from nerves or lack of having eaten a thing since the night before, I didn’t know. Soon the questioning was officially through and people packed up their things and began their side conversations, I was in the middle of it all, alone.

“Are you all right, dear? Is there anyone we can call for you?” I looked up at a kind-faced middle-aged woman, part of the prosecuting team.

I shook my head. “I’m alone but I’m fine.”

Nevertheless, she fetched me a cup of cold water which I sipped. Derek had left the room by then and now all I needed to do was call a taxi to take me to my hotel. Then who knew what? I was off for a week.

Maybe I’d look up some of my old friends, go visit my aunt.

It was altogether possible that I’d never step foot in this beautiful city ever again.

Outside the conference room, I glanced around under my eyelashes while keeping my face pointed toward my phone. I was Googling numbers for a taxi service but also trying to avoid accidentally bumping into my parents.

Much to my shock, they weren’t there and my brother was gone already, too. It was entirely possible that Derek had had a friend drive him here. Perhaps the parents didn’t even know. Though that would seem odd. Suddenly I felt light, giddy with relief.

I was only a few kilometres from home. It would have been nice to be able to go pack up a few boxes of my things. But did I want to chance the inevitable confrontation with them?

With firm strides out the door and into the sunny afternoon, I decided it wasn’t worth it. I’d lived without those things this long, I could go longer, perhaps forever. This strange mixture of relief and loneliness was doing things to me, however. As I made my way down the overabundance of concrete steps toward the curb, tears prickled the backs of my eyes.

This too, would pass.

Remember how badass you are.

The minute I thought of that phrase again was the same minute that I saw them. Three figures on a nearby concrete bench. Upon seeing me hit the bottom of the stairs, all three of them stood.

Mum, Dad and standing right in between them, Derek.

I froze and the needles behind my eyes exploded with sharpness and pain. My vision blurred and my throat clogged. Damn it. Not the best time to burst into tears like a little girl.

Not when I was trying to be a badass.

I stood still and slowly they walked toward me, Derek lagging behind the other two. I sniffed loudly and blinked my eyes, then admitted to myself that I needed to give my cheeks a quick swipe with the back of my hand.

Dad stood right in front of me. Mum off to the side, a little behind him.

“Katya,” he said. “How are you doing?”

With another self-conscious sniff, I tore my eyes away from the scrutiny on my mum’s face and looked at Dad. “I’ve been better.”

“I missed you, girlie. Why didn’t you ever call?”

I swallowed and stuffed my hands into my pockets. “I was under the impression that You stick with this family or you’re gone for good, meant, yeah, that I was gone for good.”

He flinched, clearly not appreciating his own words repeated back to him across almost two years. Mum spoke up at his side. “Derek was just telling us you came all this way back home just to tell everyone you won’t help him.”

I cleared my throat and turned to her. “I came back to tell the truth. I don’t know where he was that night. And I had to get this over with because your very expensive lawyer tracked me down and was trying his hardest to get me kicked out of the States. I didn’t appreciate that trick, either. Maybe now you’ve learned that I’m not a little girl you can intimidate anymore. Maybe you haven’t missed me at all. Especially if the first things you have to say to me are how upset you are that I didn’t commit a crime just to cover Derek’s ass.”

Mum started shushing me and that just pissed me off more.

“No, I’m not going to quiet down. Even now you have no notion whatsoever that what you asked me to do was heinous and wrong. I’m your daughter, goddamn it!”

“Kat, don’t speak to your mother that way,” Dad snapped.

“Then she shouldn’t be speaking to me the way she is. She seems to forget she has two children, not just one.”

Behind both of them, I could see Derek begin to pace, wringing his hands. I tore my eyes away.

“Was there anything important you needed to say? I’m going to leave,” I finally said.

“Don’t leave. Come to the house, girlie. I promise we’ll be civil.”

“There’s nothing I want there, anymore. I’m still really hurt by the way you’ve all treated me so I don’t think I can.”

Mum shook her head at me with a disgusted curl of her lip. “It’s always been all about you and only you, hasn’t it, Katya? Why, oh why, did I raise such a selfish girl? Your brother is sick. Didn’t you listen for one moment during all that family therapy? He’s sick!”

New tears sprang to my eyes and now Derek had stopped and was watching us talk about him like he wasn’t even there. “Yes, he’s sick. And it breaks my heart—” my voice cut off in a sob. “And it’s broken my heart over and over again. And every time he promised to do the work to get better, I hoped against all hope that this one time, that one time would be the time. And over and over again, he’d fall. And instead of learning what you needed to do to be the support network he needs, you enabled him to keep doing it. Derek may be the addict but this entire family is sick. You two are addicted to enabling him.”

Now Dad was trying to shush me because my voice was raising and people were on the sidewalk nearby. A mother pushing her baby in a stroller had her eyes glued to us and almost ran into a pole. Some man in a dark suit out of the corner of my eye veered from the curb and headed straight for us. Maybe he was an officer of the court who was going to threaten us with disorderly conduct or something.

This was Canada, after all, didn’t the world know us all for our politeness and cheerful friendliness? There was nothing cheerful or friendly happening on this sidewalk right now.

“I told you I’m not going to shush. If you’re going to stand there and accuse me of being selfish—”

Suddenly the man in the dark suit was beside me, holding my arm. Dad jerked his head toward the newcomer, his expression angry.

I looked up at the man beside me and almost fell over when I saw who it was. Lucas. A rush of so many feelings raced through me—confusion, joy, relief, betrayal. I blinked.

Maybe I was imagining things, and I’d just dreamed him up out of delusion.

“Hello,” he said, clearing his throat. “I’m Lucas Walker, your son-in-law.” And just like that he was shaking my stunned dad’s hand and then my mum’s.

Lucas then waved to Derek who was staring at him. “Hi Derek.”

My brother dropped his gaze to the pavement. “Hey Lucas.”

“I’ve come to take my wife away from whatever this is. She doesn’t deserve this sort of treatment. She is the one who did the right thing. And it was wrong of you all to ask her to do anything else.”

Dad looked at Lucas as if he had no idea what to say and Mum was now crying. Great. This family… we’d be a great case for the Jerry Springer show if there was anything like that in this country. And I’d be embarrassed that Lucas was even here witnessing this if I hadn’t seen just as bad behavior on his own parents’ part.

Lucas tugged my arm lightly, trying to get me to disengage, but all I could do was look at them with these crazy mixed-up feelings. Should I just walk away again without a word—like I had before?

It felt wrong not to say anything.

“You’re my family. You’ll always be my family. But that doesn’t mean you get to tell me how to live my life anymore. I’m going to make the decisions I need to be happy. And if you can’t love me anymore, then I’m sorry for you and I’ll find the people who will truly love me.”

Dad and Mum looked like I’d just set off an explosion in their faces. They were clearly shell-shocked. The only one who wasn’t, was my brother, who’d finally stood up straight, watching me.

And the most stunning thing of all was that he had tears running down his cheeks. He slowly approached, and I felt Lucas tense at my side, ready for anything. But I knew Derek better. My brother was messed-up and selfish most of the time but he wasn’t violent. He’d never hit me, even when he was high.

He stopped right in front of me, unabashedly crying and making no effort to wipe his face. “Kat,” he croaked in a voice that broke. “I’m sorry, sis. I’m sorry I put you through this. I’m sorry I broke this family. I’m just sorry.”

Gawd. Now I was losing it again. That feeling like I’d swallowed a handful of nails. I hadn’t cried this much in—well since that incident in Lucas’s den the previous month. My eyes ached and my cheeks were raw with salty tears.

Ugh. It would be so much easier if I could just hate Derek.

But I loved him.

He was my brother. He was a fuck-up. He was sick. But he was Derek. And I loved him.

I reached out my hand and grabbed his, squeezing it and looked him straight in the eye through my tears. I summoned up the lessons I’d learned from all those tenets at Al-Anon meetings and from my own therapy and in my reading. “If you love me... if you love all of us, give us the best gift ever. Get better. But don’t do it just for us. Do it for yourself.”

I’d heard that he might get sentenced to as many as two years in jail if he was convicted. And though the thought of my brother in jail made me ill, I knew that nothing I could have done, even if I had lied, would have made him better. He had to decide to fight for it and no one else could do it for him.

Derek’s face dropped into his hands and Mum was comforting him. And for once, I didn’t begrudge her that. She and I might not ever see eye to eye, but it didn’t matter anymore. I was a grown woman, and I had to live my life for me now.

“Good bye, Mum. Bye Dad.”

I stepped back and Lucas guided me, his arm around my shoulder. He turned us around so we were walking away from them. They didn’t call after me.

And I didn’t look back.

Instead I kept walking. And before I even realized it, I was leaning against Lucas, resting my head against his shoulder. His arm tightened, and we kept walking.

I knew that there was a park nearby with a trail. I’d catch the cab for my hotel soon, but for right now, I just needed to be away.

And I needed to know why the hell he was here.

Once we were safely down the thickly wooded path, I stopped. Every fifty metres or so, there were wooden park benches, covered trash cans and those little dispensers for bags to put your dog poop in. But at midday on a weekday, there was hardly anyone here.

I faced him and he stopped, staring at me, allowing me to extricate myself from his hold.

He had his laptop bag slung over his shoulder and began fishing through the front pocket until he pulled out a rumpled but clean In-n-Out napkin.

I thanked him and began mopping up my face and blowing my nose loud enough to summon small animals to my aid. “Wow the napkin is giving me flashbacks to our glorious wedding.”

“I’ve got another one. Here.” He tried to take the snotty one from me but I wouldn’t let him. Gross. Why’d he want that? “Let me throw it away for you.”

I stuffed it into my pocket instead. “Why are you here? What happened with the presentation?”

He hesitated, staring at me and taking a deep breath before letting it go. “It’s not important what happened with the presentation. What’s important is that I screwed up massively by letting you come up here by yourself after promising you I’d be here for you.”

I rubbed at my sore eyes.

“Well, as you see, I managed to do it myself.” I took a deep gulp of air. “But I’m glad you showed up when you did. I was feeling mighty alone out there on that sidewalk.”

He blew out a breath and shook his head. “I’m so sorry, Kat. I wish I could have been there for you.”

I frowned. “In some ways, you were, or at least your words were, reminding me I was a badass. And that I could do it alone.”

He hesitated, and I looked up at him. He seemed super nervous. He was staring into my eyes. I’m sure they were a site to behold—all runny mascara, puffy and swollen. He had no luggage to speak of and I still only had my carry-on which I’d been lugging beside me all this time. “I should probably get going. It’s late enough I can check in and I could really use a nap….”

“Can we… can we go sit on that bench over there? For just a minute.”

“I think I’ve had my share of overwrought emotional confrontations for the day.”

His face fell. “I don’t have anything to confront you with. I just—”

I sighed. “Okay, fine. I’ll sit there and hear what you have to say. You’ve had a long trip, and it doesn’t even look like you brought any luggage… Did you have a plan?”

He turned and walked to the bench without answering my question. I tagged along after him, rolling my bag behind me. He sat, and I gave him some space, scooting away to the end.

He noticed, his jaw bulging where he clenched his teeth. You bet, I was still pissed at him. He was here, and that was great and I was grateful but had it really changed anything?

“I need to admit some things to you.”

I folded my arms over my chest and cocked my head toward him. “Okay.”

“I’m not falling in love with you.” I blinked, acknowledging the stab of hurt that sliced through me but before I could say anything, he kept on talking. “Because I already fell for you long ago.”

My brows scrunched so closely together they threatened to form a permanent unibrow. “Uh, what?”

“Kat, I think I fell in love with you the first week I met you. I didn’t know it then. I didn’t acknowledge it because I was so dead set against ever trusting my feelings again. They’d failed me once. And it had been a critical failure that had cost me a lot.”

I opened my mouth to interrupt, but he held up his hand. “Please, just let me get this out. Then you can say whatever you want.”

I snapped my mouth shut and waved my hand, urging him to continue.

“This entire time we’ve known each other, I pushed you away. I was an obnoxious prick at times, but it was full on self-preservation mode. I knew you’d destroy me if I let you get close to me.” Man, it was hard not to interrupt him or to talk back, but I did as he’d asked.

I thought through those times he was talking about, his gruff, sometimes mean behavior. The insult ping pong game we constantly played. I gave as good as I got—and sometimes better. But all that time, I’d been so sure he hated me—or merely tolerated me out of necessity.

Except those few times I’d caught him looking at me with something other than hate. It wasn’t lust, though I’d caught that sometimes, too. Other times he’d look at me with that same expression I’d seen so much on his face lately. Admiration, respect and sometimes even pride.

I shook my head.

“I know it’s hard to believe. Believe me, I’m the textbook poster boy for lying to myself. And that’s exactly what it was. I… built these huge walls around myself and I was safe there. But I had to keep you away because you’d beat them down like they were never there. Not a wrecking ball, not a steam-roller but a fucking one hundred megaton bomb wrapped in a supernova.”

I blinked, those tender feelings from all the emotions I’d felt throughout these past few days were sore. And like anything that was sore, they didn’t want to be poked and prodded any further.

I drew back from him, hugging myself. He wanted to talk about walls? Well, I needed some protection right now because I was feeling naked and vulnerable and…

Without another word, he stood up from the bench, took a step away, ran his hand through his hair, then pivoted, right in front of me. He sunk to both knees in front of the bench where I sat.

“You are, without a doubt, the best thing that has ever happened to me. And I was a stupid idiot and pushed you away hard because I was so afraid of what you were doing to me without even trying.”

On that bench I stared at him, wide-eyed and stunned. My mouth opened. What could I say? I licked my lips.

He reached out and took each of my hands in his own. “Thank you for letting me get all this out. I don’t even deserve you, not after I let you down the way I did. Not after I hurt you. But I’m going to be an undeserving asshole and ask you anyway.… Will you give us another chance?”

I opened my mouth and closed it, stunned. Our gazes locked and held. I couldn’t breathe and it sure as heck looked like he was holding his breath, too. Maybe we’d both die from lack of oxygen out here and sometime in the spring, some unsuspecting jogger would happen upon us, frozen and then thawed in this exact position. And they’d launch an investigation to find out why we’d died.

And the cause would be sheer stupidity. On both our parts.

I blinked and bit my lip. “There would have to be rules…” I began.

His brow dipped in earnest and he nodded slowly.

“You know, because I love rules so much…” I continued. “And I can make much better rules than you can.”

He blinked, concern clearing. He was on to me.

“Before you tell me what they are, I agree to all of them.”

“Is that wise?” He reached into his pocket, pulled something out, then tugged my hand toward him. Without any words, he slipped a ring on my finger. “Your great-grandmother’s ring! I gasped in surprise.

“Nope. That’s your ring. To be resized at our earliest convenience. I can’t ask you to marry me because we’re already married. And asking you to not divorce me seems backward.”

I pulled my hand back and studied the flashing diamond for a moment. “Now tell me about your job, because I have a sneaking suspicion that you were at work to give the presentation and you left to catch a plane.”

He nodded. “Accurate.”

I raised my brows at him expecting him to elaborate. He didn’t. “Well? What happened? Did you lose the job?”

He didn’t even hesitate. “I don’t know. Probably.”

“You don’t seem to care all that much.”

His eyes fixed on mine, and he looked at me, really looked at me like he was looking at me for the very first time. Like he was laying eyes on an awe-inspiring work of art. His eyes traced the contours of my face, my hairline, my neck, my ears. Like he was soaking it all in.

Something about that, the way he looked at me, stole my words, blocked my throat. And there was this pressure inside my chest, like suddenly my heart hurt with every beat.

“It was a matter of perspective, Kat. I wanted that job, yeah. I really wanted it. But fuck if I didn’t give a shit about whether or not I had it once you were gone. It was like….” He shook his head. “Like nothing good was worth having if you weren’t there to share it with.”

Well, talk about melt-inducing. My shoulders slumped and my spine softened and I melted right into him, bending forward and catching my hands around his neck to pull him in to kiss me.

We kissed, and we kissed, my mouth opening to his and our lips fusing together, speaking the language of love that had been so difficult for us to express with our words.

I held his head to mine and his hands clamped on my waist, scooting me close to him. Soon, we were pressed up against each other and breathless. Our lips parted and there were tears on my cheeks. He expelled a breath of surprise and reached up to dry them. “Please don’t cry anymore, my beautiful Katya. I’m going to spend the rest of my life making sure you never have a reason to cry again.”

“Even though you’re going to be stuck with me hunting bugs in the Den for the rest of our lives?”

“Cranberry, if it’s with you, it’s going to be ten times more fun than anything else.”

I smoothed my thumb over his cheek and smiled. “You’ve absolutely ruined the knees in your suit pants by now.”

He smiled. “Worth it.” He picked up my left hand, the one that bore the ring he’d given me and kissed it. I noticed, then that he wore his ring, still. He’d never taken it off.

“So if you just walked out of the board meeting and went to the airport, how did you have my ring with you?”

He smiled. “I had to run by the house to get my passport for the trip. I grabbed the ring at the same time.”

Suddenly, as I pictured him running around grabbing stuff at the house, another thought occurred to me. “What about the dog? You didn’t leave Max alone, did you?”

He shook his head and smiled. “Jordan and April are babysitting him tonight. Tomorrow, Michaela is going to take him back over to his doggy camp to see his lady friends again. I heard one of them is a poodle.”

I laughed. “You know, when we first met, I thought you were so hot… then you opened your mouth and said the most complete assholish thing to me.”

“You remember what I said?”

I nodded. “Yup. You said, ‘There’s no reason to be so smiley. We’re serious in QA and you’d better be serious, too.’”

“Wow, what an asshole,” he concurred.

“Right?” I shook my head. “Jedi Boy.”

“Cranberry.”

He ran a thumb over my hand again, then pushed to his feet, sliding onto the bench beside me. He held that hand up to his mouth again, kissing it like an old-timey gentlemen would woo his lady-friend.

“It’s too late for me to give you the wedding of your dreams, but we can have a big fancy party to celebrate… maybe renew our vows, if you want.”

I snorted. “You know me well enough by now to know what I’d think of something like that.”

“Sounds like Hell?”

“You got it. Let’s just have a nice little get together with our close circle and as for our vows… let’s renew them on our own. On a real honeymoon.”

He raised his brows, intrigued. “Hmm that sounds like an interesting idea. Any idea when—or where?”

“I have the next week off. Let’s go now.”

He nodded. “That’s very possible. Where should we go?”

My grin widened, heartened with the idea. “Let’s test our adventurous spirit. I have hardly any luggage and you have none. Let’s just go to the airport and pick a destination when we get there.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “You are absolutely insane.” Then he shouted to the sky, “My wife is insane! I love her more than anything.”

“My husband is too sane. I love him more than donuts. And beer.”

He wrapped his arms around me. “But not tea?”

I grinned. “There are limits. But there’s always room for growth.”

He kissed me again, and we held each other, rocking to the rhythm of the beating of our hearts. He squeezed me to him tight, and I pressed my face to his solid shoulder.

He kissed my hair. “I will never give this up. And I swear to God I will never let you down again. To say nothing of never making you cry. And—”

I pulled back suddenly, staring at him in disbelief. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I held up a hand between us. “Don’t even!” But there was a wicked, wicked glint in his eyes that gave me my answer. “Dude, did you just… rick-roll me?”

“You know the rules…”

I punched him in the arm. “You fucker. I’m so getting you back!”

He grimaced and rubbed his bicep. “But not right now because right now we’re getting a taxi and going to the airport.”

He took my hand and pulled me off that bench. Then he grabbed my suitcase. I tried to get him to skip to the parking lot but he refused. He did sing along with me, though it was Lucas’s least favorite song in the world.

It was now my favorite.