Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 68033 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68033 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Cam dragged himself to sit against the wall, elbows resting on the knees he pulled up. He offered a maniacal grin, blood lacing his teeth and running down his chin.
“You’re such a spoiled bastard,” he spat at Walsh, the look he leveled at him malevolent.
Cam gestured to the stately foyer.
“You’ve had everything since the day you were born. All this. The best schools, great family. A mother…”
Cam’s voice broke. He closed his eyes and shook his head, wiping at the blood on his face.
“And you just had to have my girl.”
“It wasn’t like that.” Walsh heaved precious air through his lungs, spent from their violent exertion. He stretched out on the floor, looking up at the crystal chandelier overhead. “We didn’t…we never—”
“Just because you never fucked her—”
“Cam, good grief,” Uncle James said. “That’s your wife.”
“Oh, you didn’t hear?” Cam dragged himself to his feet. “She’s not my wife anymore. At least not for long.”
“What’s he talking about, Walsh?” Unc asked.
Walsh couldn’t meet the disapproval and disappointment in his uncle’s eyes.
He remained silent, banging his head once against the floor. He felt like an insect Cam had stretched out beneath a magnifying glass, three sets of eyes singeing him with unrelenting sun rays. They all watched him with varying degrees of censure and judgment.
“Oh, nothing to say now?” Cam swiped at his still-bleeding nose with the hem of his shirt. “Let’s just say that Walsh and Kerris had a…special relationship that didn’t leave much room for her husband.”
Walsh gulped back the shame boiling up in his throat, never taking his eyes from the glittering light fixture above. His faulty character was on display here in the house where his mother had raised him, where Uncle James had taught him to be a man.
Walsh forced himself to sit up and face Cam.
“I don’t know what to say other than I’m sorry.”
“Is it true?” Uncle James, face a blank sheet of paper with just a few lines, waited for Walsh’s response.
Walsh looked at his uncle, unable to apologize.
“I love her. I loved her before Cam even married her.”
Walsh turned his eyes to Cam, who looked back at him like an enemy.
“What I regret is not telling you, Cam. Thinking I could handle it. Thinking it would go away. The kiss you walked in on should never have happened.”
“Jesus, Walsh.” Uncle James’s disillusionment whooshed from his mouth in one quick breath. He ran his hand over his face. “How could you?”
“What? Kiss her?” Walsh stood to his feet. “One kiss. If it had been up to me, she would have left your ass a long time ago, Cam. That would never have happened, though. And you know why? Because that’s the kind of woman you married.”
Cam looked back at Walsh, unblinking and silent.
“She would never have left you for me. Never have cheated on you. One kiss, and you’re throwing that away?”
“A lifetime with a woman who loves someone else?” Cam twisted his eyebrows into a frown. “Would you take that?”
“I’d take Kerris any way I could get her.” Walsh cleared his face of repentance or apology. He grabbed his bags from where he’d dropped them. “As a matter of fact, I’ll take her as your…how did you put it? Broken-in leftovers? Yeah, I’d take her if she’d had seven husbands, not just one idiot ahead of me.”
“So you’re really going after her?” Cam asked.
Walsh walked to the door and knew this would be it. This would be final.
“Unc, would you run me to the airport?” Walsh looked past Cam and Jo to where his uncle stood. “I’ll wait in the car.”
Chapter Eleven
Mama Jess, I need you to do me a favor.”
Kerris glanced from the bulk of her two casts, lumps beneath the comforter, up to Mama Jess’s worried face. She had cried for only a few minutes after Cam left, and then she’d retreated to her office on the screened-in porch. From her wheelchair by the window, she’d looked out and down to the riverbank. Mama Jess had finally convinced her to eat some soup and a sandwich. A quiet meal, with Mama Jess not asking many questions, and Kerris not offering many remarks. After eating just a few spoonfuls of soup and pulling the crusts from her sandwich, Kerris had declared herself exhausted and in need of a nap. And now she was in need of a favor as well.
“What is it, Lil’ Bit?” Mama Jess reached down to push the bangs from Kerris’s eyes.
“When Walsh comes.” She caught Mama Jess’s hand by her face, gripping her fingers. “I don’t want to see him.”
“Do you know that he’ll come?”
“He’ll come.” Kerris licked dry lips. “I just don’t…I can’t see him.”
“I saw him crying his heart out in the chapel.” Mama Jess adjusted the comforter around Kerris’s shoulder, looking down at her with eyes blessedly free of judgment. “That man loves you.”