I find it morbidly fascinating that I’ve come full circle. The minute Kate walked out of my door for good, I felt the same gut-wrenching, heart-splitting misery that I felt when I was told that Gina had died in the accident.
Does that mean I felt the same exact way about both women?
I don’t think so. The more reflecting I have done, the more I have come to realize that there were very few similarities between what I had with Gina and what I had with Kate. And yet both of them are gone and both of their absences have affected me profoundly.
Yup. I’ve come full circle. Sitting my ass in a seedy strip club searching for something but not knowing what it is. I know I’m not going to find it there. And yet I keep coming back, hoping that there will be a clue as to what I can do to pull myself out of this misery.
The parking lot of Tribeca is packed, but I’m not surprised. It’s a busy place because they have fantastic burgers and a wide selection of beer. I push my way through the crowd and find Ryker perched up against a corner of the U-shaped bar.
“What’s up, man?” Ryker says as we bump fists.
“Not much,” I tell him. I wave a hand at the bartender, who walks over to me, and I order a Guinness on draft.
“So the tits and ass weren’t any good tonight?” Ryker asks with a grin.
“Same old shit, different day,” I respond with exaggerated mock sadness. “What have you been up to?”
“Talked to Hensley today,” he says after taking a sip of his beer. “She’s made the decision final and wants me to take the girls full-time and is willing to sign over full custody. She’s going to drive them and all their stuff down this weekend.”
I give him a bright grin. “That’s awesome, dude.”
Hensley had apparently been vacillating over what she wanted to do and it was driving Ryker nuts. He finally told her to make a decision, make it final, or he was going to make it final for her by going to a judge.
Ryker smiles big back at me, because one thing I’ve learned about him over the past few weeks is how much he loves his kids. “Yeah, I’m pretty psyched about them coming to live with me permanently. I’ve got their room finished up and I checked out the school that they’ll be enrolled in.”
“We’ll have to hook Ben and the girls up for regular playdates,” I tell him.
“Sounds good,” he agrees with me, and then gives a dramatic pause. “Listen…I also wanted to ask you about Kate.”
And as always happens when I hear her name, a stab of pain hits me in the chest followed by a deep longing, ending with a pit of emptiness. “What about?”
“Have you talked to her lately?”
I shake my head. “Guess I’m not really sure what I would say to her.”
“Well, we won’t hash out again all the reasons why I think you’re a moron when it comes to her, but I was wondering what you thought about me offering her a job?”
I hesitate for only a moment before saying, “I think that would be fantastic.”
And I truly mean that.
In addition to the guilt that I feel for hurting Kate, I also feel terrible over the fact that she had depended solely on the job I had given her to help her start back to school in the fall. That has been weighing heavily on me since she left.
“You wouldn’t think that was weird?” he asks carefully. “It’s inevitable that you will see her at some point between some of the club functions or even with the kids getting together to play.”
“Yeah, it would be weird,” I mutter. It would fucking hurt—that was for sure. “But I’m a big boy. I can handle it.”
“So why don’t you give her a call and ask her for me?” Ryker says with a mischievous smile.
I merely give him an admonishing look. “Nice try, buddy. But if you want to talk to Kate, you’ll need to call her yourself. Trust me, I’m the last person she wants to hear from.”
“I think you might be wrong about that,” Ryker says as he picks up his beer. He waves it at me and says, “Just because you hurt her doesn’t mean her feelings have changed for you.”
“Maybe not,” I tell him with a grimace. “But it doesn’t mean my feelings have changed either.”
Ryker narrows his gaze at me and looks at me with skepticism. I know he’s trying to weigh the truth of my words that I am no closer today about opening my heart to a woman than I was five minutes ago.
But what Ryker doesn’t know is that my feelings have definitely changed.
I’ve gone from utter confusion over what I felt for Kate to a little bit of clarity as I’ve been thinking things through. I’ve come to realize that my feelings for Kate were so muddied because I had absolutely no clue as to where my feelings stood with Gina. I think I was so immersed in trying to figure out my past problems that I failed to see that perhaps the answer was literally right in front of me. Or, rather, right underneath me on most nights.