The Keepers Book Two of the Holding Kate Series (25 page)

She crawled onto his back and wrapped her legs around him and leaned down to kiss him on the neck. I choked and spewed orange juice all over the table.

Tara whirled around. “Are you okay?” She threw me a kitchen towel, and I mopped up my mess, riveted to the drama playing out in front of me.

“Fine,” I croaked. “Sorry.”

She shook her head and turned back to the eggs and I turned to watch my heart get ripped out and stomped on.

Trip had frozen when she kissed his neck and slowly turned around in her arms. They bobbed in the water inches apart. I could see Kate’s face plainly. Desire blossomed as she floated in Trip’s embrace, her eyes inviting him to love her, to be with her. I have to give him credit. I would not have been able to resist that look, but he very deliberately peeled her off of him and swam away from her toward the shallow end. She scowled and watched him swim away, then submerged and came up at the ladder.

Tara slipped a plate of eggs, bacon, and toast with my favorite raspberry preserves in front of me. I glanced up at her and saw she had been watching. She wouldn’t look at me and shook her head slightly, squeezed my shoulder and walked back to the stove.

My heart felt trampled on, my face burned with embarrassment.
Why Kate? Why would you pick up this behavior again? After all we have shared and been through?

Suddenly no longer hungry, I stared at the eggs and bacon Tara had so carefully prepared. She knew I like my bacon crispy and my eggs soft. She knew my favorite preserves. She knew my deep pain and shared in my embarrassment.

“Thank you, Tara,” I choked out.

She waved over her shoulder but didn’t turn around. I saw her grab a paper towel and dab her face with it. I shoved back my chair, strode over to her and wrapped her in a hug. She held onto me sharing my pain, feeling her own and wept silently into my neck.

I stroked her back gently. Comforting her slackened my pain.

Kate sauntered into the kitchen wrapped in a towel, dripping all over the floor. “What’s this about?” she asked as though offended. “Trying to steal my man, Tara?” She nonchalantly perched herself on the bar and reached for the coffee pot.

Tara wrenched from my embrace and ran to her bedroom.

I glared at Kate.

“What?” She raised her eyebrows innocently.

“Go put some clothes on and try to control yourself,” I snapped at her and stalked out of the front door, leaving her sitting there gaping at me.

I tromped around the pond, scattering the ducks, kicked at a stump and probably broke my toe. My seething anger sought an outlet. I took off running down the drive trying to put some distance between myself and any other living human being. I didn’t want my frustration with Kate to be taken out on someone else. I heard Donnie’s jeep crunching up the driveway, so I took off in another direction, cut through the field, and disappeared into the bracken before the jeep came around the corner.

After all the weapons and cardio training, I was in good shape, barely winded after ten minutes of jogging. I climbed a hill and topped the rise. Stopping for breath, I gazed into the valley of Heartwork Village. The morning dew still glimmered on the grass as the sun broke over a line of trees in the distance.

My inheritance.

In a few short months, on my eighteenth birthday, I would become the sole owner of Heartwork Village. Well not exactly true, I had a wife to share it with. A cheating, lying, slip of a wife who I couldn’t trust! Augh! Anger erupted in me again at her faithless display.

Why
? I just didn’t understand why so suddenly she reverted back to the old Kate, sniffing around after Trip like…like…like the Beautiful One said she would. I sank to my knees and cried out, loosing my fury into the dawn.

“God! Why?”

I chose this woman. I chose this life. He warned me that she would be wanton and have a restless spirit. I didn’t have to choose her. I could have walked away from her that day. The One also said he willed that we be together. He willed that I be crushed by her infidelity and remain faithful to her anyway.
How messed up is that? What kind of deity would will something so vile for someone? It didn’t add up. The being I spent a thousand years with seemed loving and good. How could he want this for me?

The image of Kate in her sheer white wedding gown slammed into my head. Stunning beauty, such overwhelming love beckoned from her. I had waited thousands of years for her and she had been worth the wait. Small instances of tender kindness towards others came to my memory. Her gentle spirit and fierce love for her friends washed over me. The good in Kate far outweighed her few instances of indiscretion. All that I dreamed of and more, Kate matched me, fit me. I realized I could have never walked away from her that day or any of the thousands of days before our wedding. I could never walk away. She existed as much a part of me as my own inner organs, my body parts. Kate was my home. I couldn’t imagine life without my bride. We were going to have to work through this, together.

Then those indiscretions flashed through my mind; seeing her with Trip, mouth still wet from his kiss, finding her in his arms in the woods when she grieved, hearing him sing soft songs of comfort to her, and today pressing her body against his like a seductress.
How many other times have they been intimate that I don’t know about? Just how intimate have they been?

Anger and jealousy raged inside of me. “Kate,” I growled into the grass. “Kate.”

“Will you ever love me the way I love you? Will you ever realize I am enough?” I released my tears into the earth and let my sobs be heard by the crickets and bees around me. Such agonizing pain this thing called love, such gut wrenching, soul sucking torment.

I stretched out in the grass and dug my fingers into the soil. I had to find my center. I needed to dig my roots into something solid and unmoving. More pain loomed in my future. I knew it deep inside of me. I couldn’t run off into the woods every time Kate disappointed me. I had to expand my base and become unwavering, rooted deeply in one solid truth.

Kate is my past, present, and future.

She remained the biggest part of me, the focus of my love for all eternity. No matter what she did, what circumstances broke to rip us apart, we were one.

We were one.

WITH THAT SETTLED
,
I needed to go work off this undeniable anger that I still felt when I thought of her in Trip’s arms. I stood and jogged down into the village to find a partner for racquetball, poor Joe.

It turned out to be Eunavae, not a Joe that I ran into.

“Hey, let’s play some racquetball!” I said after I hugged her in greeting.

“Okay, there’s not much going on around here. We have a couple hours of free time this morning before the Focus Sessions start.”

“Focus Sessions? What are they?”

“Well, since the jumps have been suspended—and let me just say I am not complaining—we have been going through this grief recovery curriculum. It’s really good stuff. I think we all needed it after losing so much.” She tugged on her ear lobe, nervously.

I took her hand. “I’m glad you are all getting some help.” The losses of the two century jump still scoured our hearts.

She snorted and nodded like I had just made the understatement of the century. Eunavae blew off the Focus Sessions to spend the day with me. We played an even dozen games of racquetball, and then went to the diner for supper. Eunavae said they had been eating there more since they stopped the jumps.

“It’s good to be around people our own age.” She planted her elbows on the table, folded her hands behind her ears and chortled. “Well, you know what I mean—teenagers. I think we got a little stuffy and set in our ways after 212 years.”

Caitlyn and Navarro entered, and we waved them over to join us. They had light in their eyes again, and the stifling sadness over the loss of their babies had abated some.

I stood when they reached our table. “Caitlyn, glad you are out of the hospital.” I hugged her and extended my arm to include Navarro. She and Kate had taken a beating in our last jump.

“Clean bill of health.” She sashayed into the booth. “How is Kate’s head?”

That is the question of the day,
I thought, but just said, “Fine.”

“Did Mel’s ankle heal up okay? It looked really swollen. And your leg mangled like meatloaf!”

“We are both fine and ready to run races.” I showed her my scars.

The anger in my chest subsided in the presence of my old friends. The time got away from us and we ended up staying in the cafeteria until they kicked us out. The crescent moon glowed high in the night sky when I waved at them and watched them descend the hill to their cabin. Then I turned and went to a place on campus I had never been before.

The Chapel.

I tested the door. The latch gave, so I let myself in. Dark and silent inside the little white church, yet comforting, I walked to the front row and sat down. The exit lights over the doors and the campus lights filtering in through the stained glass windows gave just enough illumination.

“Are you here?” I whispered into the sacred air.

Not quite sure if the Beautiful One from the Scriptorium was the same God worshiped here, I pressed on. I had a strange feeling deep inside, that they were one and the same.

“If you are here, then I want to say something.” I started in the barest of whispers, then my volume increased with my confidence. “You said you willed Kate for me. I believe you.”

I felt a tightening in my throat. I cleared it and stared at the cross in the front of the chapel. “Just give me strength, to do this. I know something worse is coming. I feel it here.” I pressed the heel of my hand into my chest. “Please, just give me strength to do the right thing.”

Silence rang out in answer, but a thought grew inside of me. I don’t know if you could call it a voice. I couldn’t hear it with my ears, but deep inside.

“
My strength is made perfect in weakness
.”

What does that mean? Did I make that up?
If so, then I sat here seriously afflicted with some psychotic disorder.
Strength can’t come from weakness. Much less be made perfect by it. It makes no sense.

I sighed heavily, placed my head in my hands and said. “Well, that’s all, I guess. The end.”

I didn’t know how to pray. I knew I needed to say something to end the prayer, but couldn’t remember for the life of me what to say. ‘The end’ not quite right, I hoped the One would give me a break for ignorance.

I sat drinking in the silence like a sponge and soaked up the peace offered in this sacred place.

Reluctantly, I stood, walked out of the Chapel, and climbed the hill to First Cabin and my bride.

I walked around to the back. I didn’t want to talk to anyone inside just yet. Not even ready to talk to Kate, but I missed her so much I couldn’t stand it. I just wanted to take her in my arms and make everything right between us. A twinge of guilt poked at me for leaving her the way I did. She would be worried sick about me. I glanced into the French doors that led from the patio to our bedroom. The lights out, I figured she lay deep in sleep by now.