Best Kept Secrets (Complete Series)

by Kandi Steiner

  Reese grinned. “And it’s a boy this time?”

  I nodded, and he whistled, his eyes growing wide as silver dollars.

  “Better prepare yourself there, Tadpole. You think Daisy has been a handful… boys are the real trouble.”

  “Don’t I know it,” I agreed, and we both laughed, our gazes sweeping over the room before we both settled on Cameron and Daisy.

  Cameron looked up at us, a flash of something crossing his face before he smiled, half waving at Reese. Reese waved back, tucking his hand in his pocket once more when he’d finished.

  “She’s sure beautiful,” he whispered, his eyes on Daisy.

  “She is. Dad will have his work cut out for him once she’s not a little girl anymore.”

  Reese smiled again, but it slipped easily as we watched Daisy and my Dad playing patty cake. Her giggles could be heard over every other sound in the party. After a moment, I pulled my gaze to Reese again, watching his face warp as he watched her.

  He’d never hid his emotions well, and I knew there were questions he’d never asked me, ones I had tried not to ask myself. But he was stronger than I was.

  “She’s his, Reese,” I said softly.

  He ripped his gaze from Daisy to me in a flash, his brows pinching together over his sharp nose.

  “Cameron didn’t want a paternity test,” I said. “Not at first. And even after Daisy was born. But I know you’ve been wondering,” I said. “And honestly, I had, too.”

  Reese swallowed, his jaw tense as he listened to the words I spoke. The party continued on around us, as if nothing was happening, but it felt like we were standing on our own little edge of the world.

  “I asked him to take one a couple months ago,” I explained. “He refused at first, but I begged him. I told him I needed to know, and I wouldn’t tell him. I would look at the results and he’d be none the wiser. So, he agreed.” I smiled, the same relief I’d felt that day rushing over me again. “And Daisy is his daughter.”

  Her laughter shrilled out over the party again, and Cameron looked to me, nodding to his watch next. Daisy was getting fussy, and he wanted to do the cake as much as Mom did, but I held up one finger, asking for a moment longer.

  Reese just stood next to me with his eyes on the pink cups that lined the table.

  “Does that make you sad?” I asked, but he quickly shook his head, before I’d even finished asking.

  “No,” he answered. “Not if it makes you happy.”

  “That’s not what I asked, Reese.”

  He considered me then, his eyes finding Daisy before they drifted back to me.

  “I think I knew even before you told me,” he said. “I can just tell. They’re one in the same, aren’t they?” He shook his head. “Cameron is a great father, and I’m glad she has him.”

  I swallowed, reaching over to squeeze his forearm gently before I released it just the same. “Me, too.”

  “Charlie!” My mom called, snapping her fingers from beside Dad.

  I laughed, holding up the wet naps to let them know I was on my way.

  “Well, time to let my daughter shove cake up her nose,” I said, but my eyes softened as they found Reese one last time. “Thank you for being here… for always being here.”

  Reese smiled, shrugging as if he had any other choice. “Get over there. Your family is waiting.”

  With one hand on my belly still, I carried the wipes over to where Cameron and Daisy sat, smiling as everyone lined up on the other side of the table with their phones and cameras at the ready. I smiled at Graham first, who held his daughter — the one who favored him just as my daughter favored me. Then, my eyes trailed over my parents, family friends, children whose eyes were as wide and open as their hearts at that age.

  Finally, I found my husband, squeezing his shoulder where he sat below me. He smiled, kissing my belly, and our eyes stayed connected until my Mom started the countdown.

  “Three… two… ONE!”

  Together, Cameron and I gently guided Daisy’s face to her cake. She was shocked at first, her little hands stretching out in front of her and her face scrunching up in surprise. But once her hands found the icing, the creamy stickiness of it gooping between her fingers, she grinned, then laughed, and then everyone was laughing, too.

  We all watched with smiles on our faces as she played in the cake, and after she’d snapped enough photos, Mom slipped away to help coordinate the cutting of the larger cake, the one that would be distributed. Cameron squeezed my hand, both of us still watching Daisy.

  And from across the room, I felt another pair of eyes watching, too.

  Later that night, when the sugar highs were done and the presents all opened, Cameron and I loaded a sleeping Daisy into the car for the trip home. She woke up only long enough to call out for the birds when we got home, who she referred to as Wet n Wet since she couldn’t say their full names. We let her sit in the hammock with us for a while until her eyes began to close again, and then Cameron took her upstairs, tucking her into her bed before joining me again.

  “Tea?” he asked, dipping his head inside the aviary. I was watching Scarlett and Rhett settle into their nest for the night, and I only shook my head, reaching out a hand toward him to ask him to join me.

  Cameron closed the cage door behind him, sliding into the hammock next to me, and I tucked in under his arm with a content sigh.

  “What a day.”

  “You said it,” he mirrored, his hand playing with my hair. “You tired?”

  “Strangely, no.”

  “Me either. I think it’s the time, you know,” he said. “One year. She’s already been alive for one year. It doesn’t seem possible.”

  “It doesn’t. But God am I glad she got the chance to live, that she is here with us today.”

  A long breath left Cameron’s lungs, and he kissed my hair, the hand in his lap finding mine. He held it for a moment before his fingers slipped up to my wrist, tracing the birth stones of our sons that hung there on the same chain he’d given me almost two years ago.

  “They’re still here with us, too,” he said softly. “They always will be.”

  I nodded, tucking tighter into his side, and for just one small moment, on my daughter’s first birthday, I thought of my sons. I missed them, missed who they could have been, but I knew Cameron was right. They were always with us, and they always would be.

  After a while, Cameron lifted my chin with his knuckle, his eyes searching mine.

  “Have I told you today that I love you?”

  I smiled, brushing my nose against his. “You have. Many times.”

  “Well,” he said, lowering his lips to mine. He hovered there, and just before he kissed me, he said, “I hope you never get tired of hearing it.”

  He kissed me long and soft, his hand sweeping through my hair, and I smiled wider when he pulled away.

  “I never could.”

  Cameron held me until the birds were fast asleep, and once they were, he led me into the kitchen, making us both a pot of tea as soft music played through the speakers. I smiled to myself when I realized the song, the same one we had danced to at our wedding, and Cameron pulled me into his arms as soon as the tea was made.

  We danced slow and sweet, swaying to the melody of the song, and I closed my eyes, remembering how it felt to dance to that song for the very first time.

  Back then I’d worn a white, lace dress, tonight I wore a nightgown.

  Back then, Cameron held me tight, but tonight, he held me tighter.

  And there in the middle of my kitchen, with my daughter upstairs sleeping and my unborn son dancing right along with me and Cameron, I realized every heartbreak and trial along our path had led us to this moment.

  I wouldn’t have changed a moment of that path, of our story — not the beautiful days nor the dark. Because I knew in my heart that without them, this moment wouldn’t have been the same.

  On the northeast side of Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania, there was a hous
e.

  And now, finally, a home.

  “We don’t mean

  to hurt each other

  but we do.

  and perhaps

  no matter how

  right we are for

  each other,

  we’ll always be a little

  too wrong.”

  — Beau Taplin

  PROLOGUE

  * * *

  Sarah

  I was the girl who cried wolf.

  That was one story I never forgot from my childhood, the one that warned me against lying. Don’t cry wolf if there’s not really a wolf, my parents would say, or when there is a wolf, no one will believe you.

  It seemed simple enough. And I’d held that story in the back of my mind ever since, weighing the possible consequences of lying. I never said I’d cleaned my room if I hadn’t truly done it, nor did I say I was sick if I wasn’t. That story had scared me honest. I’d learned from it.

  Or so I thought.

  Now, as the twenty-one-year-old version of me, I was sitting on the old, musky floor of my college dorm room in north Florida, tears staining my now-numb face, wondering if the lesson had been lost on me. Because they taught me what would happen if you lied, if you became known as a liar… but they left out what would happen if you were telling the truth.

  It turned out, it didn’t really matter.

  No one would believe you either way.

  I was the girl who cried wolf.

  My wolf was not the kind that walked on four legs and hunted in a pack, nor was he the kind who mercifully killed his prey before devouring it. No, my wolf walked on two legs, dressed in the finest suits, and spoke with the elegance of a well-educated man. His hair was black with a touch of gray, though, and maybe that’s why I saw him as a wolf. Maybe that’s why the story I’d heard as a child was all I could think about while my wolf — disguised as my respected piano professor — bruised my wrists and spread my thighs in the same room where he’d taught me to play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.

  I blinked, unwrapping my arms from where they’d held my knees and letting my legs flop out in front of me. For all intents and purposes, they were the same legs I’d had before. They looked the same, but they felt foreign to me, like someone else’s legs. Surely, it couldn’t have been my own that had been hitched up, spread wide for a man who assured me everything would be okay if I just cooperated.

  I wished I could feel something — anger, sadness, resentment — anything. But it was as if I’d been submerged in the iciest, blackest depths of the Pacific Ocean, like my entire body had seized up, yet I was still breathing.

  I was still alive.

  And perhaps that was the worst part.

  My phone buzzed with a text from my mom, asking when she should expect me home — home being our little two-bedroom apartment in Atlanta, Georgia. As far as she knew, the only notable event yesterday was my last final before winter break. As far as she knew, the only thing on my mind was getting home to her and her holiday cooking.

  As far as she knew, her baby girl was still a virgin.

  I blinked again, shooting back a text that I was loading up my car now, and I’d be pulling in a little after midnight.

  Only a partial lie.

  I would make it back to my mom’s two-bedroom apartment outside of Atlanta a little after midnight, and I was loading up my car — with the very little I wanted to keep. For the most part, I was leaving everything behind. I wanted to light it all on fire, but settled for abandoning it in the hell hole that was my university.

  Up until yesterday, it had been my home. Up until last night, it had been everything I’d wanted as a starry-eyed, music-loving girl who sacrificed going out with her friends in high school just to practice piano. Up until now, Bramlock University was everywhere I wanted to be.

  Now, it was my prison.

  And I knew one thing for sure — I was leaving for winter break tonight, and I was never, ever coming back.

  As if that truth was the last bit of fuel inside me, I popped up off the floor and shot straight into my tiny bathroom. I shared it with my roommate and closest friend, Reneé — but she’d already finished her finals and headed home for break. I knew I’d miss her.

  I also knew I’d never tell her why I wouldn’t be back.

  I ran the shower as hot as I could, so hot the steam fogged the mirror before I could undress. I didn’t bother throwing my clothes in the laundry basket I already had piled high and ready to take care of when I got to Mom’s. Instead, I tossed the ripped leggings in the trash. The skirt, tank top, and sweater quickly followed, and I didn’t so much as give them a second look before I stepped into the piping hot shower.

  I didn’t pull away from the water, even though it burned. My dark, umber skin grew an angry red in protest, my nervous system warning me against injury, but I knew it’d survive.

  If I could survive last night, I could survive anything.

  I was the girl who cried wolf.

  I’d waited to shower, because that’s what they always told you. Don’t shower after being raped. They give you a whistle at freshman orientation and a list of what to do if it ever happens to you, as if it’s as simple as getting lice or the flu. Here’s how to remedy that rape, my child. Take this pamphlet.

  I laughed out loud at the audacity of it all, finally used to the water as it spilled down my bare back. That whistle they’d given me was buried somewhere in the bottom of my desk drawer. If I’d had it, would I have been able to get to it, to blow it loud enough that someone would have heard?

  But I shook that thought away, because it wouldn’t have mattered, anyway.

  I did what was right.

  I took all the proper steps.

  I didn’t shower and I went to the music director and I told her my story.

  I showed her the bruises and relived every torturous moment while she pressed her lips together with a sympathetic bend in her brows, nodding as I replayed the assault.

  And then, she grabbed my hand, squeezed it, and told me it was best to keep this between us.

  This.

  As if this was referring to something like a little white lie I was keeping from my roommate, or to something I’d walked in and witnessed her doing wrong. Let’s just keep this between us, Dr. Chores had said. These are strong allegations, and you will have a lot of rough years ahead if you follow through with them. Go home tonight and think about what you’re saying, and more importantly, about who you’re saying it about.”

  Because my wolf wasn’t a wolf in the eyes of Bramlock University.

  In their eyes, he was a god.

  He was a piano legend, a blessing to our music program. Thank God he’d wanted to retire in Florida, they’d say, since that was where our university was. And how could it possibly be that such an accomplished man with so much respect could ever do something as horrendous as rape his student?

  As the water started to run cold, I felt the soreness from my wolf between my legs. That’s something else they don’t tell you about in those stupid rape pamphlets. No one tells you that, when you’re a virgin, rape doesn’t just feel like an invasion. It feels like you’re being ripped from the inside out, like your assaulter is splitting you in half. And I guess, in a way, he had. Half of who I used to be was still there, somewhere, but the other half?

  I didn’t even know who she’d become.

  My eyes watered, the dream I’d have of giving myself to a man I loved one day shattered like a fragile tea cup thrown carelessly against a cement wall. I curled in on myself, as if I could shelter myself now, as if I could protect what damaged goods still remained.

  As if anyone would want them, even if I could.

  That soreness between my legs was enough to drive me insane, that constant reminder of who had been there. I didn’t want to look, didn’t want to touch, didn’t want any more proof of what had happened. Instead, I deftly reached out a hand to shut off the spout. I pressed my back against the cold tile
wall and slid down until I sat again, my knees against my chest, my hands in my wet, wild, and curly hair.

  I didn’t know what I expected.

  All the words they say make it sound so easy. You get assaulted? You tell someone — and everything will be okay. But if there was one thing my father taught me before he died it was that actions speak louder than words. And the actions when it came to rape cases were loud and clear.

  The victim was rarely believed. When she was, she rarely won in court. When she did, the attacker rarely got a sentence. When he did, he rarely served it all.

  The truth was there was no winning — not when you’d been raped. Not when the first man to ever touch you did so without asking permission, without kissing you first, without telling you he loved you.

  On that cold, wet, tile floor of my dorm room shower, I realized my home had been full of monsters all along. I’d just never seen them before. And now that I had, there was no going back.

  I was the girl who cried wolf.

  But I vowed to myself that I would not be the girl who let the wolf win.

  ***

  Reese

  My boots crunched the old, dirty snow with every step I took down Charlie’s parents’ driveway toward my car. My hands were shoved in my pockets, eyes on my feet, but my head was still inside that house.

  My heart was still inside that house.

  I’d long surrendered to the fact that I was a masochist. What other man in his right mind would keep contact with a woman and her family after she blatantly rejected him? Charlie had been my best friend’s little sister when I was younger, but she’d always been something more. We both knew it. And when life had brought me back here — back to Pittsburgh and back to her — I thought we’d finally have our chance.

  It didn’t matter to me that she was married, not when I saw how miserable she was. But I was the stupid, selfish, cocky son-of-a-bitch who went after a married woman thinking there was no way she couldn’t choose me.

  It turned out, her husband wasn’t going to let her go without a fight.