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.

Of course, it’s moot now. Things are so fucking far down the shitter that I don’t think they can ever be rescued and polished up.

Ryker pulls his phone out and says, “Give me Kate’s number. I’m going to call her right now.”

I blink at him in surprise and do a quick sweep of my gaze across the bar. “You’re just going to call her right now…from a bar?”

“Yeah, why not? No time like the present.”

I shrug and pull my phone out. I’ve never memorized Kate’s number because she was always in my favorites contact list. I haven’t taken her out of there yet because I just couldn’t bear to do it. I pull up her contact info and read her number off to him.

He types it directly into his phone and then calls her.

I watch as he holds the phone to his ear and waits for Kate to answer. It’s the closest I’ve been to her since she walked out the door.

And fuck…that was a miserable day for me, but more so for Ben.

Kate was up early that morning, but I was up earlier waiting for her in the kitchen. She startled in surprise when she saw me and then proceeded to ignore me while she made a pot of coffee. I tried to reason with her one more time.

“Kate…is there anything I could say that could get you to stay?”

She looked at me with those clear blue eyes and smiled at me sadly. “You can tell me that you love me.”

I was so startled by her request that I reared backward in my chair. My reaction was palpable and she just lowered her gaze while shaking her head in resignation.

I had nothing to say. My lips wouldn’t move…my throat wouldn’t cooperate.

I couldn’t tell her I loved her because that concept was too foreign for me to consider. I definitely cared for Kate, in a way that I never would have thought was possible after Gina died, but I was pretty damn sure love would never be part of the equation for me again. I was a complete fuckup when it came to love.

The rest of the morning, Kate hung out with Ben, but only after I sat down at the kitchen table with both of them while Kate explained to Ben that she needed to leave and return home. My heart broke in two when his eyes filled with tears and he merely asked, “Why?”