ONE WEEK LATER, Garret stepped into the entryway of Kit’s kitchen, closing the door softly behind him. It was early morning, the sun barely coming up; Kit should be sleeping safely in her bed. But as he stood there, he could all but feel the emptiness of the house. For a moment, he just leaned against the door, closed his eyes, and prayed Kit would give him the chance to explain. Because even though he’d given Caleb the go-ahead to tell her where he was going and why, that wasn’t the kind of explanation that would be important to her—not now.
“She’s gone,” came Caleb’s voice from the kitchen.
Not bothering to take off his boots, Garret stepped into the kitchen. Caleb was sitting at the kitchen island drinking coffee. He looked like shit.
Garret paused.
Caleb took another sip of his coffee, never taking his eyes from Garret. He had a scruffy week’s worth of growth on his beard; his eyes were bloodshot, his face gaunt and drawn.
“Do you know where she is?” Garret asked.
Caleb shook his head.
“How was she when she left?”
“Physically?” Caleb clarified.
Garret nodded.
“Battered, bruised, beaten up, but no lasting damage. Her hip was sore and she was walking with crutches when she left the hospital, but no more head trauma or broken bones, and the knife wounds were healing.”
“And when did she walk out of the hospital?” Garret almost didn’t want to know the answer to that. In the dark recesses of his mind, there was a little part of him that had hoped she’d have had to stay bedridden until he got home. Because then she’d be forced to listen to him.
“They kept her another four days. She got out three days ago.”
Garret swallowed. He’d intentionally not kept in touch with Caleb after he left because Garret hadn’t trusted himself to stay and do what he’d needed to do if he’d known that Kit was coming home without him. “Three days? And you don’t know where she is?”
The thing with Kit was that she could go anywhere. With friends like Drew and Dani, disappearing could be incredibly easy if she really wanted to.
Again, Caleb shook his head.
“She just packed and left?” Great, she really could be anywhere.
Caleb shrugged. “She said she needed some time.” Not to recover from her injuries was left unsaid. Garret felt the bile churning in his stomach.
“And you haven’t looked for her?” Garret could hardly believe that. Not the Caleb he knew.
But Caleb gave him a long, hard look. “I think she’s had enough of the men in her life testing her trust. She asked me to let her go, not to follow her or look into her whereabouts. I thought it was the least I could do.”
Garret felt the accusation lance through his chest. He knew in his heart Kit understood that neither he nor Caleb were anything like her father in the results of their actions. But the cold, unvarnished truth was that, in the actions themselves, they were very much alike. Coming and going as they saw fit, leaving with no notice, going places they wouldn’t divulge, coming back only when the job—whatever it may be—was done.
Distantly, Garret noticed his hand was shaking. Taking a deep breath, he willed himself to stay calm. “Did she say anything else?” he asked.
Again, Caleb lifted a shoulder as he took another sip of coffee. “She said something about needing to heal and just giving herself the space to do that.”
Garret blinked, the fog starting to lift. “She said that? Those words, about needing to heal?”
As if sensing the shift in Garret’s focus, Caleb put his coffee down with a soft thunk on the granite countertop. “Yes.”
Garret turned for the door.
“Cantona?” Caleb’s voice called him back.
Garret turned, “I know where she is and I’m going to be with her. Hopefully, I can also convince her that I’m worth being with, but at the very least, I want her to know exactly why I did what I did so that she doesn’t carry my betrayal with her for the rest of her life. She doesn’t deserve that.”
And not that there had been any doubt, but it was in that moment that Garret realized just what Kit meant to him. When her healing and her happiness became far more important to him than getting what he wanted.