Saving Ever After (Ever After #4) (21 page)

“You’re a
damn sadist,” I groaned, grabbing my shorts and a shirt to work out in and
heading for the bathroom to change.

When we got
to the fitness center, Kris did exactly what he promised, and pushed me hard on
the machines. I whined and complained the whole time, like I always did, but my
body actually felt better than it ever had, even knowing I would be sore after.
Really sore if his hard look was any indication of what he had in store for the
rest of our workout.

Collapsing
in the grass as soon as we set foot back outside, I groaned. “I can’t move my
legs. You’re going to have to carry me back.”

“I’m not
carrying you. Get up, Mia.” He nudged me in the ribs with his foot.

“I’m serious.
You’re going to have to piggy back me or I’m not moving.”

“Then I’ll
leave you here,” he threatened.

“You can’t
get back in my room to get your computer without my room key,” I reminded him.
It was currently wrapped around my neck on a lanyard.

Thinking he
was so sneaky, he quickly bent forward, hand shooting out to snatch it from
around my neck, but before he could get it, I wrapped my arms around his neck
and swung my legs around his waist, latching onto him.

“What the
fuck!” he cried, trying not to lose his balance, but not quite able to stand
back up with me hanging off of him. “Get off me you damn spider monkey.” He
tried to pry my hands loose behind his neck, but I had a solid grip. “You’re a
damned crazy person, Mia!”

He finally
managed to stand upright, but that only allowed me to wind my legs around his
waist even tighter, making it impossible for him to shake me. We’d acquired a
few onlookers at this point, some seemed mildly amused, while a few wore
pinched expressions at seeing the two of us horsing around together.

“I’m not
letting go,” I told him.

“For fuck’s
sake then, just get on my back,” he gave in, not nearly as frustrated as he was
pretending to be. His expression and tone might have suggested he was annoyed
with me, but I could see the amusement in his eyes, and the almost smile
pulling at his lips.

“Okay, if I
hop off to climb on your back, you’re not going to try to leave me are you? Because
if you do, I’m just going to lay right back down and we’re going to do this all
over again.”

“Just get on
my back before someone calls the campus cops to cart you off for assaulting
me.”

I laughed
and jumped down to my feet. He turned, giving me his back and I hopped on so he
could piggy back me to my dorm.

“So when are
you heading home for Thanksgiving?” he asked as we approached my building. Up
until that moment, I’d completely put the conversation with my father out of my
mind. The instant Kris had barged into my room, all the shit had slipped away
and I’d had a great afternoon, but now it was back.

“I’m, uh,
not going home for Thanksgiving.”

“What? You
just told me last week that you were. Why’d you change your mind?”

“I didn’t.
My dad did. He doesn’t want me to go home to spend Thanksgiving with my family,
because apparently I don’t have much of one left,” I told him bitterly.
“They’re all so wrapped up in their own thing that they don’t have the time to
get together for even one day and act like we all give a shit about each
other.” Yeah, I was really bitter.

“That sucks.
So what are you going to do? You’re not just going to sit around your dorm and
mope for the whole weekend are you?”

“I don’t
mope, asshole, and no. I’ll probably spend it with Sadie.”

“You can
come to my games then this weekend. We play at home Saturday and Sunday. You
could even come to our game in New Hampshire tomorrow if you want.”

“Thanks for
the pity invites, but I don’t know. Sadie is probably going to spend
Thanksgiving with Ace’s family in Connecticut, so I might not even be in town
if I go with them.”

“I didn’t
invite you out of pity, Mia,” he said, genuinely irritated this time. “I
invited you because I want you to come.”

“Okay. I
will if I can.” That seemed to alleviate his irritation with me, but I couldn’t
help but wonder about his reaction and how adamant he was about wanting me to
come.

He carried
me inside the building, and I remained on his back all the way through the
elevator and to my room. I only released him when I dropped down onto my bed.
Kris gathered up his computer, preparing to leave.

“Hey Kris,
why don’t you have a girlfriend?” I thought about all the girls who came up to
flirt with him any time we were out together, and all the puck bunnies that
gathered at his games. He had a lot of opportunities to date, or to not date if
he just wanted to hook up, but I never saw him show them even the mildest
interest.

“What kind
of question is that?”

“I don’t
know. I just want to know why you have girls throwing themselves at you all the
time, but you never date anyone.”

“Mia, maybe
you just don’t see me with girls,” he pointed out, but I shot that down.

“But when
you’re not in class or at practice or away at a game, you’re almost always
hanging out with me.”

“There’s
other times I’m not with you, Mia,” he sighed like he wished I’d just let it
go.

“Like when?”

“Fuck, Mia,
why do you want to know so bad?”

I hesitated
for a moment, trying to figure out how best to approach him without upsetting
him more. “You’re not . . . you don’t . . .”

“Don’t what?”
he snapped.

“Like me, do
you?” I cringed, waiting for him to answer, afraid that I might have just hurt
his feelings. I frowned when he barked out a short laugh.

“Geez Mia,
is that what you’re worried about? And by the way, thanks for acting like that
would be the worst possible thing in the world,” he said sarcastically.

“Well, it
kind of would. It would completely mess up our friendship, and I don’t have a
lot of good friends, so I can’t really afford to just go losing my best
friend.”

He looked at
me oddly for a second and then let out a deep breath. “To answer your question
. . . In bed. I’m not with you at night when I’m in bed.”

“Well duh,
of course not. When you’re in bed – oh.” His meaning sunk in.

“Yeah, oh.
So can we drop this now.”

“You’re a
total player, aren’t you?” I giggled, finding it amusing that he had tried so
hard to keep that from me. “And you didn’t want me to know.”

“Well now
you do, but we are not going to talk about it anymore. I’m serious.”

“So if
you’re such a manwhore, how come you don’t like me?” I asked, simply out of
curiosity. I was incredibly relieved that he wasn’t harboring any secret
feelings.

“If I didn’t
like you, we wouldn’t be friends.”

“That’s not
what I meant. How come you only want to be friends with me? And how come I’m
the only girl friend,” I frowned, that didn’t come out right, “friend girl,”
that wasn’t much better “the only girl that you’re friends with outside of
bed?”

He just
chuckled. “I don’t know, but I liked you that first night. I think our
friendship may have been cemented when you tried to go ninja on Leland’s ass. You
were funny and spunky and seemed more real than a lot of those people there,
even drunk. You also looked like you could use a friend, a real one. And maybe
I needed one too.”

“You needed
more friends? What do you collect them like pet rocks?” He had more friends
than the guy who created Facebook.

“I said a
real friend Mia. I’ve got plenty of fake ones, but you, you’re more than just
my only real
girl
friend.”

I was shocked for a
moment and then smiled. “Are you saying I’m your best friend too?”

He shook his head, but
he was smiling. “I’ll see you tomorrow, you lunatic.” He started toward the
door, carrying his computer.

“Hey, you’re the one
with a lunatic for a best friend,” I called after him.

I heard his soft chuckle
before he left the room, the door shutting behind him with a soft click.

Hmm.

I had a best friend,
like a real one. I’d never really had one of those before. Unfortunately I knew
all too well what he meant by fake friends. I’d had plenty of those. Even Lexi
and Emma who’d I’d called my best friends, were only party friends.

Chris

At the beach. Shoot
shouldn’t take long.

I’ll find you when
it’s over.

xox Katrina

I read the note a second
time before crumpling it and tossing it in the wastebasket by the dresser.

Vacation my ass.

She was working.

She’d talked me into
bailing on Thanksgiving with my family so the two of us could take off for
Cabo. A getaway for just the two of us. A chance to reconnect because we’d been
drifting apart even more since returning from Australia. Intimate weekend. No
distractions.

She was fucking working.

We’d had the argument
last night when we arrived and she confessed that she had to do one quick shoot
this morning. I told her that was bullshit. As far as I was concerned, work
counted as a distraction. She’d argued and promised that it wouldn’t take up
much time and then it would be just the two of us. We went to dinner last night
with it unresolved, and it seemed that while I was working out this morning,
she’d decided to do the shoot, even though I’d asked her not to.

I’d never, not a single
damn time, asked her to put me before her work, but she’d fucking lied about
this trip. Then the one time that I ask her to put our relationship first, she
couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do it. I felt like that said a hell of a lot, and I
didn’t know why I was still trying so hard to make this work, to make our
relationship a priority and think of her first.

Hell, I’d agreed to this
trip when I would have much rather spent it with Bas and my Dad. Since Lissa
had Abby, I’d hardly gotten to spend any time with my niece.

Now today was
Thanksgiving and I was alone in a damn hotel room. Well I wasn’t going to sit
around and wait for her. I showered and changed into a pair of shorts and went
to explore, turning off my cell phone.

I wandered around the
resort for quite a while, checking out the pool area that had three large
pools, one with a current that moved the water around in a winding lazy river.
I got a drink from the outdoor bar and floated around in there on an inner tube
with a holder just for my bottle.

Even though it was relaxing
and nobody bothered me, one can only float around in a circle for so long
before even that gets old. I powered my phone back on to check the time,
wondering if Katrina’s quick shoot was over by now. I decided against going to
look for her in the room. I figured she would text me as soon as she was back.

She did. Almost three
hours later. So her quick shoot had been more like a five hour shoot. I’d
already had lunch and checked out the shops and area around the resort. The
only thing I hadn’t checked out much, was the beach. I’d wanted to avoid
running into her on her shoot.

Hey baby. All done.
Where are you?

That was her first
message to which I didn’t respond.

Babe? I’m back at the
room.

Chris, where the hell
did you go?

Then she called. I
didn’t answer that either. The messages and calls continued to come and I
continued to ignore them for an hour before I finally returned to the room and
found her pissed off and waiting for me.

“What the hell, where
were you? I texted you like six times and called three.”

“I know,” was all I said
as I slipped the shades from my head and set them on the dresser.

“You know? Well what
were you doing that you couldn’t take the time to answer me? We’re supposed to
be spending time together.”

“Like we were this
morning while you were at your shoot?”

“Chris, I already told
you –”

“I know what you told
me, and I asked you to cancel it. You’re the one who wanted this vacation with
no distractions. Well I’m here on vacation. I was here all damn day while you
were working.”

“Christian, it’s my
job!”

“I know, and maybe if
you had been up front with me I wouldn’t be so pissed right now, but you were
the one who made such a big deal about this trip being time for us and not
letting anything else get in the way.”

“I know. I’m sorry, I
just really wanted you to come away with me. I’m done now. No more work the
rest of the trip. We can just focus on you and me.”

“I don’t know if it’s
going to work Katrina,” I sighed and scrubbed a hand through my hair, bringing
it to rest on the back of my neck, squeezing to relieve some of the tension. “I
don’t know if we’re going to work.”

Her eyes went wide with
panic and her mouth fell open, but she didn’t say anything for a moment. “What
do you mean?” she asked, her voice nearing hysteria.

“Things were really good
when we started out, but lately, they’re not anymore. Obviously you’ve noticed
it or you wouldn’t have made such a big deal about us needing time to work on
our relationship. I know relationships aren’t supposed to be easy, that it
takes work, but I don’t even know what it is we’re fighting to hang on to
anymore. It’s obvious we’re both more committed to our careers than each other
and I think that if this was real, we’d both have done more to make each other
a priority.”

“I don’t know what I’m
supposed to say here, but I know you’re wrong. You mean everything to me
Chris.” She grabbed my hand, her eyes pleading with me. “We can make this work.
I know we can.”

“I’m sorry Katrina, but
I don’t think we can.” I tried to pull my hand out of hers, but she clung to it
desperately.

“Please, just give us
this chance. We can talk. About anything you want. We can get back to where we
were.”

“That’s the problem Katrina,
we shouldn’t be trying to go back. We should be moving forward. Our
relationship should be growing, but it’s not.”

“But we can work on it,”
she cried. “You can’t just give up on me, on us.”

“Look, I’m not trying to
hurt you, but I think if you were being honest with yourself, you would see
that I’m right. I know this isn’t easy to hear, but I think you’re more upset
about losing the idea of our relationship and what you want it to be, than the
reality of what we actually have.” She dropped my hand as if I’d burned her,
pulling it back and then shoving at my chest.

“Don’t!” she cried.
“Don’t you dare try to tell me what I feel or what I want.”

I stepped back, raising
my hands up in the air. “Okay, I’m sorry.”

“So that’s just it?
You’re just sorry and it’s over?”

“I don’t know Katrina,
but I think so.” It might not have seemed like it to her, but this was hard on
me as well. Eight months together wasn’t nothing to me. I didn’t want to throw
that time away, and she did matter to me, but that just wasn’t enough. There
had to be more than that.

“What I know is that I’m
going to book a flight home, and I think you should stay here. You should take
the time to yourself to relax and try to enjoy the rest of the trip. We can
both use the time apart to really think about what we truly want, and then when
you come back we can talk and see where we’re at.”

“I don’t need to think
about it,” she choked out hoarsely, “I already know that I don’t want to lose
you.”

“I’m sorry, Katrina. I
really am.”

“This is about her,
isn’t it? I saw the way you looked at her in Australia, and I know you’ve been
playing that stupid game with her almost every night.”

I sighed, “This isn’t
about Mia. This is about you and me.”

“I don’t believe you.”

I didn’t know what else
to say to her, except, “I’m sorry.” This wasn’t about Mia. Yes, I felt
something for Mia, and maybe that’s what opened my eyes to things between
Katrina and me, but I’d chosen Katrina. We weren’t working because we weren’t
right for each other, no matter how much we both didn’t want that to be true. I
just couldn’t deny it anymore and I was tired of not even knowing what I was
trying to hang onto.

She sat on the bed and
watched me pack. It really was one of the hardest things I’d had to do. I could
feel her hurt, it was almost suffocating. To be honest, it was the most emotion
I’d seen or felt from her in almost the entire time we’d been together.

I placed a soft kiss on
her forehead before walking out. Even though I’d told her that we would use the
time apart to think, as soon as the door clicked shut behind me, I knew that I
had just closed the door on our relationship. As hard as it was to accept,
mostly because I hated that it caused her pain, I knew it was the right choice,
and that eventually she would see that.

I had to wait in the
airport for almost three hours before they were able to get me onto a red eye
flight back home, but the further I got from Mexico and the closer I got to
Boston, the more at peace I began to feel about my decision. It was almost a
relief to know that Katrina and I were done, like I’d been trying so hard for
too long to make myself feel more than I did, and that hadn’t been fair to
either one of us. I’d set us both free from that burden.

The sun was barely up when
we landed in New Jersey for a quick layover and then I was right back on a
plane headed for Boston. I had my brother pick me up from the airport, and
after we swung through a fast food place for breakfast and shitty coffee, I had
him take me straight to Katrina’s. I knew it would be cold of me to just slip
in and take all my stuff, leaving her to come back and find every trace of me
gone, but it seemed less harsh than leaving it here to give her false hope,
only to take it away later.

He gave me a ride to
Ace’s after I’d filled a single duffel bag with all of my things from her
place. Thanks to the coffee and the almost freezing morning air, I was wide
awake and Bas used the drive to Ace’s to grill me.

“So, obviously the
vacation didn’t go well. You want to tell me what happened that made you hop on
a plane back to Boston, alone, and then collect your things from Katrina’s
condo?”

“Not really, but I know
you’re not going to let this go. Honestly, there’s not much to say, other than
we weren’t working out and I got tired of pretending that we could.”

“So no reason, then, you
guys just weren’t working out?” He turned his head away from the road briefly,
to give me a skeptical look.

“Things have been, I
don’t know, off between us for a while. Even though I didn’t really want to go,
I thought a vacation could be good for us. She said she wanted us to have a
chance to spend time together away from any distractions, and just focus on our
relationship, so obviously she felt it too. Then, as soon as we got to the
hotel Wednesday night, she tells me she has to do a shoot in the morning.”

“So you got pissed that
she scheduled work over your guys’ vacation? I can see why you’d be upset about
that.”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t
just that. I
was
pissed that she was the one who said no distractions
and then booked a shoot anyway, but more than that, I just realized that we
both cared more about our careers than each other. Our relationship has always
come second to our dreams, and that worked, but I just . . . I don’t think it’s
supposed to be that way. I see you with Lissa, and Ky with Jax and now Ace and
Sadie, and how much you guys would give up for them, and that wasn’t me and Katrina.
She was great and I cared about her, but it was never going to be more than
that and I didn’t want to drag it out. So I told her, and then I left.”

“I get that, but are you
sure that you’re not just running because it was getting serious? You’ve always
kept things pretty casual. Katrina is the first girl you’ve been with semi long
term. You sure that didn’t just freak you out? I know we’ve never talked about
it and you always acted like it wasn’t a big deal, but I know Mom and Dad’s
divorce really fucked with you. Can you honestly tell me that has nothing to do
with your reluctance to commit in a relationship?”

I laughed dryly. “You’re
right. Mom and Dad’s divorce did fuck with me. I was angry for a long time and
trust doesn’t come the easiest for me, but if anything, it’s given me a better
perspective on relationships. I’m not afraid to commit, Bas. Their divorce
didn’t screw me up that bad, not like how Elaina fucked up Ky. My only
reluctance is that I want to be sure. When I get married, that’s it. I’m only
doing it once and I intend for it to be forever. I don’t see the point in
staying in a relationship if I know she’s not the one I want forever with. I care
about Katrina, but she’s not it for me, and I’m convinced I’m not it for her.”

“Okay then. I guess
that’s it.” He dropped me at Ace’s with the invitation to join him and Lissa
for dinner and spend some time with my niece since I’d missed out on Thanksgiving
dinner yesterday.

Ace and Sadie were both
home, so Ace and I took some time for band business. He let me know that while
I’d been gone, the band had been booked for a last minute TV guest appearance
coming up, and reminded me that we had to be in the studio all next week as
well, filming a new music video for one of our singles. He also gave me some
lyrics and music for a new song he and Ky had come up with, so I could work out
the drum piece for it. Once we were on the same page and had band stuff sorted,
I crashed for the rest of the day, napping until it was time to head to Bas’
for dinner.