As I was flicking through the numerous sports stations, my finger paused on the channel button when I saw a familiar football stadium.
The University of Kentucky’s Commonwealth Stadium was on the screen, shown in all its beautiful glory.
I wasn’t raised to be a football fan, but somewhere along the way, as happens to most people born and bred in Kentucky, a love for the Wildcats got into my blood. It was in part because that’s where I went to collegeto my mother’s chagrin, because she attended the University of Louisville, Kentucky’s greatest rival. That was how my family started our playful football rivalry.
It might also have been because those were the last pure, good, happy memories I had of my mother and father, before he passed and my heart began to ache.
My college years were the last years of my life when I felt free, and as I stared at the television screen, watching the game between the Wildcats and the South Carolina Gamecocks begin, I let the roar of the crowd in a stadium that seated almost seventy thousand crazed fans seep into my soul. Memories of a life when I was carefree and full of joy came rushing back.
Like sorority rush week.
That first week of classes as a freshman, when the campus felt too large, and I walked around feeling more lost than ever. Yet it hadn’t taken long for that campus, and the dorm room that I shared with a girl named Rachel Evansa girl who chose a competing sorority house, which pitted us against each other from the very beginningto become my home.
I cried at the end of my freshman year when I had to go home for the summer. I had wanted to stay on campus instead of going back to my hometown, a hometown that had always been good to me. I hadn’t wanted to leave the security and connections I’d found on campus.
And when I returned for my sophomore year and moved into my Alpha Chi sorority house, it was with a larger smile and a confidence I’d never had before.
I grew in college. I became stronger, more assured of myself. I learned how to handle drunken assholes and escape parties without being taken advantage of. I learned the meaning of overnight cram sessions and showing up for finals with eyes feeling like they’d been scoured with sandpaper.
I learned who I was.
And somehow, just a year after graduation, I threw that girl away and became someone I never wanted to see again.
A forceful puff of breath left my lips as I shook off memories that came after all the good times.
I didn’t want to think about Kevin.
Not in Declan’s home, where for the first time in my life since those college days, I finally felt safe again.
With a quick shake of my head, I clicked the button on the remote, changed the channel to the movie station, and settled in to watch Sweet Home Alabama for the umpteenth time.
I was just getting to my favorite part, where Reese Witherspoon walks into the small-town bar for the first time in her quest to get a divorce from her husband, when my phone began to ring with a shrill tone.
Everything in me chilled as I pulled my eyes from the television screen and stared at the light flashing on my cellphone.
Declan was the only one who had the number. His cell and the number for Fireside were the only numbers programmed into it.
I didn’t even know why I had it sitting next to me instead of tucked away in my purse where I usually kept it.
I must have tossed it there after my walk.
It vibrated and rang again, and I reached out to grab it.
It was just a wrong number.
The thought didn’t bring me comfort as I pressed the Connect button and lifted the phone to my ear.
“Hello?” I asked, my mouth suddenly dry.
A deep, familiar chuckle echoed through the line and my blood turned frigid. “Hello, Katrina. Surely you didn’t think I wouldn’t be able to find you.”
I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. I knew this whole time that I was fooling myself.
I jerked the phone away from my ear, hit the End button, and threw it at the wall. It bounced off, undamaged, luckily, but I started shaking, terrified.
I stared at the phone as if Kevin himself was going to materialize through the plastic contraption, and another tremor vibrated through my body.
“Holy shit,” I gasped.
He had done it.
How did you even get the number for a phone bought at a random RadioShack?
Security cameras?
It didn’t matter now.
I pushed myself to my feet and rushed upstairs, running like the flames of a fire were nipping at my heels. I vaguely heard Boomer thumping up the stairs behind me, but I paid him no attention as I reached for the bag I’d stashed at the bottom of the closet. I began tossing all my clothes inside, ripping them off hangers and letting the hangers fall on the floor in a pile. Then I hurried to the bathroom where I scooped all of my bathroom supplies into my arms and rushed back to the bedroom.
I had to get out of there.
Canada.
I’d continue with my original plan. With the couple of hundred dollars I’d made in tips, plus the car I could eventually sell, I had enough to get another trashy hotel room.
I just had to say goodbye to Declan.
The thought made me pause as I dumped my bathroom things on top of the clothes in my bag.
I didn’t have to say goodbye to him.
I could just leave.
I had known him a week and didn’t owe him anything.
But he was so damn nice to you and the least you could do was call him so he didn’t worry.
And he would worry.
I knew it.
It was that whisper of conscience inside my head that made me head toward the phone in his bedroom.
I’d ignored this room since I’d been here, and yet now, knowing it was the only time I’d be inside his room, I couldn’t stop my gaze from taking in everything.
A rich-gray comforter flung haphazardly over the pillows, blue walls that almost looked gray. They weren’t too dark or too girly, but the perfect masculine blend. It matched the rich, dark wood of his headboard, nightstands, and dresser.
Clothes weren’t strewn all over the floor, but they spilled over a hamper in the corner of his room just outside a door, which I assumed was his closet.
He was clean. Not stuffy and precise, but clean and picked up.
A lump lodged in my throat as I moved on what felt like wooden feet to the far side of his bed, where a landline phone rested on the nightstand. I’d heard it ring in there before, the only way I knew there was a phone in his room.
My fingers shook as I reached for it and dialed the number to Fireside before I could second-guess myself.
It was after seven and the dinner rush wouldn’t really have started yet, but I still didn’t expect him to answer.
He had to be busy.
I only needed to push the Call button on the phone to speak to him.
Or I could leave.
I glanced out his window, saw his fenced-in backyard, and tears pricked the corners of my eyes.
I’d enjoyed being here. This small house felt like more of a home than the mansion I’d lived in for years with Kevin.
Thinking his name sparked me to action.
I pressed the Call button and my stomach rolled with nausea while I waited for someone to answer.
“Thank you for calling the Fireside Grill, how may I help you?” a perky voice answered, and I instantly recognized Maggie. She always answered the phone the same way.
“Hey…” I paused and cleared my throat, willing myself to speak without emotion. “Hi, may I please speak with Declan?”
“Certainly,” she chirped. “May I tell him who’s calling?”
“Trina,” I whispered. “It’s Trina, Maggie.”
Her voice softened. “Oh. Are you okay? He said you were staying home tonight.”
“I’m fine, please. I just…I need him.” I blinked rapidly and cleared my head. “I mean, I need to speak with him.”
But I did need him.
The reality slid inside me and around me, making me shivery with fear and warmth at the same time.
In less than a week, I’d become dependent on another man.
Only more reason to leave.
“Trina? What’s wrong?”
Declan’s deep and demanding tone snapped me back to the present. I was still reeling from the realization that I might need Declan too much, that the only words I could think of to say were…
“He’s found me.”
“We’ll be there in five minutes.”
I shook my head, barely registering his words. “I’m leaving, Declan. I just…I wanted to say thank you.”
“Don’t go,” he snapped, and I heard him bark at someone in the background, the command muffled by the receiver. “We’re coming. Don’t you dare leave before we get there.”
He hung up before I could answer, and I was left staring out the window, somehow unable to move.
We?
Who in the heck could he possibly mean?
Chapter 8
Trina
I should have been gone before he returned home. I didn’t know if it took me longer than five minutes to gather the rest of my things and carry my bag downstairs, as well as collect all of Boomer’s things, or if Declan moved with supersonic speed when a woman was in trouble.
Regardless, as I zipped my bag, Boomer next to me, his tail thumping maniacally on the carpet at my heels, I heard the front door burst open.
“Trina!” Declan yelled my name at the same time he appeared in the living room.
He stopped suddenly and my fingers froze on the zipper.
My jaw dropped open and I stood up. “You didn’t have to come home.”
Home. It wasn’t even my place.
I’d become too attached, too secure.