Home to You by Taylor Sullivan Page A

He laughed. “Are you okay?”  
    “Yes.” I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to ignore his warm skin that was so close to my lips I could taste it.  
    “Did you need something?” His voice was deep and smooth, and I looked up to see him smiling.  
    You.
      “Butter.” The familiar tug twisted in my abdomen, and I let out a shuttered breath.  
    He smoothed a lock of hair away from my face before turning toward the fridge. “Syrup?”  
    “Yes, please,” I muttered, then grabbed my coffee and took a long sip. Only a week ago I planned to spend the rest of my life with another man. But sitting there in that kitchen, a plate full of Bisquick pancakes in front of me, I realized the last three years had been a total lie. My heart had never been Kevin’s. It couldn’t have been. It lived over a hundred miles away—here with Jake.  
    When he returned to the table a minute later, he wore a pair of black-rimmed glasses that made him look like Clark Kent. A very sexy, half naked Clark Kent.  
    “Nice glasses,” I said, unable to contain my grin as I sliced a pat of butter and spread it over my pancakes.
    “Thanks.” His brows furrowed, but a smile lingered at the corner of his lips. “They’re for reading.”  
      “You need glasses for reading now?” I raised my brows in that teasing way that told him he was getting old. The one thing I held over him and used whenever possible as payback for all the times he and Dave called me a baby.  
    “I know.” He scratched his head. “I’m almost thirty, how’d that happen?”  
      I smiled, then stood and grabbed the coffee pot to refill my mug. “So what’s this party thing Grace was talking about last night?”  
    “I don’t know. Something she’s been planning for a while.” He shrugged.
    “Here? At the house?”  
    “Yeah…”  
    “Oh.” I frowned. It wasn’t like him to have big parties. In fact, he hated them… Sorrow gathered in my chest, and I poured syrup on top of my pancakes. So much had changed since I’d been gone.  

    By twelve o’clock I had most of my clothes unpacked, my laundry sorted, and a doctor appointment scheduled for Monday afternoon. Jake was in the living room watching a Dodger game, and I could periodically hear him yelling at the screen. Just like the old days. Before one perfect kiss tore us apart.  
    I gathered a load of laundry from the floor, stopped to add the purple bikini to the load, then headed out to the garage. As I passed him on the couch, the sound of Kevin’s unmistakable voice filled my ears. Adrenaline pumped through my veins, and I whipped around, scanning the room for his face. My body stiffened, and my eyes locked on the television.  
    A wildfire blazed on the screen, and Kevin’s smooth voice reported the devastation. My hands dropped, and the laundry slid from my arms to a pile on the floor. There he was, that gorgeous face that used to make me swoon, now projected on the sixty-inch television screen.
    “Katie?”  
    I barely heard Jake’s voice as I wrapped my arms around my stomach. This wasn’t the first time Kevin had been on TV, but it was scarce enough that I wasn’t expecting it.  
    “I found condoms in his pocket once—I’d already been on the pill for over a year.” I laughed a little, a hollow laugh with no humor. “I actually believed him when he said he’d forgotten to take them out.”  
    I felt Jake move behind me but didn’t turn around. “Then someone left a note in my inbox, warning me that he hadn’t been faithful—that’s when I knew.” I turned to face him. “There were three of them that I know of, but probably more.” I closed my eyes, not sure why I was telling him all this, but in that moment, it was important to me. 
    He tried to speak, but I shook my head, needing to finish. “People in the office actually covered for him. One of the women was even supposed to be my friend.” My throat constricted, and I had to swallow before I spoke