CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - KAMI

Mondays were the worst days to pull double shifts since they were always slow, but at least I had my phone with me to keep me company and my boss didn’t mind if I texted my friends when I wasn’t serving up the Loving Cup’s finest brews.

Tate had messaged me at least fifty times since yesterday. He’d apologized at least twenty times and told me that it wasn’t what it looked like. I’d had to laugh at that one. Wasn’t that what they all said when they got caught?

The thing was, was that I truly thought Tate was different. I thought I knew him better than I obviously did. Could he really have faked all that? He’d told me he loved me and invited me to move into his home with him and his sister. Maybe there was a reasonable explanation. Or did I just want to believe that I hadn’t been fooled again?

Before I could answer that question, Rain walked in with a grim look on her face.

When she’d come to pick me up at Tate’s yesterday, I’d told her I didn’t want to talk about it. I said we’d had a fight and left it at that. She knew not to push me and figured it had just been some petty snit that we’d get over.

“What’s wrong?” I closed the space between us, knowing the girl well enough to tell that whatever it was she’d come in to tell me, was not good news.

She gave me a look like she didn’t know what to say, and I was left to guess for a few more intense moments. “Tell me, Rain. Is it Aunt Helen? My parents? Did someone die?” The look on her face was so unreadable, yet so frightening that I could only imagine the worst.

“No, no one is dead. Though you might wish they were.” She took a deep breath and sat at the nearest table. “I don’t know how to say this, but I guess I could start by asking how well you know Tate.”

“Wait, what? What do you mean, how well do I know Tate?”

“Did you know he’s like really wealthy?”

I shook my head. She’d been talking to Devin again. “I guess so. Big deal.”

“You make it sound like it’s a welfare check, Kam. But I’m telling you, he’s like filthy rich, and has quite a playboy reputation.”

That one hit home. I thought about the messages on his phone again and started to feel increasingly nauseated. She looked down to her phone and then after keying with her thumb, she turned the thing around and let me see a few images that had popped up. Pictures of Tate dressed up for parties, draped with women, everything plush and gilded around him. One of the images I clicked on, showed him with a sports car and the title of the article read Young Millions.

“So he has millions. Who cares?” I asked.

“That’s not all I have to tell you,” Rain said.

“Oh, this should be good,” I said.

“Listen, Kam, he’s been whoring around the Matched Solid site the whole time you’ve been together.”

I sighed. “I know.”

“Wait, what? You know? Is that why he called me to come get you yesterday?” she asked incredulously.

“Yeah. I grabbed his phone to check the time and saw a bunch of notifications. I don’t know, Rain. He swore to me that there was an explanation, that it wasn’t what it looked like. He’s been texting me nonstop, trying to get me to talk to him.”

“Well before you talk to him, you need to see the rest of this. That girl Samantha I work with got a message from him.”

My blood turned to ice-water and my face burned.

“What kind of message?”

“She forwarded it to me, in screen shots, so you can see for yourself, Kam. It’s him, and he seemed pretty interested.” I took the phone and held my breath as I read his brief, but damning message. Hello, Beautiful. It was the first thing he said to me. And sure enough, that was followed by, hope we can chat. He’d baited me like all the others. But why spend so much time with me? Perhaps I was a hell of a lot easier, or gullible. My nausea increased.

There was one last screen shot of Samantha telling him how hot he was and his response was “Likewise.”

“When did she say this happened?”

Rain took her phone and held my hand. “She told me last week she was talking to this amazing guy. She said he was extremely gorgeous and she’d show me his picture at lunch. You can imagine I almost fell over when I saw it was Tate. She said he was well sought after. There’s a forum, and some of the women had been battling for his attention. She figured he finally settled on one.”

“This has been going on the entire time I’ve been with him.” I pulled away and put my hands over my face as tears came to my eyes.

“I’m going to beat his ass; I swear it, Kam!” She was livid, and I knew it was only because of my tears.

Suddenly, I felt the contents of my stomach rise into my throat and I barely made it to the bathroom before I vomited everything I’d eaten that morning. Once I emptied my belly, I splashed cold water on my face and went to tell my boss that I needed to go home. Since I had never once called in sick in my two years, he didn’t hassle me at all.

“I’m so sorry, Kam.”

Rain offered to drive me home. Even though I’d thrown up, I still didn’t feel right. I accepted and we rode the short distance in silence.

I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead to the cool glass of the passenger window. I couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been. I had put myself in exactly the same position that I’d been in with Devin. What an idiot I was.

My phone buzzed in my hand and I looked down to see another text from Tate, begging me to talk. I nearly threw the damn thing out into the street. My stomach lurched again and I had to roll down the window so I didn’t puke in Rain’s car.

She patted my leg and looked at me sympathetically when I was finished. “You really do love him, huh? You weren’t even this bad after Devin.”

Tears coursed down my cheeks as I shook my head. “Yeah Rain, I really do love him.”

We arrived home and I climbed the stairs to my apartment. I looked around and felt incredibly sad. Just yesterday, I was planning on leaving his place behind and starting a new chapter with Tate in his home. God, how had I let myself get so swept up in him.

I ran straight to my bed and laid down, not even bothering to take my clothes or shoes off. I cried myself to sleep and when I woke a few hours later, I felt no better. I got up and went to the kitchen to fix myself a little something to eat, but the minute I opened the refrigerator and looked at the leftover casserole Aunt Helen had sent up with me yesterday, my stomach lurched again.

As I ran to the bathroom, I caught a glimpse of the calendar on the wall.

Wait. What was the date today?

Oh, holy fuck.