The late is because my laptop was giving me some trouble.
Also 450 comments and I'll update tomorrow?
━━━━━━━━━♚━━━━━━━━━
Katrina Diaz
"I've no excuse to give you for what I did, except for the fact that I was confused and lost. Hearing about our past from Vanessa made me angry, and despite all my trust in you, a cowardly part of me was scared that you would wake up one day and realise I am living because Diana — the mother of your child and your child paid a price. And for the longest, I told myself that you hate me. Seeing what you did to Kendra, I was scared because you have brains, guns, and power. You have everything I don't and the imbalance was scary..." I drawled.
He gave me a look that said 'how is any of that my mistake?'
"My mom, my sister, my best friend, my ex — they were not always cruel to me. They just changed mid-way. And an insecure part of me always believed you'd change, too. I let my cynical mind weave tales, and I had to protect myself because betrayal from you is not something I can ever recover from. So, I wanted to stay away from you, but then Gladys..." I sucked in a sharp breath to calm the panic raising in my chest.
"After what she did, it felt like it was me against the world; I just couldn't push past the hurt from her betrayal to see that anyone would truly care about me. One day she was giving me a cup of hot chocolate and the next day she was killing me. Despite never harming any of them, they all hated me, and how could you not when I caused you pain? So I assumed you were there to torture me as she had. And I didn't know if I wanted to live or die." I bit my lip. "I just..." didn't want to be tortured.
"It took me a while to remember how you're the reason I had survived Gladys physically and mentally. You have to know I'm not giving you reasons to justify my actions. I'm baring myself open to you, admitting I've been nothing but an insecure idiot." My heart stung. "And you have to know— You have to know how sorry I am. For threatening you. For not trusting you. For the way, I left things between us."
"There is an 'us'?" Cold, cold words.
"There..." My words died. "I'm sorry. I should have known that you wouldn't hurt me. I should have trusted you."
"But you never do." He ambled closer to my bed. "I could burn the world to keep you warm and you would find a way to make me the villain in your narration."
"I'm sorry..." I fisted the bedsheet.
His shoulders stiffened. "I heard you the first time."
"And people in your court don't get a second chance?" My eyes met his.
"Not you."
"I feel so special," I quipped, unable to push down the satire.
"You're not."
"I wish I was," I whispered ruefully. "What do you want me to do to get your forgiveness?"
"You'll never have it."
"Because I ran away?" My shoulders slumped.
"I should have left you" — sheer, contained rage — "out on those damn cold streets."
If Hayden did that, Romeo would've come after me.
Tearing my eyes away from his, I gazed down at my lap, emotions closing around my throat. If I lifted my head, he'd see the tears burning at the backs of my eyes, see what his words could do to me, and see how defenceless I was mentally and physically against him.
"Why didn't you leave me, Hayden?" My voice shook with vulnerability.
"Don't cry. Don't Gaslight me into feeling pity — you bought this on yourself." Ruthless words, that velvet cloak voice bringing out the concealed sword.
Stark vulnerability in my face, soul stripped bare, I met his eyes and watched the cold retreat from his eyes. With a sigh, he took a step my way, and I buried my face into my pillow, pulling the sheets over my head.
_______________
Two days later, when I was sure the drug had been totally out of my system, I decided to meet Erika to thank her for helping me. Though I hated Rita Cerak with a passion, I had no reason to treat Erika like shit, especially when she was offering me an olive branch.
Rubbing my palms against my shorts, I wiped the sweat off my clammy hands and rang the doorbell, contemplating running away before I would have to face her.
Was I really doing this without Hayden? What choice did I have if the man couldn't be bothered to talk with me or so much as look at me?
"Kate?" Her green eyes widened, and I shuffled on my feet.
"Hi, Erika." My lips curled into an uneasy smile. I expected her to shut the door in my face, but she reached over to grip my arms.
"Come in. It's absolutely freezing today, isn't it? "Pulling me by my arms, she ushered me inside. As a footman stepped forward to take my jacket, I divested off it before following Erika as she led me into the warmth of her house.
As we sauntered, my inquisitive eyes instantly darted across the high-ceilinged room. The lofty luxury living space had a pair of trophy-imposed shelves, climbing all the way up and backing up against a wall, and had two chimney breasts. Metallic-coloured sofas surrounded the modern coffee table trio, above which eye-catching modern chandeliers were hanging from the roof. The entire area was bathed in the white light which was streaming in from the floor-to-ceiling window.
"Sit down, please." She motioned towards a couch. Smiling, I walked over to a couch, and she hushed, "Not that. The other one."
"Did you guys do the deed here?" I scrunched my nose, unsure if I could sit down anywhere in the house without thinking if these two did dirty.
I swung my gaze towards her and found her blushing. So they did. Amazing.
"No, it's just Ash. He peed on the couch." She gave me an apologetic smile. "You can sit on the beside one."
Ash? He? They didn't have kids — I knew that much about my half-sister.
"Is this Ash a mouse or a dog?" I queried, perching on the edge of the soft cushion awkwardly.
She sank into an armchair across from me and provided, "Ash as in Asher, Rodger's son. Ryan and I were babysitting him last night."
"Oh," I whispered, eyes drifting to a woman who was carrying a tray occupied by a kettle and tea cups and biscuits.
With a smile, Erika reached for the kettle and started to pour the scorching hot tea into two cups with a practised feminine grace.
"I just wanted to thank you for saving Liam. I can't imagine losing him," I whispered, tugging at the handles of the bag in my lap.
"You're my sister, Kate," she reminded me, tone gentle. "Helping you is my responsibility."
The words were out of my mouth before I could call them back. "Is that why you did it? Because we are related and you feel obligated?"
"No," she hurried. Maybe my expression gave away my discomfort. "I feel the responsibility because I like you. You're my person, but not just because we are related."
"You like me?" I couldn't help the scepticism out of my voice.
Erika's and my encounters could be numbered on one hand — the majority of which we didn't even converse much. Then how could she like me?
"I do. What's not to like about you?" Her brows bunched in concentration. "Don't you remember the Christmas balls you attended when you're in Frostburgh?"
"No?"
"There was this little girl who wanted chocolates, which her mom wouldn't permit her to eat. And she charmed me into giving her chocolates. Do you know what she told me when I asked her name? 'What would you—"
"Like it to be?" A chuckle left my mouth. "That was my response for the longest time."
"That little girl had lashes from a stick on her palm. Lashes she got from eating chocolate. Such cruel punishment." Her forehead creased into a frown.
Of course, Matilda did that. If I ever stepped a toe out of line, she would go ballistic and punish me mercilessly.
"I forgot the girl's face, her voice, pretty much everything about her except the lashes. There wasn't anything I could do when I was a teenager trying to save a mom. And by the time I realised that the little girl was my sister, it was too late — a decade late. Then I spent nights wondering if the girl survived that callus, abusive house. And I know very little about you, but I love you all the same, like a father seeing his unborn child for the first time."
Overwhelmed by her confession, I offered her a smile, unable to weave words into sentences so eloquently. I reached for the bag in my lap and pulled out the little gifts and placed it on the table.
"I hope you like them."
Awkwardness at its finest.
Way to go, Kate!
"You didn't have to.." she paused, eyes scanning the label on the wine bottle. She let out a high-pitched scream, "Penfolds Grange Hermitage 1951. Where did you get it? It's so rare."
"Liam has connections." I shrugged. "Besides, he was the one who told me you like wine."
A few days back, when I had asked Liam what Erika loves the most, and he had it was wine. I had done the grave mistake of asking him to choose a good wine, and he had had it delivered to me two days later. We had bickered a lot that I wouldn't use his money and he said if I wouldn't give it to her, I could drink it or just throw it in the trash for all he cared. Throwing it in the trash seemed way too extreme, and I wasn't a wine lover, so I wasn't left with much choice. Thankfully, the glass was brown-coloured, or maybe I would throw up if I saw the wine.
"I could kiss the ground you walk on for bringing this. Wine is my guilty pleasure." She held the bottle to her chest.
"Why are you screaming, Cox?" Ryan's voice reached my ears before his foot appeared in my peer. His steps halted at the end of the hall, eyes studying his fiancée. He was dressed in a dashing black suit.
"She's got a 1951 bottle," Erika exclaimed, clutching the bottle like it was a damn trophy. I had to stifle a laugh at her excitement.
"A week back I bought you Chateau Lafite 1869, and you complained it tasted like shit." Ryan narrowed his eyes at his fiancee.
"Trust me, I still stand by that." Her chuckles filled the room.
"Leave it for you to make fun of a $230,000 bottle of wine." He rolled his eyes. "This, yet again, proves your IQ has fallen to room temperature."
Erika narrowed her eyes. "What have you accomplished in your life that makes you an Einstein, Kingston?"
"Aside from the fact that I deal with you day and night—"
She interrupted him. "In your delusions, I presume?"
"No, I meant all the time when I interrupt your rants with facts and reasons."
"I really love you all the time, you know." Erika took a sip of her tea. "But then you start talking and I just want to punch you in the face."
"To ruin my stunning looks and stop me from being on the Forbes list?" Ryan's lips twitched.
"To put a stop to your vexing arrogance, honestly."
"Is it still arrogance if I pull out our grades?" An arrogant smile.
"Fuck you, Kingston."
"Feeling horny again even after I shagged you this morning, Cox?"
"And that's my cue to leave," I announced, climbing to my feet and Erika shot Ryan a glare, her cheeks red. Standing up, she held me by my arm, gesturing me to sit.
"NO!" Erika protested, giving her fiance a stink eye. "It has to be a certain obnoxious presence that should be long gone by now."
"The door is this way, Cox." Ryan responded, pointing a finger at a door.
"Ryan Kingston!"
With a laugh, he sauntered towards her, ignoring the sheer annoyance painting her features. Grabbing her face into his hands, he kissed her and her hands curved around his ribs, pulling him closer to her. He angled his head to deepen the kiss, and I shifted my gaze from them, embarrassment coursing through me.
"I'll be back for dinner." His eyes flitted to me. "Hello, Kit kat. Don't be alarmed by her recurring hysterics."
"Leave now unless you want to sleep on the couch." Erika shoved him in the direction of the foyer, wrenching out a laugh from me. "He is annoying."
"He seems to love you," I noted as she settled down on the sofa.
"He does." Her lips curled, and her eyes lit up.
"How are things with Hayden?" She asked hesitantly, handing me a cup of steaming tea.
I held the saucer in my hand, appreciating the floral print on it. "Why do you ask?"
Now, my strained relationship with Hayden was an open book for everyone.
"Because Hayden is complicated. Men like him they usually don't care, but when they do, they love you more than themselves. And Hayden has the patience of a saint, but when he reaches that threshold, there's no stopping him from becoming your worst nightmare. It's scary how callus he could become to the same person he cares for. And I heard Ryan say that he wasn't happy about you going to Frostburgh."
No wonder having Hayden close enough yet not having him was the closest form of torture.
"He was extremely displeased," I whispered.
Erika said softly, "He'll come around."
With a nod, I diverted the topic from my relationship with Hayden to other things. Soon, Rodger's wife, Eirlys' Kingston, joined us too, ranting about motherhood and wifehood.
"How was Hayden like?" I asked, putting my elbow on the armrest.
"The one that always left the group chats." Eirlys burst into a chuckle.
Erika nodded. "The quietest, the nerdiest, and the most controlled one."
"The deadliest one, too." Eirlys' face twisted in pure awe. "He was a force to be reckoned with. Most girls were jealous of Erika for having Ryan and Hayden on her arms. She was quite the talk of the town."
"Stop it. Don't talk as if you didn't have Rodger's attention." Erika shot Eirlys a glare.
"I wish I got to experience all the fun," I whined, meaning those words.
Erika's eyes slid to me. "The only thing I can remember is how I had only one-night stand and way too many books to fit in."
"Must be really hard since your roommate was a nerd, too." Eirlys offered not so sympathetically. "Your sister's roommate, Mackenzie,a was a misandrist. So Ryan avoided coming to Erika's room because she used to be so hostile. Remember when she and Hayden got into a quarrel?" She turned to me. "She told Hayden, 'I miss the times when men used to go to war and die there.' fuck!"
"And what was Hayden's response?" Curiosity nibbled at me.
"So, do I, Mackenzie. Your empathy is what got us here today." Erika recited Hayden's reply, bursting into a laugh.
"That sounds like him." I agreed.
Hayden's love for wars and chaos was well known.
I inquired. "Are we talking about Mackenzie? The CEO of Mackenzie Architects?"
"Yeah, why do you ask?"
"Oh, dear, Liam is working for her," I squealed, all too excited for his misery.
The other day I overheard her bashing him on the phone, 'Are you going to work, or do you fancy just blabbering on the phone and being utterly useless like most men?' She sounded like she was filled with revulsion towards men.
"Aww, poor Lulu." Erika laughed.
Then our conversation veered into fashion, Eirlys poking fun of Erika's monotone style. Meanwhile, Erika quoted famous quotes that dissed fashion to support her lack of interest in fashion.
"I want to make things right. Salvage every moment we had lost as siblings." Erika's tone was hesitant. "If you think it's still not too late, pick any of your hobbies and sign up for it. I'll tag along with you."
"How about cooking classes?" I suggested, and Erika slapped a hand across her face with a groan.
"Your sister can cook, you know?" Eirlys patted my sister's shoulder. "Only the food is as palpable as cow dung."
"All the more reason to go to cooking classes then." A laugh burst from my chest.
"Really, Kit kat? It was supposed to be us against everyone." Erika huffed. "If it's what you want, I suppose I can attend the classes."
After our giggles and squeals, Erika suggested we could go to a restaurant to have our dinner. Now that I was more susceptible to flashbacks from what happened back in Frostburgh and severe nausea, I had to decline Erika's invitation and had made excuses to go home.
Erika, persistent as hell, talked me into going to the nearest cafe to grab something to eat. And that's how we ended up in a cafe. Thankfully, the drinks and food we had ordered had nothing that reminded me of blood, permitting me to spend the chilly evening with them and keep my mood light and breezy instead of gloomy and gory. Especially the beer that Eirlys had ordered consisted of chocolate and toasted nuts' flavour, making me wonder when would I have the luxury to drink hot chocolate without feeling nauseous.
"Do you fancy a monopoly game?" asked Erika over the rim of her glass.
"No." Sheer horror painted Eirlys' face.
I frowned. "Why do you look traumatised?"
"Because Erika has the patience to keep playing the game for decades," reasoned Eirlys, swirling a fork in her salmon pasta.
"The only game that I've been playing for years now is the one with Hayden and Ryan. Currently, Ryan is at the top, followed by Hayden, but I'm never going to give up. Like never, ever. I'm going to beat those two losers and climb high," said Erika, taking a swig from her second pint of beer, her chicken burger untouched.
"You're high," Eirlys laughed at my sister before her attention drifted to me. "Back in those days, I used to think these three were complexly codependent, Kit Kat."
"Like a poly relationship codependent?" I cocked a brow.
"No!" my sister screeched, cheeks tinting red. "Eirlys is just jealous. Our dynamics weren't so hard to comprehend."
"I think she comprehends it's perfectly normal for grown adults to hate each other's guts at monopoly and somehow still need each other this badly," I remarked, rubbing my palm against each other to generate heat.
Erika, drunk and all, nodded at the blonde beauty. "See, even Kit kat understands our friendship."
"Oh, please. She hadn't seen how you guys were way more dependent than infants on their mothers when they breastfeed," Eirlys said with a laugh
"No, we weren't." Erika protested with a pout that looked ridiculously adorable on someone who walked through corridors of glory and power.
_______________
It'd been three days since I had drunk with Erika and Eirlys, seven days since I had killed Gladys, and perhaps forever since Hayden talked to me. He would be long gone to work before I woke up and wouldn't return home early in the morning. The only evidence of Hayden coming home was his laundry piling up. He was giving me the worst kind of cold shower. And it was becoming rather painful with every passing day. After what Erika told me about Hayden, I had thought leaving him unbothered was the best reaction, but it didn't seem helpful since he had gotten acclimated to ignoring me.
That wouldn't do, though. How long will we go on like this?
So, tonight, I was going to talk, or at least try to talk to him. Spotting Hayden, who was seated on a sofa, working on his laptop, I sauntered over to him, peeping over his screen to see if he was working — to be sure I wasn't disturbing him. He was surfing Twitter.
"How long are you going to be pissed off at me?" I pouted, sliding beside Hayden on the sofa.
Instantly, he moved away from me, creating an entirely unnecessary gap between us, sending a lance of disappointment to spear through my chest. Biting on the inside of my cheek, I shifted closer to Hayden until he was practically sandwiched between the armrest of the sofa and my body.
Turning my head, I stared at him, the hard set of his jaw, the burn of his dark eyes and felt the contained energy vibrating from him as if he sought to keep a leash on vivid anger. Awareness seared through my despair — the memory of his touch, his mouth, his hands.
Lured by the memories of the past, I shifted even closer to him until I felt the length of his thigh pressing against mine, bolts of need arcing through me. Released the tight breath from my lungs, and forced the anguish down into an icy ball, burning it beneath the simmering heat Hayden's presence wrought in me.
"You know I am the foulest of women and I deserve punishment from you for hurting you. So I am sorry and I am willingly ready and will definitely be expecting you tomorrow morning for the spanking you would offer me."
My attempt to crack a smile from him turned futile; Hayden ignored me.
"How long will you ignore me? A month? A year? A decade?" A plea threaded my question, broken and desperate. "All my life?"
Hayden jerked his gaze to me. "Belt up! Now is not the time for this talk, Katrina."
"When is it?" A humourless laugh cracked the brittle air. "It's been a week, Hayden. Just tell me, will we ever be back to normal?"
"I will tell you when I have an answer." The unyielding obstinacy in his voice was brutal.
"That won't do. You'll have to give me an answer." As my calm dissolved into something turbulent, I gripped his jaw, forcing him to look at me.
While he seared me with that alarming gaze of his, our breaths mingled in the space between us, energy crackling in the air, enchanting me to slant my lips and swipe my tongue across his as heat flooded straight to my womb. But would I ever have those moments?
Moments where Hayden would enunciate the word 'mine' with a mere kiss. Make the word so much more than a word. Make it a vow, a command, a truth.
"I miss you," I whispered.
Words of repentance pulverised in my throat when Hayden said, "Why? Do you need something?"
"Such benign words..." I quipped, heart stinging from the burn of his words. "You make rotting alone easier than being punished by you."
His eyes slid to my wrist. "You have only ever craved pain."
And just like that, he had shoved sharp shreds of glass into my veins, making me want to scream in pain. To hear Hayden throw my scars in my face didn't make it any less gut-wrenching, no matter how passively he worded it.
Rage swamping me so fast, so hard, so acute, I couldn't take those words back. "Lucky for me, at least I'm married to someone who gets off on hurting me."
"Don't turn this on me."
"It's all on me. Isn't it? The fact that you nearly tried to kill Kendra? The fact that you threatened to kill my friend? The fact that you made the decision about my biological family. You hid everything about my life from me and still, I'm the only one at fault." I cocked a brow, daring him to say otherwise.
"Alright, I want to believe you don't remember anything." He blinked his eyes. "But tell me, Katrina, am I talking to the honest one in the room?"
My eyes flashed. "I know I'm not talking to the warmest one in the room."
How was I going to tell him about everything about Gladys? It was morbid and gross. Besides, who was to say Hayden wouldn't call it me gaslighting him?
Moving to the extreme edge, giving him the space he had wanted, I pulled my phone out of my shorts and opened Instagram, texting my cousin and listening to her rants about her complicated relationship with Alysteir.
━━━━━━━━━♛━━━━━━━━━
Who is mad at Kate?
Who is mad at Hayden?
450 comments and I'll update tomorrow 12:00 am EST. make in-line comments only in the chapter part and don't spam with "update" its honestly so annoying. (i'll delete the spam comments)
Also we have only 3 chapters excluding bonus chapters and epilogue
Stay safe ❤️