“No!” he yelled. “No, I can’t believe that you’re abandoning everything that we have together! We’ve been through so much over the years, Kinsley. This is just one more…” he stopped, swallowing hard as he closed his eyes. “This is just a little blip in our lives together. We’ll get past this.” He opened his eyes again. “Did you get him out of your system? Can we get back to the plan now?”
Kinsley realized that he truly believed what he was saying. He believed that he could move past the idea that she’d had sex with another man. As long as they could just pretend that it didn’t happen. That they could just move on.
“No, Carl. We can’t get back to the plan,” she said gently. She started to reach for him, to touch his arm, but she pulled away. The wounded look in Lincoln’s eyes when he’d pulled away stabbed at her heart. She needed to get to him, to call him and explain. But she also needed to get Carl to understand that they weren’t going to get back together. Ever!
“The plan was good, Kinsley. I know that I teased you about that. And I won’t anymore. You love organizing things and I’m fine with that. I’ll propose exactly how you wanted me to. I saw the beautiful wedding gown in your closet, honey. It’s gorgeous. The pearls all over the bodice and the draping down the front…it’s perfect. You’ll look perfect in it.”
Kinsley wanted to cry. Carl was a good man, she thought. He just…wasn’t the right man. Not for her.
“Carl, I should…” she stopped, as his words registered. “Wait. You looked in my closet?”
He shrugged, shoving his hands into the pockets of his starched, khaki slacks. “I wanted to know what was going on, Kinsley. I hadn’t heard from you in weeks. We’ve never gone that long without talking before.”
Suppressing the anger at further evidence of his invasion of her privacy, she took a moment to calm down. When she felt more in control, she looked at him. “Carl, you shouldn’t have gone into my apartment, but I guess I can understand why you did. But going into my closet, going through my clothes, that was beyond creepy.”
He looked at her with pleading eyes. “I needed to know what was going on with you, Kinsley.”
“We broke up, Carl. I told you that I didn’t love you. Not the way that a wife needs to love her husband.”
“We can make it work, Kin! I can get you back to that those feelings for me.”
She shook her head. “No, Carl. I never loved you that way.” Not the way she loved Lincoln, she thought, but kept that to herself. The feelings she had, always felt, for Carl were warm and kind. What she felt for Lincoln? He made her laugh and burn and…just thinking about him made her tingle, as if she were in fire.
“You’re thinking about him right now, aren’t you?” he demanded furiously.
Kinsley jerked back to the present and blinked at Carl. “Yes, Carl. He’s on my mind. I think about him a lot. Pretty much all the time.”
“And…” he swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing with the effort. “You had sex with him?”
She shook her head. “Carl, just as I would never disrespect you by telling anyone about our personal details, I won’t do that to Lincoln either.”
“Just tell me! It’s been driving me crazy, thinking about you in his arms!”
She turned and headed towards the stairs. “We’re through Carl. I’m so sorry that I hurt you, but it’s over and you need to accept it.”
He groaned, but Kinsley kept going. She wanted to call Lincoln. She wanted to see him and tell him that what Carl said wasn’t right. Well, it was right, but not why she’d had sex with him. Right now, she just knew that Lincoln was furious with her. Furious and hurt and…she just couldn’t handle that!
Stepping into her apartment, she didn’t care about the dust or the stale smell after having been gone for so long. She grabbed her cell phone out of her purse and dialed Linc’s phone. But he didn’t answer. “Please pick up!” she whispered as she dialed again.
Nothing!
Grabbing her car keys, she sped over to his house. It was late, but she just had to talk to him! She had to!
Unfortunately, he’d closed the gates to his “compound” and wouldn’t answer the bell.
I refuse to give up on us, she decided as she turned her car around.
But he didn’t answer his phone on Sunday. By Monday, she was frantic to talk to him, wondering if she had a job. But, she didn’t care about her job anywhere near as much as she cared about Linc.
Lincoln stared out the window into the darkness, trying to forget about Kinsley. But the image of her standing there in the parking lot with Carl was burned into his mind. The image, plus the words…had she had sex with him just to get him out of her system?
That’s what Carl had said. Lincoln never would have thought that of Kinsley. Again, he was torn between his belief of her innate honesty and the reality of what Carl had said. But this time, she hadn’t denied those words.
Muttering curses as he went, he stomped out of his house and down the path to the warehouse. Inside, he flipped on the lights and started pulling pieces together. Tools, nuts bolts, cylinders, switches…he didn’t really care what he was building. He just needed to focus on something other than Kinsley in Carl’s arms. Kinsley kissing Carl. Carl and Kinsley making love. Or even worse, Kinsley in that
