“Travis!” Caitlin hissed, squirming her hips away from him.
He sighed and muttered, “Fuck.” Then he rolled off her on his back. He raised an arm and rested the back of his hand over his forehead.
“Nothing will make me happier, you know,” he said after a few minutes. “We’d been planning to start a family.”
Caitlin scrambled off the bed, grabbing her torn underwear and huffed when she realized it was ruined. “That’s your plan with Sarah. Not me. I wasn’t privy to your plans with her for having a child. I don’t think I’m the maternal type.”
Something snapped in him as he shot off the bed, furiously tucking himself back in his pants. “Guess what, Caitlin? You are Sarah and Sarah is you. Believe me, I’ve tried so hard to wrap my head around it and it’s driving me insane. So yes, probably it’s not fair for me to push this dream we’ve made together on you because you don’t remember. I’m sick and tired of tiptoeing around you, afraid I might hurt your feelings because I might say something that was only a memory between me and Sarah—whoisyou. I swear I want to move forward only with you. With you, Caitlin.” His face was tormented when he choked out, “But you insist on making this a fucking nightmare every single time. I can’t fucking take it anymore.”
“So living with me is a nightmare?” Caitlin couldn’t breathe because an excruciating pain gripped her chest.
Travis stared at her, his lips thinning grimly. He shook his head and said, “Fuck this.”
He left her standing there and slammed out of the bedroom.
Caitlin stared numbly at the shut door, unable to process what Travis had said.
Fucking nightmare.
I can’t fucking take it anymore.
Fuck this.
The tears came and she gulped back a racking sob. She ran back to her own room and locked herself in the bathroom. She started crying hard. Nobody wanted her. Jase left her. And only after two weeks, Travis had given up on her when he hadn’t for three years. She could never compare to who she was before. She stared at herself in the mirror. She was scarred in more ways than one.
She couldn’t sleep with his smell all over her. So she started the shower and stayed under its punishing heated spray until her skin was scraped of every essence of him. Afterward, she crawled into bed and cried herself to sleep.
Ben Porter was already waitingfor her when Caitlin walked into the NEST offices at 10:00 a.m. It seemed her schedule that day was about to change.
“I figured we’d start early,” Porter told her smoothly. “That way your mind is fresh.” He frowned at her. “You looked like you haven’t slept well.”
“Too much to drink last night,” Caitlin lied. She didn’t sleep until 3:00 a.m. She heard Travis open her door at around midnight, but he didn’t come into her room. She’d felt his eyes drilling into her in the dark. She held her breath until she heard the door close, and his quiet footfalls faded back into his room.
“Everything well between you and Blake?”
“Same old. Same old,” Caitlin muttered.
“He needs his wife back.”
“I’m not Sarah.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Porter replied evenly. “You mean everything to him, Caitlin. I hope you’re not too blind to recognize that fact.”
“I think you’re wrong there. He said I was a nightmare to live with.”
Porter frowned. “He said those exact words?”
Caitlin fidgeted in her seat. “No. Not exactly.” Damn. Maybe she twisted his words a bit too conveniently.
“Blake was pissed that I went behind his back. He said he’d find a way to come up with the hundred million if that would keep you out of CIA hands.”
Her gut fell from under her. “He said that?”
Porter nodded. “So you see, my dear, I don’t think I’m wrong about him.”
Oh, God. She had been such a bitch to him. So unfair. Caitlin felt nauseous with guilt. She would make it up to him tonight. She hoped she wasn’t too late. The sooner she got out of here, the better she could prepare a special evening for them.
She turned on her laptop and swiveled it to face Porter. “Your files.”
