Page 199 of Love Arranged

He nods, the movement short and stiff. “So, he drove, and still to this day, I’m not sure where he was going because he ended up on the opposite side of town—” His sentence ends with the break in his voice.

“No.” Acid crawls up my throat at an alarming rate.

“If he drove straight home… If he paid attention to where he was going, my parents might still be here today. No, I’m sure they would be because Trevor wouldn’t have hit them. He could’ve gone home and slept it off, and my parents would’ve never ended up dying in a ditch.”

He whispers the next part, sounding more like the ten-year-old child who lost his parents than a bitter adult with a score to settle. “They would’ve come back home tome.”

I don’t notice I’m crying until Daisy starts licking my face.

“For a while, before I found out the truth, I blamed my parents.” He looks down with shame. “Why did they insist on driving the sick dog to the vet in the middle of the night? Why couldn’t they wait until morning?

“The dog didn’t even make it. Not because of the accident, which he miraculously survived, but from kidney complications.” His pain is a living, breathing entity, and I absorb it like my own.

With an experience like that, I’m surprised he wanted to adopt Daisy.

Because he wanted her foryou.

Daisy butts her head against my chest, and I wrap my arms around her neck while wishing I could hug Lorenzo instead. Something tells me he needs to get this out without any interruption, so I hold off.

“Eventually I learned the truth about everything that happened, and it made me sick.” The words tumble out of him without any pause, and he isn’t the only one who feels sickened by the news. “Trevor called his dad first. Can you believe that? Not 911, but hisdad.”

My heart pumps furiously in my chest.

Lorenzo shakes his head with disgust. “And then the mayor called his brother, who was a deputy at the time.”

I’m so disgusted by the entire cover-up, I can’t begin to describe how I feel about it, but I think my expression must do the job because Lorenzo frowns when he turns to look at me.

“It was more than an abuse of power. It was…”

“One of the most awful things a person can do,” I answer.

His voice drops. “I’ll never know if they could’ve gotten help in time, and that’s what haunts me most. It keeps me up at night sometimes, thinking about their last moments and whether they were bleeding out in front of each other, praying for help but never getting it.”

I’m full-on sobbing by this point.

“How did you…” I can’t even finish the sentence because it’s too horrible. To think that not only did Trevor Ludlow kill Lorenzo’s parents but then tried to cover up the crime?

Absolutely unforgivable.

“How did I what?” Lorenzo asks softly. “Find out about everything?”

I nod with tears streaming down my face.

“I hired one of the best private investigators in the nation to get to the bottom of the case. His methods were expensive but effective.”

“And he connected it back to Trevor?”

“Yeah. There were too many coincidences to ignore.”

“How did your PI figure out it was him of all people?”

A dark look passes over his face.

I don’t like it, so I ask, “What?”

“Will you take my word for it when I say that I’m certain I have the right guy?”

“You don’t want to tell me,” I state, not sure how to feel about that.