Find A Way Or Make One (23 page)

I close my eyes and repeatedly bang my head against the bar
. I am the one who deserves all this, not her. As I try to get my emotions in check, I think back over what Lachlan had said. “What do you mean, ‘make her break her rules, not once but twice?”
After ordering a glass of ice water for me and
beer for himself, Lachlan continues to stare at me. Finally he explains. “You know ‘Kye’s Rules to Live By’, right?
1. When you love, love with all your heart. 2. When it’s over it’s over. No take backs and
NO SECOND CHANCES
!!!
Well she broke that
second rule for you twice. Once in Morocco when she let you back in her life,
and
when she went to your apartment to see what was going on and met that bitch buttoning her shirt and leaving.”

“Oh God, please no. What did she say? Almost immediately after I found out that she wasn’t the girl I was supposed to find, I was sent on a covert mission for six months.
I have never loved an
yone as much as a love Kye, and fate and my dumbass keep fucking it up!”

After looking at me for a long moment; completely taking in my dejected presence, Lachlan sighs and offers me a bone. “
Look, one of my best friends and partners is having her birthday party here tonight. Be in the
Magnolia ballroom by 8:15.”

The confusion is evidently written all over my face. “Look man, if you can come tonight and convince the guys, we will let you see Kye.”

I immediately start shaking my head, “No.
I repeatedly let her down and put her in danger.
I don’t deserve her or any part of the goodness that she brings to my life.”

Pushing off the bar into a standing position, Lachlan gives me a long, pointed look. “No you don’t. But does
she
deserve to be miserable?” With that parting comment, Lachlan walks toward the exit. Just before reaching for the door, he turns
around and looks at me. “8:15; g
ot it?”

***

The chance at seeing Kye again was all I needed to
instantly sober up. After
quickly paying my tab at the bar, I head back to my hotel suite and rush to my carryon bag and take out a small black ring box I have had for seven years. I lie down on the bed, but and tried to figure out what I was going to say to Kye to get her to really understand how much I love her; how much I have always loved her
. As I lie there, I think about all the major ways I had fucked up. I hadn’t been honest with her about the assignment that Mathers wanted me to do because I was selfish enough to want nothing between us to change. I had also put successfully completing the assignment
above her feelings when I purposefully hurt her with the whole. “You wouldn’t fit in” line I threw at her at
the club that night. That was wrong and would have hurt anyone, but with what I now knew that Kye had been through
with her high school boyfriend, Zandoville, and Christien, I know that it must have completely devastated her. Zandoville and her high school boyfriend made her feel like a piece of meat who didn’t deserve the chance to say no; then C
hristien made her feel like she was only good enough when things were easy, and as soon as things become too difficult he showed her that she wasn’t worth the effort.

Then there was me. I could only imagine what I had put her through over the years.
To her it must seem like I played her seven years ago then, when something better came along I cut and ran.
Then
we run into each other seven years later, after I finally wear her down, she lets me back in, only for me to once again tell her she isn’t good enough. On top of that I accuse her of having an affair with her son, while in actuality it is a girl she thinks I slept with less than twenty-four hours after we made love. I fucking suck
so bad. I know I suck and she knows it, even if I haven’t done everything she thinks I have, my doing things half-assed has hurt her time and time again.

I slowly rise from the bed
and open up my luggage to get the small ring box that I have had for almost seven and a half years. Holding it in my hand, I walk over to the dresser and silently stare at my reflection. I know that this ring is in no way a guarantee that I will get Kye back. However, even if I
the ring won’t get Kye back; even if I have killed any feeling she has for me, she still deserves t o know that my heart is hers and has been, since the day I met her.

***

It is 8:09 and I am standing outside of the Magnolia Ballroom, with a case of nerves worse than any I have ever had before. The nerves added to the queasy feeling of being sober after close to three months
of being almost constantly drunk, are less than ideal, but I know this may be my one and only shot at getting to find Kye, and I wasn’t about to mess it up.

I drawl in a long jagged breath, open the door, and walk into a veritable Who’s Who of international politics. Making a quick calculation of who I see here tonight brings me to
at least five young European royals; three male and two female, several U.S. senators, both from on the houses, and Connor and Lachlan’s father and mother; one of the most popular vice president and his wife. Formal gatherings like this are nothing new to me. An invitation to my family’s New Year’s Eve gala was one of the most sought out invitations in Texas, so to find myself actually feeling awkward and unsure of myself is a new experience for me.

As I look around, I can’t help the sense of dread that begins creeping into my soul. I cringe
as my words come back to haunt me once again. “
Look Babe, did you really think that we were going to last? I mean, you’re a good lay, but you wouldn’t really fit in with my family and friends back home.
”
Those w
ords cost me so much, and now seeing the circles that Kye moved in, even if only for business, fills
me with fear. What if she laughs in my face and tells me I am not good enough for her now?

Just as I turn around to leave, a distinguished looking older gentleman stands on the stage and clinks his glass right in front of the microphone so that it will get everyone’s attention.
I see an older woman, with dark hair and eyes that looks strangely familiar, even though I know I have never seen her before in my life.

After clearing his throat, the older gentleman
began speaking. “I am happy that each of you could be here tonight to celebrate my daughter’s birthday. You know, it was in this city that I met my daughter twenty-six years ago, when she was adamant about playing with my two youngest sons despite their bodyguards being rather strongly
against it.” As the crowd chuckles, I get a better look at the man’s face and freeze. He is the informant that Mathers wanted me to help by finding his daughter! Oh my God! Did Kye actually know who she was?
I couldn’t believe that I could have kept from having to be involved in that whole Catherine debacle just by talking to Kye. The weight of my regret almost brings me to my knees.

The informant continues on. “While Kyliana and my sons were in Oxford, they started some new traditions wit
h the friends they made there. One was having these guys sing ‘Happy Birthday.’ So here they are, the
Jagged Pill
.”

I had to have heard him wrong. His daughter’s name is not Kyliana. It can’t be. Then the front man for
Jagged Pill
, Ethan,
opens his cockney mouth and makes all my worst fears come true. “Kye sweetie, you know that
we love singing on your birthday. Hell, we chased you down seven or eight years ago when you pulled your little disappearing act! As they started singing, I realized how much I had hurt Kye and took her for granted. Hell, not only did I hurt her on her birthday, I hadn’t even known it was her birthday! She had wanted me to meet her friends and celebrate her birthday and I had thrown it all away. I can’t see how she will ever forgive me
for the pain I have put her in, recently or seven and a half years ago. T
hat knowledge almost has me leaving. The only reason I stay is because I know within the depths of my soul that
I will die without her.

As I look around the room, I see Kye seated at a table in the center of the room. As ‘Happy Birthday’ ends, I start to make my way over to Kye. When I am about twelve feet away from Kye’s table, Ethan starts talking again. “Usually our egos won’t let us play back
up. But tonight we are
going to play back up to a couple of mates that I think you know.”

Just then Seamus and Cian kiss their mother and leave to go up on stage.
I hear a commotion behind me, and like the rest of the room I turn around to see Tiarnan, in full dress uniform, walking into the ballroom. I hear Kye’s gasp, and I know she is like everyone else and doesn’t know what is going on.

Tiarnan only pauses briefly at Kye’s table; long enough to give her shoulder an affectionate squeeze, then proceeds to the stage. Once he gets there he picks up his own microphone. “Well, I know that everyone is surprised to see me, but my brothers and I decided we were going to sing a special song to our mother for her birthday, because she has saved each one of us.”

With that, the band begins to play Kenny Chesney’s
You Save Me
. The boys have the song broken up into parts, but at the end of every verse, Tiarnan sings “Mama you saved me.”
I look over and I see Kye is balling. I start to go to her to console her and offer her a shoulder to cry on when Cale’s voice stops me. “No
man
let them have this. This is the first time Kye has heard him call her Mama, and not
Mamacita
. Let this memory be about them and that.”

When the song is over,
the boys all rush off stage to hug Kye, and tell her how much they love her. I stand to the side, out of site in order to give them a minute, when I hear a commotion coming from the back of the ballroom. I turn around to see Christien, followed by his
bodyguards;
make his way to Kye’s table. By the time that he reaches Kye’s side, all the boys have stood up and backed away from her. Christien looks at her a long moment, then drops to one knee. “Kyliana
, when I met you nine years ago;
you were nineteen years old and I was twenty-two. Even though we were both so young, I knew then that how rare and wonderful you were, but circumstances came between us. Please marry me and give me the chance to love you and make you fall in love with me again?” After saying this, Christien pulls out
a ring with a large sapphire and an intricate, filigree gold band. “I know your birthstone is an Aquamarine, but I wanted the best so I got a Sapphire.”

After a long, tense minute in which I died a thousand deaths thinking she would say yes, Kye finally stood up and quietly asked Christien to follow her outside. I stood there a couple of minutes, trying to get the fog to lift from my brain so I could decide what to do, when Tiarnan’s voice sounded from beside me. “Are you really going to let him waltz in here and take her? I hadn’t thought so before, but maybe he
does
love her more than you do!”

Well that got the fog to lift almost instantaneously.
“The fuck he does! He could love her with everything he has f
or ten lifetimes and never love her as much as I do in this moment alone!”

That
drawls a smile from Tiarnan. “Well then, what are you standing around here talking to me for? Go make Mom a happy woman!
Just know if you hurt her again, there will be a line of people waiting their turn to kick your ass, and I will be at the front of that line. Now go!
” I quickly turn in the direction that Kye and Christien went to do just that.

34

“All my heart is yours, sir: it belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence forever.”

Charlotte Brontë,
Jane Eyre

Kye

Damn and hell! What in the hell is Christien thinking? Over the years he has asked me countless times to take him back, but this is the first time that he has ever asked me to marry him; and in front of everyone like that, what the hell was he thinking? After standing in shock like some statue for what seemed like eternity, I finally got my mental bearings about myself and quickly usher Christien out the ballroom door.

Once we get out in the hallway, I unleash all kinds of hell on him. “What are you thinking? Do you really think that I am going to just forgive and forget you fucking some whore the very night that we got engaged, all because I couldn’t give it up to you that time, really what the fuck are you thinking? Just how far do you have you head shoved up your ass?”

At that, Christien’s face crumbles. I can tell that something that I said is killing him. “Couldn’t give it up? Couldn’t give it up? Kye, I loved you; with all my heart and every fiber of my being. When you started screaming the second I touched you something inside me just snapped. I couldn’t handle it, and when I went to drink the memory of your screams out of my mind, she was just there. Shit, she had been coming on to me for months, so after so many beers and the echo of your screams in my mind, fucking Sable didn’t seem like such a bad idea. You have got to believe me that was all it was; a quick fuck to try to get me to forget.”

I quickly turn to face the opposite end of the hall.
Oh my God, Zandoville had been trying to screw with my life longer than even back then? As much as I want to tell Christien just how stupid he is to have slept with that, that rest stop whore, I know that
isn’t what I need to focus on right now.

After taking several long, deep breaths; I am calm enough to answer him. I can only hope that he really listens to me. “Christien, what you did hurt, I can’t deny that. But it isn’t why I can’t marry you.
First, you don’t really love me. You love the illusion that you have shaped me into in your mind. The fact that my birthstone wasn’t good enough for you proves that. Aquamarine wasn’t classy enough, so you had to use sapphires.