Page 37 of Fatal Deception
Audra touched him then. Her hand over his fist. He hadn’t realized he’d curled it on the table, but he could still see it in clear, perfect color. The anger, the bitterness, thehateon Danielle’s face.
And then, the ensuing miserable guilt.
She’d apologized, but it had broken something. For both of them. And even when he’d offered to stay out of some kind of misplaced duty, she’d refused.
“She apologized, and after we’d calmed down, I offered to stay. Start over. But… She just wanted me out of her life. A fresh start. Her and her baby. The end.”
And that had been that. She’d walked away, and there’d been no way to make her stay. No way to repair what she’d broken. Except to pretend like they’d broken it together. Pretend like the kid he never met didn’t mean anything to him. Just…pretend, and pretend his way into being someone else.
“I tried to… I don’t know. Keep working. Keep living. But I was someone else. I’d lost everything, even that…core of who I was. I couldn’t stay there. I wasn’t me anymore. So that’s why I came here. To be someone else.”
It sounded ridiculous when he said it out loud. So why had he? Why had he let Audra drag this out of him? It was so…
“I know how that feels,” she said very quietly. So quietly, he had to lift his head, to make sure he wasn’t dreaming she’d said those words.
She wasn’t looking at him. She was frowning at the kitchen sink, but her hand was still over his. “To feel like two different people. Before and after, even if I didn’t leave. Everything in my life is before my dad died, and after my dad died. And not in that sort of…grief way. In an angry way. That loss of something that wasn’t right, wasn’t fair. It’s…sharp, so it just sits there. Bitterness. I don’t like to be bitter. I don’t like the way it…infectseverything, and the people I love. So I liked it like that. Before. After. I could be someone else after.”
Why should she understand? Why should she be the one to hold them accountable? Why should this unplanned forced proximity have led himhere, talking about things he’d wanted to bury and leave behind?
Except he hadn’t left anything behind. The past always clung to him. A layer of something he’d never been able to wash off. Weights that had stayed right there, his whole time here.
Until now. Somehow, she’d been right. Laying it all out—from start to finish—was a weird kind of exorcism. He’d always hate it. That betrayal would always be a part of him. The loss of a child that wasn’t even his.
But…there was something about laying it all out to someone who hadn’t been there, didn’t know anyone, so stoutly saying what he’d always felt deep down, always tried to talk himself out of.
No matter whathe’ddone wrong, they had been wrong to hide it from him. Danielle had been wrong to let him think he was going to be a father. They had been cowards, and he wasn’t perfect, God knew, but he’d always been honest.
“You know, I kept this secret from Rosalie for years. I mean,years. And I finally told her last year. I didn’t want to tell her. I hated telling her, but I had to. And then, I felt better. To not have it anymore. To be able to tell her everything I felt. You just have to be able to let it go sometimes.”
“What was the secret?”
She pulled her hand away from his, looked down at her plate, poked at what was left of her eggs. “Oh, I’d just sort of… Our parents sucked. Always. I was pretty aware of it, but Rosalie was younger. So I just…did a lot while we were growing up so she didn’t know how little they cared about us. I made sure my parents paid attention to her, wished her happy birthday, gother presents—that kind of thing. I did things for her and gave credit to my parents. So, in a weird way, when we found out about my dad’s second family, it hit her harder. Because she’d idolized him, but what she really idolized was the version of him that I’d created.”
He could only stare at her. It was completely and utterly selfless. She hadn’t done it for herself. Just for her sister, and even if it had backfired a little, she’d had the best of intentions. She even feltguiltover those best of intentions, like it was somehow her fault.
He had never met someone so bound and determined to hoard every responsibility for themselves, and he imagined she’d just been soldiering that weight her whole life. The weight of this ranch and her sister.
She wrinkled her nose. “I guess that doesn’t do anything to deny the martyr claims.” She got up, took their plates and crossed to the sink.
He grabbed the glasses and followed. He could say something nice. He actually found that hewantedto, but it was dangerous ground here. He recognized that enough to agree with her. “No, it sure doesn’t.”
She started rinsing off the plates. “I guess I am.” She shrugged. “It is what it is. And now we’ve gone down those little memory-lane trips, gotten to know each other a bit, we can call each other friends now,” she said, forcing some cheer into her voice. Then she looked at him and smiled.
Copeland didn’t get involved. He didn’t get wrapped up. He didn’t vomit out his past at the drop of the hat. Whatever she turned him into, it wasn’thim.
This wasn’t exorcising anything. It was dragging it all up and tying her to it.
And he wanted her more than he could ever remember wanting anything. Especially when she laughed. Especiallywhen she looked at him like she was just as irritated she wanted him as he was that he wanted her.
When she looked at him andsmiledand said they werefriends. When she’d done something he’d stopped everyone else in his life from doing.
She stood up for him. Pointed out the flawed thinking that he’d had a role in what two people he’d loved and trusted had done fully behind his back.
Oh, he knew his parents blamed Danielle, and even poor dead Ethan, for what they’d done. But he hadn’t let them act on that, or say it to him. It had been easy to brush off any of their commentary as a parents’ blind eye to their only child’s flaws.
But Audra wasn’t blind. He hadn’t been exactlyniceto her, even if he’d helped her. He didn’t think she had any pie-in-the-sky ideas about who he was. And still, she’d seen everything he’d laid out for what it was.
Wrong.