Sparrow

“You told me to marry him.” She sniffed, her nose dripping, her fingernails still clawing into my pants. “You said it’d be the best thing for everybody because of that goddamned pregnancy. Oh, Troy.”

“Cat,” I growled, “the goddamned pregnancy is now a kid. Maybe you should consider taking care of him.” But I knew what Cat never said out loud. She resented Sam, because Sam was the final straw between us. I couldn’t take her back after that betrayal.

“This could have been us. Married. Happy,” she pleaded. “I belong in your bed, in your house, in your mind. I’ll do anything. Tell me what to do to bring you back to me.”

“You’re a wreck.” I turned around and started walking to my car. I hated that she barged into my time with my dad.

She stalked after me, crying hysterically, stumbling to the ground and then lurching back to her feet. Stiletto heels weren’t exactly the best footwear for a muddy graveyard. But Cat had always liked putting on a show. Twenty-something-year-old Troy admired that. Thirty-something Troy knew this shit got old.

“Don’t do this,” she warned. “I’ll ruin this for you.”

I sighed. “Catalina, baby, you can’t even ruin your own f*cking life successfully, let alone someone else’s. You’ve never been the overachiever type.”

“Go to hell.” She shoved me and then flailed at me with her fists.

I dodged her girly jabs and captured her wrists, walking her backward into the high stone fence that surrounded that graveyard and pinning her back to it. It felt so vacant to hold her between my arms. For a moment, I wondered if I ever really did love her.

“Enough,” I said. “This stops here. Now listen to me carefully, and get it into your head, because I won’t say it twice. You had your chance. I gave you everything. Worked my f*cking ass off so you could afford your fancy shit. Took risks. Built a business, opened a French restaurant just ’cause it was your favorite food—all for you. But you betrayed me. You got coked up on my money, snorted through the majority of it, and I had to send you off to rehab, where you f*cked up more. We had our fun, and now it’s time to let go. Got it?”

Catalina threw more aimless punches at me and screamed, “Stop saying these things!”

I knew she had a hard time hearing this, but the funny thing was, I no longer had a hard time saying it, admitting this to her and me. I’d sent Cat to a Malibu rehab shortly before we broke it off. The most expensive f*cking rehab in the States. Sauna rooms and twenty-four-hour spas. Only the best for my girl. She came back pregnant with her counselor’s baby. With Brock’s baby.

I still remembered the day I found out my initially unpregnant girlfriend had come back after two months in rehab with a new addition in her belly. She tried to convince me the baby was mine. Hell, I fought hard to believe it myself. But then I went with her to her check-up and the OB-GYN had spilled the dates. Cat was six weeks pregnant, and not with my child.

“No, no, no, no.” She shook her head violently, raking her long fingernails down her face, streaking her cheeks with bloody scratches.

“Don’t mistake my sympathy then for feelings.” I said, surprised that the rage was gone. “When you were pregnant, I didn’t throw your ass out of my apartment because I didn’t want this shit on my conscience, not because I still loved you.”

“Troy!” she pleaded, throwing her bloody fists in my face and crying like a tortured animal. “Stop this now!”

But it was true.

I’d felt guilty. Guilty because I couldn’t give her what she’d wanted. What we both wanted. Our engagement didn’t mean shit, and we both knew that. I was going to marry Sparrow Raynes, the poor little girl down my street. The money, the clothes, the restaurants, the fancy-ass vacations. Lies, lies and more lies. A pile of distractions to make us forget we were never going to get married. In a sense, a part of me—the puppy-love part—thought Cat screwing someone else was my punishment. I couldn’t be hers exclusively. Why should it be any different for her?

I remembered after we broke up, going back to the apartment Cat and I used to share. I’d wanted to take some of my shit, mainly clothes. I wasn’t surprised to see the guy who knocked her up had taken a trip to Boston just so he could have another dip.

She was beautiful, broken and willing to do anything the man at her side wanted. It was a lethal combination for most men, something that was too hard to turn down. I f*cking knew that first-hand.

Brock ended up staying in Boston, and I let him work for me. Gave him a job a few months before my father’s murder, thinking I’d help her—and him—build a family. I’d thought it was my way to compensate. We were done, but I still had a chance to redeem myself in the eyes of the only girl I’d ever fallen in love with. Even if I couldn’t have her.

“We should have stopped this f*cking years ago,” I told Cat, who was struggling for breath, her face blotched with tears and older since I’d last seen her.

“I love you. He was always just a plaything. I love you, Troy.” Trying another strategy, she arched her back away from the stone fence, her hips meeting my groin.

I pulled back immediately. Jesus, she thought I was going to take her right then and there. How could I have loved someone so weak?

I sucked in a breath. “You don’t love anything other than danger and cock. There’s an abyss between us, and it swallowed every positive feeling I’ve ever felt toward you. Because even after I tried to help you and your husband, you had the nerve to go and spill every secret I ever told you to him.” I let go of her wrists in disgust. “And that was the ultimate betrayal.”