25
IAN EXPLAINED TO her what had happened with the Lipins, and Kelsey spent the remainder of the drive wondering what she could do to help. In a way, this was her fault. Not directly, but the feud was the reason, and she was part of the feud. She’d told her father that she was done, but that was after more than two decades of gleeful participation. She might not have started it, but she’d thrown plenty of fuel on that fire, heedless of how many innocent people prior to Ian might have gotten burned.
Her guilt, of course, was no longer the only reason she wanted to help him. She cared too much about him to stand aside and merely say sorry. Unfortunately, positive intentions didn’t necessarily translate into useful actions, and Kelsey couldn’t come up with many ideas. She might have some influence among her family and family friends, but it was unlikely any of the Porter businesses that were balking at their contracts would listen to her over her father.
That was frustrating in its own right, but her feelings paled in comparison to the frustration and worry plastered over Ian’s face. After he’d told her about his call with Micah, he’d fallen into silence, staring morosely out the window or scrolling through his phone. Kelsey let him be with his thoughts. She had no doubt he’d open up and share in time.
That time turned out to be when she dropped him off at his house, but what Ian shared was nothing like she’d been expecting.
“What are you saying?” She’d parked in his driveway behind the truck. Her SUV’s air was thick with tension, but Kelsey had assumed that was from everything weighing on Ian. And in a way it was. But it sounded like more had been weighing on him than she’d realized, and she felt like someone had knocked the wind out of her. She did not like being blindsided, and she was hoping against hope that she had misunderstood Ian.
Because it sounded like just a week after they’d decided to make their relationship official, he was breaking up with her.
Ian winced. “I can’t do this, do us, now. I’m sorry, Kelsey. I need to focus on the brewery, and that means I don’t have time for distractions. I probably never did, but I wanted to be with you so badly that I lied to myself and said this could work.”
A distraction. He was really calling her a distraction. And he was breaking up with her.
Kelsey thought she might vomit. “A distraction?”
She tried to summon some rage over that, and there was a little. Over time she might be able to build that spark into a fire. But at the moment, it couldn’t overpower the deadness and hurt that Ian’s words had caused.
Ian rubbed his eyes. “Maybe that’s not the right word, but you do distract me, in a good way, and that’s a problem. We’re losing Lipin businesses because I’m with you. And because I’ve been so distracted by you, I didn’t even realize what a problem dating you would be. The brewery has to remain neutral in the feud. It’s the only way we can survive. I shouldn’t have chosen Helen without understanding the town, and that was my mistake. I screwed up. But if the brewery fails, a lot of people are going to get hurt. This is my aunt and uncle’s investment—I have a responsibility to them, to take that seriously.”
Her jaw was aching, and Kelsey realized she’d been clenching it. Better that than to let out the pressure building inside her. She didn’t cry, especially not in public. A good Porter soldier didn’t show weakness. She got angry, not hurt. Then she got vengeful.
She hadn’t been a good Porter soldier in a while, though, and if she didn’t get the hell out of here soon, she wouldn’t be able to hold back the tears.
She’d been right to choose screwed as her new word for Ian. Because that’s what he’d absolutely done to her—he’d screwed her up, screwed her over, and apparently now was screwing right the hell off.
Well, fuck him. Her sense of guilt for whatever role her past actions played in bringing about this moment had depended on him not blaming her for it.
“Fine.” Kelsey restarted the engine. “I was feeling bad, like I’d dragged you into this mess, but if you’re going to choose your job over letting me work through it with you, then whatever. I don’t want to be with someone whose priorities are that messed up. Get your things and good luck.”
Ian reached toward her, and she snatched her arm away. “Kelsey, please. Listen to me. When things settle down maybe, when we’re better established, we can—”
“No. Don’t you dare expect me to wait around until you have your shit together. Life never gets easier around here, and I’m not waiting for you to figure that out. The only when you should be thinking about is when are you going to kick your father out of your head? That’s what this is about. You won’t listen to me or let me help, because all you can hear is him telling you that you’re going to fail. My voice counts for nothing, so why should I believe that’s going to change?”
Ian flinched, which was all she needed to know that her punch had landed. “That’s not fair. I have people relying on me—family, friends, employees. I can’t just tell them ‘Sorry, I have other priorities.’ I’m not like you.”
“Excuse me?”
Ian clamped his lips shut, then broke a second later under her glare. “I mean you have no right to lecture me about choosing to prioritize work. You lie to everyone, even your friends and family, about what you do. To protect your job. I’m at least trying to protect my friends and family by putting my job first.”
Oh, how dare he. She’d explained to him why she had to lie about what she did. Their situations were not even close. Kelsey’s knuckles whitened around the steering wheel. “I said—get your things and get out, before I drive away with them.”
A wall crashed down over Ian’s face, and he got out of the passenger seat. As soon as he’d unloaded his bag, Kelsey backed out of the driveway. It was time to pick up her dogs. She’d been right all along—they were far superior to any humans.
KELSEY FOUND IT hard to be creative when her life was in turmoil, but writing romance specifically, even romance as far-fetched as one involving husky shifters, was like trying to outrun a pack of sled dogs. She couldn’t make it past the starting line.
For that matter, she’d barely made it past her couch for the last two days, but who was counting? Not even her beloved collection of Jane Austen adaptations was helping. Silly Jane had given her characters happy endings.
Kelsey had officially declared a war on happy endings. A feud, if one would.
It was particularly troublesome given that she needed to write them to earn her living. She’d briefly considered switching genres to something more fitting to her state of mind, say, revenge thrillers, but that would not help in the short term when she was under contract for romances. Besides, any type of creativity, even preparing meals, was out of reach.
It didn’t help that Ian’s accusation was stuck in her head. She told herself she did not put her job ahead of her family. That, if anything, she was putting her family ahead of her job. She was protecting them by keeping her secret. Yet at the same time, Kelsey wasn’t so sure she’d be keeping secrets if she did write revenge thrillers. And that made no logical sense. While revenge thriller writers projected an air of don’t-mess-with-me that could be useful in her situation, the fodder any semipublic career provided the Lipins wouldn’t have changed. So what was the difference—why was one lie okay and the other unnecessary? Her only conclusion was that she just didn’t want to deal with the extra baggage that came with the title of romance writer, and in that case, she wasn’t lying to protect her family nearly as much as she was lying to protect herself.
For the first time, she felt a little guilty about all the lying, and that made her angrier at Ian.
Kelsey circled her spoon around the empty container of rocky road ice cream, feeling more forlorn. She was out of ice cream, which meant she needed to put on real pants and get to the grocery store. Her stock of comfort foods was running low.
Maybe she could beg Josh to do the shopping for her.
Then again, that would require responding to the half dozen messages her cousin had left her. Ugh. Human interaction was so overrated.
Kelsey flopped back on the couch, and Romeo let out a tiny yelp of surprise. “Sorry.”
The husky didn’t seem to mind her accidentally smacking him, and he licked her hand. Her entire pack was distressed. The dogs might not know why, but they’d picked up on her mood and had been especially snuggly and affectionate with her since she’d returned on Sunday.
“You’re so much better than people.” Kelsey scratched Romeo’s head, and he nuzzled her shoulder. “Yes, you are. No wonder you don’t trust them. You see where trust gets you?”
As if anticipating a lecture, Juliet and Puck lifted their heads and wandered over. Puck jumped up on the sofa, too, burying her under an additional forty pounds of fur.
“I trusted Ian,” Kelsey said, not about to deny herself a willing audience. “Not only with my secrets, but with my heart. He made me believe that maybe love wasn’t just fiction. That maybe some men could be as deserving of my heart as the three of you are. But it was bullshit. When things got tough, he picked up and ran. He chose his work over me. He didn’t even give me a chance to help, so it must have been an easy decision for him. Obviously, I was an idiot to think I meant as much to him as he did to me.”
Juliet barked her disgust with Ian. Female understanding about these sorts of problems evidently crossed species.
“Exactly. What an asshole to have led me on like he did.”
Although had he ever led her on, or had it all been in her head? Through her misery, it was hard to tell, and Kelsey no longer trusted her judgment. Ian had opened up to her, and he’d made her soup and done her favors, but what if he’d never done more than what he considered to be reciprocating? What if he’d told her about the dogs and his father only because he knew about her career? What if he’d only brought her soup and fixed her table because he thought he owed her for the website work and the car supplies she’d given him? In her head, the exchanges that had started off as an attempt to be even with him had morphed into things she was doing because she cared. But perhaps Ian had always seen these moments as a way to maintain the balance? If she made a move, he had to counter so he didn’t owe her.
Of course, that wouldn’t explain why Ian had indicated he wanted to try again with her in the future. She must have meant something to him if he didn’t want to write off a relationship completely. But Kelsey wouldn’t let herself put too much emphasis on that. The future was nebulous, and Ian might have just been tossing that idea out to make her feel better. Besides, she didn’t even know exactly what he would have said. She’d cut him off because she hadn’t wanted to hear it, and she didn’t regret it.
Kelsey’s stomach rumbled with unhappiness, ungrateful for the steady diet of junk food she’d been feeding it. New question—what if she pulled her head out of her ass and started acting like the warrior she’d been raised to be? Or, barring anything so ridiculously dramatic, just a functional adult again?
She’d allowed herself only two days to mope when she discovered what Anthony had done to her. Then she’d picked herself up and gotten her life back. Or started to. Given how much more pain Ian’s betrayal was causing her, she deserved more time to mourn her crushed heart. But she’d take no more than one additional day—two max—to manage her emotions. She would absolutely not allow Ian more than that.
“It’s a plan,” she told the dogs. Since they didn’t argue with her, Kelsey assumed they thought it was a good one.
Her phone barked with a text, and given the time, Kelsey had a feeling she knew who it was. The same guy had texted her at this time yesterday.
Still, it was best to confirm that it wasn’t Ian admitting he’d screwed up and begging for her forgiveness. Which she wouldn’t give, naturally. He was the one who’d told her it was okay to make people earn it, and that would be an impossible task.
My good opinion once lost is lost forever, so Mr. Darcy proclaims in Pride and Prejudice, and that seemed like an ideal to live up to. Dearest Jane hadn’t intended it to be (probably), and Darcy had been called out on it in the book. But Kelsey was certain Darcy had been onto something. Giving people second chances gave them second chances to hurt you. Only a fool made the same mistake twice.
She’d been fool enough, trusting a new man after the first had hurt her. She would absolutely not let the same man take another swing.
So it would be ridiculous for her to feel disappointment when she checked her text and saw it was from Josh, as she’d expected.
She was not disappointed.
Totally not.
Come walk the dogs with me, Josh wrote. I have Tay’s double chocolate brownies to share.
Kelsey groaned. Her cousin knew her weaknesses well.
Josh also knew what had happened with Ian. She’d have avoided telling him if she could have, but Josh had been dog-sitting, and when she’d shown up at his door with tears on her cheeks, he’d demanded answers. Since Kelsey had felt guilty for interrupting his dinner, she’d given him a quick rundown.
She’d also denied any emotions other than a serious case of being pissed off, but surely Josh had seen through her ruse. Ignoring his texts for the last few days hadn’t been the wisest move if she’d been attempting to hide it.
Too bad for Josh, though; she was in no mood to talk. Her dogs, on the other hand, could use a good walk, and they loved spending time with Josh and his huskies. It was a beautiful day out too. Possibly her first step in recovering from Ian ripping her heart out should be to take advantage of the weather. For the dogs if not for herself.
Fine, Kelsey wrote back. But I’m not talking about you-know-who.
Josh’s response was prompt. I have no idea who you’re talking about. I just have chocolate to share.
Slick. Kelsey almost smiled.
“The things I do for you guys,” she said, peeling herself off the couch and out from under Puck. But who else was she going to do anything for? Her dogs might be the only creatures worth her effort.