"Good
morning. Told you I'd be back."
"What do you want,
Zach?"
"I want you to marry me."
When the idea first occurred to him, he dismissed it immediately as insane.
But it kept returning. So he worried it, like a dog with a bone. And the longer he played with the notion, the less insane it became.
It seemed simple, almost. Elegant. Disturbingly logical.
Kendall wanted revenge. He wanted many things: to teach Ethan a lesson; to end his own pathetic attempts at reuniting with Maria; to prevent Cambias from destroying any one else.
"I'm not going to hurt Kendall. I'm going to pick her up, dust her off, and help her take aim."
When he'd finally given in to his inner voices and proposed, he'd given Kendall many reasons to marry him – except the one that she'd refuse to believe: that he wanted to make amends. Marrying him would give Kendall some of her own back. She had been so desperate to believe in Ethan and the love he offered, and so furious and broken when she learned the boy was lying. Once again she had thrown herself out there without holding anything back, and once again she'd gotten her heart stomped on as payment. He'd tried to warn her, more than once, but she hadn't listened to him.
Not that he could blame her. He told Kendall once he'd torn his ticket with Ethan; he'd never had one with her to tear. Their initial bonding over Bianca and Ethan was long gone. Hard to believe, now, that she was the first person he called on when he arrived in Pine Valley; or that he was who she ran to when she wanted Ryan's head on a platter.
Well, he'd earned her distrust. His desperation to get Ethan out had overruled every other instinct he had. And God knew he wasn't anyone's white knight, especially Kendall's. Her taste ran to self-proclaimed heroes like Lavery. He was too gray and too self aware for her. But Zach knew that the Cambias men owed the Kane women a debt – one that he and Ethan had managed between them to compound to almost staggering proportions in Kendall's case. Ethan's desire for revenge and his own bloody-mindedness had almost cost Kendall, Greenlee and Lily their lives. Greenlee had Lavery, and Lily had Jackson; all Kendall had at the end of that fiasco was a broken heart. Offering her a chance at payback and a safe haven to lick her wounds wasn't just a clever tactic; he and Ethan owed it to her.
"You pretended to marry my brother. You almost married my son, which makes me the only Cambias you haven't been engaged to. And I got to tell you, I feel a little left out."
The fact that he dreamed about her – hot, sweaty dreams that left him aching and wanting - didn't matter. Hell, it made her revenge all the sweeter, even if she never knew it. Ethan's penance was not having Kendall at all; his was having her in name only.
He'd told Kendall she could do what she wanted when she wanted, and he thought he'd meant it. Of course, he'd undercut that promise by giving her a wedding ring with its own weather system – a not so subtle sign to most men that Kendall was not available. And any man who started paying too much attention to her during her visits to the casino mysteriously found his credit drying up.
"I
knew you had bad taste in men, but at least they were men. This
is ridiculous."
" All right, you know what? You're
jealous."
"No, no, you can teach whoever you want whenever
you want, but just so we understand that this open marriage
policy applies to both of us."
"No, no, that's cool. I'm
down with that. Anyone I know?"
"Uh-"
He still didn't know what he would have done if she'd continued sleeping with the little Chandler. He liked to think he wouldn't have gone back on his word. He had a sneaking suspicion, though, that he would have engineered a breakup if Junior's petulant rages hadn't ended it so soon after the wedding.
He was surprised – stunned - when Kendall decided to stay married to him after he told her of his decision to drop his lawsuit to win back Cambias Industries. He'd fully expected her to kick him out of her suite and her life for good. But, some crazy Kendall logic had prevailed, and she'd stayed with him. Zach didn't believe her vows that she was done with love anymore than Erica did. But if she wanted to use him as a temporary shield while she rebuilt her confidence, she could have him. She'd earned it.
The true irony was that Zach found himself reaping unexpected benefits from their ridiculous pact. Kendall once again started turning to him. She came to him for advice, for help, for reassurance. Even, it seemed, a guarded kind of friendship. And he wouldn't – couldn't - turn her away. Because in a still, small, part of himself, Zach knew the truth.
Kendall was his. She just didn't know it yet. And Zach swore to himself that she would never find out.
Because taking what you wanted – when you had no intention of really having it – wasn't easy. But having what you wanted? That could be deadly.
Because Zach always lost what he had.
And Kendall had already lost enough.