At First Hate by K.A. Linde
Savannah
Present
Finding parking in Savannah was always such a nightmare. Derek’s house was in the heart of the city with tourists rampaging through the goddamn streets at any given day of the week. Finally, I found a spot a few blocks from his place. I shouldered the bag I’d put together for our sailing trip. Amelia and Ash were meeting us at Derek’s in twenty for us all to go out on the water. Since I hadn’t seen them for my birthday, I’d wanted to do another outing with the four of us. Derek had seemed to approve.
I practically skipped up the sidewalk and knocked three times on the front door. Ever since my birthday, I’d been trying to see Derek as much as I could. It was reckless, considering the case. And being reckless with Derek had always blown up in my face. Still, I wanted this to work. It worried me that I wanted it to work, and yet I was still doing it. Maybe it was Gran’s passing that was making me give in to this one more time. But I was happy, and that was all that mattered.
The door swung open, and a gorgeous blonde stood before me. She was tall, maybe five-ten, with legs for days in a baby-blue romper and wedges. Her makeup was immaculate and hair perfectly Southern. Her pretty features sneered as she asked, “What do you want?”
My smile dropped and eyes rounded. Because I knew who this gorgeous blonde was. I’d never met her in person, but I’d looked Derek up on social media just once to see the miraculous woman that had gotten him to settle down. And that woman was standing in front of me.
“Uh…” I said. “Wrong house.”
I backed up, fear and disgust boiling through me.
“Kasey!” Derek barked from somewhere in the house. “Why the fuck are you answering my door?”
She whipped around, her hair flying. “Someone knocked.”
“We’re done here.” His eyes passed Kasey in the doorway to find me slowly backing away. He looked panicked and then furious. “Marley, wait…”
Ah, wait. That wonderful word that had ruined me time and time again.
Kasey turned back to face me. Her eyes were now scrutinizing. “You’re Marley?” She’d heard my name before. Oh great. “Seriously, Derek?”
“Leave,” he shouted at her. “Just leave. Christ.”
Kasey crossed her arms. “Fine. Just… think about what we were talking about.”
He glared with fiery hatred on his face as she walked away. I’d never seen him look at anyone like that. Not even people he actually disliked. He’d always been so good at hiding his emotions. But he couldn’t do that with Kasey.
“Uh… I guess I should go too,” I said.
“No, no, no, no, no,” he said quickly, stepping in front of me. “Kasey and I are so far past over. It wasn’t what it looked like.”
“What did it look like?”
“Like my ex-wife answered the door,” he said slowly.
“That is what happened.”
“Yes, but it’s not…” He sighed. “We’re divorced for a reason. A damn good reason at that. Can I at least tell you what happened and let you decide?”
I arched an eyebrow at his offer. He’d been purposely reticent with information about the divorce. Amelia had been more forthcoming than Derek ever had been. I’d wondered, but I wouldn’t push. Finally, my curiosity won out.
“Okay.”
He breathed out a sigh of relief because I’d agreed. I had no reason to. Not after all the shit we’d gone through. Not after the way he’d first told me that he was getting married. It had been years since that day when I’d stood on the riverfront and he’d told me he was marrying someone else. It felt like a lifetime ago… and also just yesterday.
I followed him back inside his house. I’d never been inside the three-story mansion he’d purchased and renovated downtown. It was walking distance to his office and had to have cost a small fortune. It was also one of the most perfectly elegant homes I’d ever seen. It outshone the giant monstrosity that was his father’s house by a long shot. This had clearly been done with love, and I could feel it in every stone and painted wall and carefully curated art collection.
“Your house is beautiful,” I whispered softly as I followed him into a sitting room. I took a seat across the small room from him.
“Thanks. My, uh, mom helped me with it.”
I blinked at him. “Your mom? She’s back in Savannah?”
Last I’d heard, Margie Ballentine had been cheated on by his father. Doug had taken his mistress, a young Kathy, as his wife. Margie had taken a sizable chunk of money and moved to Charleston to be around her brother and his kids. Derek had spent a few summers with his cousins Daron, Tye, and Marina. They were still close, but he never had been with his mom.
“We reconnected,” he said with a shrug. “She apologized for leaving the way she did after it all went down, but I don’t really blame her. I’d want to get the hell out of Dodge too. But she’d been an interior designer before she left, and she began to pursue her real passion—art.”
“Well, it sounds like she got the better end of the deal.”
“Yes. Though it has little to do with Kasey.”
“I figured you were stalling.”
He laughed softly. “God, I’ve missed you.”
My heart warmed at those words. It was so easy to forget all the baggage when I was with him like this. Even after just seeing that his ex-wife was somehow still in his life, I wanted his praise.
“So?” I prompted.
“So,” he repeated, “I met Kasey at a golfing event for the company. She played in college, and we played a round together. We dated for two years before we got married. She was old country-club money, and her dad works in the shipping industry. She went to St. Catherine’s. We ran in the same circles.”
My throat closed at those words. All the ways that Kasey was something that I was not or ever would be.
“After we were together for two years, I thought that I knew her. I was wrong.”
I held my breath, waiting to hear that she’d cheated on him. It felt like that had to be the explanation. Him reliving what had happened to his mother when he was a child.
“So, who was he?” I asked.
Derek narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Did she cheat on you?”
He laughed sardonically. “I almost wish that she had. But no, she was faithful, as far as I know.
“Kasey was a successful real estate agent when we met on her way to opening her own firm. She had big dreams. And then we got married, and every single one of them disappeared. She quit her job without telling me and began to spend the hours she should have been at work shopping. At first, it was just designer clothes and shoes and bags. Expensive—obnoxiously expensive—but not a drain. Since she hadn’t told me that she quit, I assumed she was mostly spending her own money on it.” He shrugged and looked distant. “I was working eighty to a hundred hours a week at the firm. I wasn’t around enough then to pay enough attention.
“Then, everything seemed to happen all at once. I found out that she’d quit her job while she was away on what I thought was a business trip. Instead, she’d gone to St. Barts with her friends for a week with a cost in the low six figures.”
I gasped. “Holy shit!”
“While I waited to confront her about the spending and her job, I went through the bills. She’d told me that she was handling them. That I needed to just relax after work and not worry about money. I’d been played. She was running up all of our credit cards. Three of them were maxed out, and apparently, she’d opened seven more that were well on their way.”
My eyes rounded in horror. “Derek, that’s terrible. I can’t… I honestly cannot even imagine.”
“She had an insatiable appetite for money. We had a huge fight when she got home. I cut up all the cards. I put limits on my bank accounts. She was furious and hit me, scratching my arms and face and screaming like a banshee. I’d never seen anyone act like that.” His eyes were so far away. “I still tried to salvage the situation. I wanted her to go to therapy.” He shook his head. “Suffice it to say, none of that worked out. I was saddled with all of her debt during the divorce, but I got out without having to pay her alimony. She had been counting on that money to continue living this insane life, but it didn’t happen, and she still has the audacity to ask me for more money.”
My mind was reeling from this news. And by how similar it felt to my childhood. All the times my mom had train-wrecked back into our lives to ask Gran for money. The way she begged until it happened. Then, she was gone again with some new man who was the one. When it inevitably didn’t work, she always came crawling back. And Gran had always given in until the very, very end, the last one that had ruined all of this.
“Believe me when I say that I know something of what you went through,” I whispered. “I can’t imagine the depths of her betrayal, but I do remember what it is like to live with someone like that. To always be looking for the next time they tried to ruin everything.”
He frowned as he realized I was talking about my mom. That little piece wedged between us uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, Mars.”
“Me too.”
“This is why I pursued you when I saw you were back in town.”
“This?” I asked in confusion.
“You were the only person who ever cared about me… just me.”
Our eyes met in the distance, and my heart melted all over again. I crossed the sitting room and curled up into his lap. I rested my head against his chest, just listening to the soft beat of his heart.
“Why is this always so hard?”
He kissed my hair. “It’s not. You and me, Mars, we’ve always been easy. That’s why I want you back. I want you to be mine. I want all those things we talked about when I was still too young and immature to ask for them.”
“But…”
He tilted my chin up to look at him. “Don’t think about it. Just be here with me. Just be mine.”
I wanted it to be that easy. To not have one more thing between us.
Then, the doorbell rang, and Ash crashed into his house with a boisterous, “Honey, I’m home!”
Amelia giggled behind him. “Shut up, Ash.”
They barreled into the sitting room just as I slid off of Derek’s lap.
Ash raised his eyebrows. “Are we interrupting?”
Derek threaded his hand into mine. “Nope.”
Amelia grinned from ear to ear. “I love seeing y’all together again.”
“It’s adorable,” Ash said with an eye roll. “Can we go now?”
“Yeah. I just had to deal with Kasey.”
“More money?” Amelia snarled.
“You guessed it in one.”
“She’s the worst,” Ash said.
I fell into step with them, as if I’d always belonged there. It was easier than thinking about all the problems that we still had to face. If I even was able to. The case was only a few weeks away, and after that, I had to return to Atlanta to my job at Emory. What would happen then?
When I looked up into Derek’s smiling face, I decided I didn’t care. This was everything that I’d ever wanted with Derek. I wanted to live in this moment forever.