A Love Built On Scorn Chapter 06
Caitlin’s POV
Four months later, at a modest inn near Lake Tahoe.
The girl at the front desk was dozing, her chin propped in her hand. At the sound of light footsteps, Denise Finstad lifted her sleepy eyes toward the staircase.
“Boss, are you heading to the hospital for your follow-up appointment? This should be the last one, right?”
Holding the paperwork from the hospital, I checked it again. “The last one. Start some pasta in a little while. After my appointment, I’ll stop by the market and pick up some prepared food on the way back, and we can have that for dinner.”
Denise stretched lazily. “You got it!”
The follow-up results at the hospital were good. The three broken ribs had healed well. But the doctor still reminded me again and again not to lift anything heavy for the next six months.
While I was waiting at the market for the BBQ brisket Denise liked, a somewhat familiar voice sounded behind me, hesitant and uncertain.
“Are you… Caitlin?”
Caitlin… I repeated the name silently to myself, and all at once it felt strangely unreal. No one had called me by my name in a very long time.
In my first month in Tahoe City, I opened a small inn near Lake Tahoe. It hadn’t been operating long, and because I was still injured, Denise handled many things for me.
I recognized the man in front of me. He was the one who had deliberately raised his voice at that party to humiliate me. He was also Sebastian’s best friend, Nathaniel Jervis.
Maybe he saw the flicker of surprise in my eyes, because his certainty deepened at once.
“Caitlin, it really is you! You… how did you end up in Tahoe City? Sebastian said you…” He hesitated, then pressed on. “How did you get away that day?”
How did I get away? Every time that question came up, I could feel the three ribs that had only just healed begin to ache again.
That day, I smashed the bottle on the table with all my strength and pointed the jagged broken edge at everyone there. They said I was a hard one to crack, too stubborn, too difficult, but they were still eager to try.
The sharp glass cut them, and that only made them more excited. That was when I understood what they really were. The madmen who had lost every shred of humanity.
So I acted like someone with nothing left to lose and smashed a gap through the glass window. I jumped from the fifth floor of that club without a second thought.
While my body was falling through the air, I thought, if I die, then maybe that’s fate. If I live, then I’ll live well—at the very least, I’ll live more brilliantly than I ever did in the first half of my life.
Maybe heaven was still looking out for me. That day, Denise, fresh out of college and crushed after failing to land a job, just happened to be crying in that dark alley. She was terrified, but she still saved me. With her small frame and all the strength she had, she dragged me to the hospital.
Three broken ribs in exchange for my life wasn’t a bad bargain.
After that, I sold every piece of jewelry I still had on me. Then Denise and I bought plane tickets to Tahoe City with our concealed identities. When we bought this small villa, Denise suggested we put the money to work and turn it into an inn.
The location was perfect. Look up, and there were mountains. Look down, and there was Lake Tahoe. Guests didn’t even have to fight through the crowds at the scenic spots to take in the view.
I gained a steady income, and Denise found work too.
“Caitlin?” Nathaniel broke through my memories by force.
I gave a faint hum of acknowledgment. “I didn’t die. I’m alive and doing just fine. You should all be disappointed.”
The words choked him up. It took him a long moment before he managed an awkward defense. “No, that’s not it. We never wanted to hurt you… Do you know Sebastian has been looking for you this whole time? He misses you. He’s cut off every woman he had on the side. Just see him once. These past few months… he hasn’t been doing well.”
I took the sliced BBQ brisket from the owner, turned, and started to leave. My expression barely changed as I refused him cleanly and without hesitation. “I’m not seeing him.”
Nathaniel panicked and hurried after me, grabbing my arm. “Caitlin, you can’t be this hard-hearted. He’s practically gone insane looking for you…”
I winced, shook him off, and stepped back to put distance between us.
“He really knows he was wrong. To make it up to you, he started a foundation in your name, the Caitlin Foundation. You must have heard of it. These past few months, all those charitable donations have been made in your name—”
I lifted a brow in contempt and cut him off with deliberate rudeness. “Nathaniel, you should know I don’t want to hear any of this. Whatever he does has nothing to do with me. You don’t know what happened between us, so you have no right to ask me to forgive what you all did. And what would come of seeing him? There’s nothing left for us to say to each other. Tell him to stop with this self-congratulatory redemption act. It’s fake, and it makes me sick.”
