Chapter 47

After bringing Colten back home and unloading the groceries, I found Jewel in the sunroom, engrossed in one of Lucille’s journals but with her whole body sort of caved in on itself. She sat with her knees drawn up to her chest, squeezed into one corner of the sofa with her arms hooked around her shins.

“Hey, you.” I walked in and took a seat beside her, leaning over to press a kiss to the exposed skin of her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“Uh, no,” she admitted. Her eyes lifted slowly from the page and flicked from one of mine to the other. For a moment, I thought she was going to leave it at that, but then she sighed. “Kaitlin came by while you were out.”

“Fuck.”

Jewel grimaced as she nodded, her lips downturned and everything about her somehow smaller than usual. “She’s uh, she’s staying at the inn and she wants to talk to you.”

Dread pooled in my stomach. “Was she horrible to you?”

One of Jewel’s shoulders rose on a shrug, her gaze not quite meeting mine. “Not outright, but she makes me feel things that aren’t so nice.”

“Same,” I agreed, taking her chin in between my thumb and my index finger and gently tipping her face up to mine. “I was hoping she’d left town, but if she’s still here, I need to go see her.”

“I know,” she said softly, finally letting go of her legs and scooching a little closer, taking both of my hands in hers. “I know you said you didn’t want space to figure things out with her, but if you change your mind, you just need to tell me, okay?”

I held her gaze intently. “Kaitlin isn’t here for me, Jewel. She’s here for my money, and even if she’s not, it doesn’t matter because I’m not interested in her.”

“You guys share a child,” she said. “A past.”

“Yeah, but just because I have a past doesn’t I mean I want to live in it. What Kaitlin and I had, even before, wasn’t some great love, Jewel. It was a hookup that resulted in a child she wasn’t prepared to raise. It’s not romantic. There are no unresolved feelings for a first love or anything like that.”

“She did break your heart, though.”

“Sure, but only because I was invested in making it work for Colten’s sake. My heart also didn’t break for her as much as it did for him.” I took her face in my hands and looked deep into her eyes. “I’m going to go speak to her to find out what she wants and then I’m going to come home. To you. Unless you want to come with me?”

“No,” she said quickly, her head shaking as she glanced over my shoulder. “I’d much rather stay here with Colt. Or is he going with you?”

“Definitely not,” I replied confidently. “Alright, then. I’ll see you soon. The inn is that building just off Main, right?”

She dipped her chin in a nod, then followed me out of the sunroom and disappeared to find Colten. A pang shot through me at the thought of leaving them here alone in favor of going after Kaitlin, but I needed her to leave and the only way to do that was to see her.

It wasn’t like I was choosing to spend time with her rather than them. I just needed to get this out of the way.

With a heavy heart, I drove back into town, all the while wondering what Colt and Jewel were getting up to and wishing I was with them instead. I found the inn easily enough, then tracked down Kaitlin suntanning at the pool.

Decked out in jewelry, makeup, designer sunglasses, heels, and a tiny scrap of a bikini, she was scolding children for splashing in the water and getting her wet. As I approached, she cursed loudly, got up, and dragged her chair away from the edge of the pool.

She hadn’t seen me yet, but when she did, she slapped on a charming smile and pulled her sunglasses down to the tip of her nose to peer at me over the solid black rims. “Took you long enough. I’ve been waiting for you all day.”

I sat down across from her, not in the mood to play games. My entire heart was back at the Manor, and while I would have loved to toss Kaitlin into the pool, I refrained, wanting nothing more than to put this behind me.

“Why did you come to the Manor?” I asked directly. “Give it to me straight this time.”

“Fine.” She sniffed softly, like she was offended, but then pushed the sunglasses back to the bridge of her nose and lifted her chin. “I’ve spoken to my lawyers and I’m going to do whatever it takes to be part of yours and Colten’s lives.”

My jaw unhinged itself. “You want to be part of my life?”

She nodded. “Of course, I do, baby. I know I’ve made some mistakes, but I can’t take them back. All I can do now is to make it right. That’s all I’m asking you for. A chance to make it right.”

“There is no making it right, Kaitlin,” I said, quietly seething. “You left him. Alone. In his crib. As a tiny, defenseless baby who couldn’t do anything for himself. The least you could’ve done was to give me a fucking heads-up so that he didn’t have to wait for God knows how many hours before I got home.”

“The housekeeper was there,” she said emphatically. “I’m sure Colten was just fine.”

“Are you?” Both of my eyebrows shot up. “How are you so sure he was fine? I checked with her, you know. The housekeeper. I asked her if you told her you were going out. She said no.”

Kaitlin reclined on her chair, blowing out a frustrated breath. She gathered the hair on top of her head in her hand. “I’ve already said that I know I’ve made mistakes, Landon. There’s no need to rub them in.”

“Oh, yes there is. And I’m telling you that there’s no way for you to make it right. Not after what you did. Not after all these years. If you’d come back the next day or even the next month, maybe we could’ve tried again, but now? You’ve got to be shitting me.”

“I hate that expression,” she said, her features pinching for a moment before she sighed. “All of that is water under the bridge anyway. I don’t care about our history. I only care about our future.”

“We don’t have a future,” I said firmly. “Have you ever stopped for a minute to think about what Colt wants? What I want? Because it’s not you.”

She pushed her sunglasses into her hair and rolled her eyes at me. “You might not want me, but he’s only ten. He doesn’t know what he wants. What he deserves is to know his mother.”

“He doesn’t want to,” I explained impatiently. “I realize that there’s no way you could know this, but he’s a smart kid. He does know what he wants and he doesn’t want anything to do with a deadbeat like you.”

“How do you know that?” she asked with a flip of her hair over her shoulder. She turned so she was facing me, stretched out on the lounger like she was posing for a painting or trying to entice me. “How do you know that he won’t want the chance to know me if we offered it to him? Maybe you’re the one who needs to think about what Colten might want.”

I gritted my teeth but kept my cool. “Your absence hasn’t been missed, Kaitlin.”

“Of course, it has. I’m his mother.” She pursed her lips at me. “That’s the point of this, isn’t it? He knows I haven’t been there, but he doesn’t know why not. I’m sure he’ll want those answers.”

“I’ve never lied to our son,” I said, stating it as frankly as she had. “He knows who you are and what you did, and he doesn’t want or need you. He knows that you chose to leave him with me and that you didn’t want to raise him. He also knows that he can’t trust you.”

She dismissed everything I’d said with a slight wave of her manicured hand. “I don’t believe you. I think you’re just saying what you think you need to say to get rid of me.”

“I’m not going to pretend that I don’t want to be rid of you. I do, but that doesn’t make anything I said less true. Colten knows all about you, Kaitlin. He also knows it’s not his fault that you left and that he’s better off without a mother who couldn’t take care of him.”

She sniffed again. “My lawyers warned me this might happen. That you might lie and say hurtful things. You can say whatever you want to say, though. I know what I want and I know what my son will want.”

Leaning over, she fished a business card out of her pool bag and handed it to me with a smug smirk appearing on her lips. Like she thought giving me a lawyer’s card was the silver bullet she needed to tear a hole through my heart. “If you don’t want to be civil about this, you can call them to discuss how we’re going to be moving forward.”

I threw the card in the pool without even glancing at it, my gaze on hers instead. “Do what you need to do. I’m not calling anyone or having any discussions with them about moving forward with a future I don’t want.”

“I always get what I want though, Landon. You of all people should know that.”

I leaned forward, my elbows on my knees as I finally got real with her. “Just level with me already, would you? I’m really not in the mood to play these games. If you wanted me back, you’d have come crawling long before now, so what is it that you really want?”

“I already told y?—”

“No, not all this bullshit you’ve been spinning,” I said, cutting over her. “At the end of the day, I need to know why you would suddenly come all the way out here ten years after the last time we heard from you. Be honest with me about the bottom line, and if I can, I’ll make it happen. What’s it going to take, Kaitlin?”

She eyed me suspiciously and I sighed, exasperation snaking through my veins. “Fine. Give me your phone.”

Her eyebrows inched up, but after holding my gaze for another moment, she picked up the device and smacked it into my waiting palm. I blew out a frustrated breath and turned the screen to her. “You need to unlock it. Otherwise it’s worth about as much as a brick.”

Reaching forward, she did what I’d asked without commenting about it or questioning me, simply pressing her finger to the screen until it emitted a bubbling noise that told me it was unlocked. After that, she watched closely as I searched for her recording app and opened it.

Hitting the red circle with my thumb to record what I was about to say, I brought my eyes back to hers, holding them while I spoke into the receiver.

“This is Landon Payne. I’m with Kaitlin Crew in June Lake, California,” I said clearly, making sure to pronounce each word properly. “If Kaitlin and I ever end up going to court over custody of our son, Colten Payne, I will strike this from the record, but I want an honest answer from her as to what she wants from me and I hereby pledge that if I can accommodate it, she can have it.”

Her eyes glittered with mischief—and victory—and she pulled the sunglasses from her head, finally sitting up straight and letting her feet drop to the ground. She was about to strike a deal and I knew it. I had her right where I wanted her, finally ready to tell me just how much money it was she’d come out here for.

Because as much as I wished for Colten’s sake that he had a mother who actually cared about him and who wanted to know him, this wasn’t that. Kaitlin had come after us for one thing and one thing only—and that one thing wasn’t her son.