Page 130 of Untouchable

She sighed, realizing it still bothered him that she was keeping secrets from him even though he had no idea about the worst of her secrets.

He wanted to hear about the made-up Russian gangster that she’d supposedly had a relationship with in the past and who had trouble taking no for an answer.

She couldn’t tell him about that, though, because it would be nothing but a lie.

She was so tired of lying. She didn’t want to do it anymore.

And she wanted to know the truth from him. She needed to know he was innocent.

“I saw my uncle die,” she heard herself saying.

She felt his body tighten beside her. “What? The one you loved? Who was like a dad to you?”

“Yeah. Him.” She cleared her throat, knowing she couldn’t give him too many details or he could possibly put them together and figure out her identity. But she needed to share something with him, and this was the deepest thing in her life. And maybe she could tell from his expression whether anything in the story hit home with him—not proof of his innocence but at least some clue to give her direction. “It was a… a hunting accident. But I was with him. He was shot, and I saw him die.”

Caleb was silent for a long time, but his arm had tightened around her. “The woods,” he breathed at last. “That’s why you’re scared of the woods.”

“Yeah.” Her voice broke since it was so hard to talk about even under the false pretense. “Sometimes I feel like I… I’ve never really gotten past that day, that my whole life just circles around it.”

“With that kind of trauma, when you’re young, it’s not surprising. That’s why you’ve not had many close relationships?”

“I don’t think I’ve had any close relationships. Except with Reese, my best friend.”

“And me,” he added, nuzzling her hair.

“And you.” She stroked his chest over his shirt and realized how true this was.

“What about your parents?”

“I was never really close to my mom, and it got worse after my… my uncle died. Her brother. She couldn’t get over his death. My dad worked, and she just… died slowly year after year.”

Caleb didn’t say anything, didn’t offer any superficial platitudes. It was a relief since anything he said wouldn’t have come close to answering the way she was feeling.

Naked. Vulnerable. But still safe somehow, as if she could trust Caleb with what she’d offered him.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m living in a Shakespeare play,” she said after a minute, remembering her reflections earlier.

“Romeo and Juliet?”There was a little smile in his eyes, a dry humor that could never be fully stamped out.

She loved that about him.

She smiled. “No. They were so young—and barely knew each other. That doesn’t feel like me at all. I was thinking one of his more mature tragedies.Hamletor something. Where one act sets off this whole downward spiral of events, and no matter how hard you try, you simply can’t pull yourself out of them. Sometimes my life feels that way. Since my father’s death, I’ve never been able to pull out of the downward spiral.”

Caleb let out a long breath. “I know how that feels.” He was silent for a while, and then he began, “Did you ever want to…” Caleb trailed off and restarted his question. “If that had happened to me, and I knew who was responsible, I would have wanted to make the person pay.” He sounded serious, reflective, like he was genuinely thinking it through, feeling with and for her.

It hurt in so many ways. “It was an accident,” she managed to say.

“But someone did it.”

“Yes.”

“What happened to the person?”

She swallowed hard. “Nothing.”

He let out his breath. “Yeah. You’re a better person than I am. Because I would have done anything in my power to make them pay for it.”

The irony was so exquisitely bitter that she froze for a few seconds. Then she reached up to take his face in one of herhands, making him meet her eyes. “I’m not any better than you are, Caleb. Don’t tell yourself that lie. We are exactly the same.”