by Rachel Woods
Sione took a drink, remembering when they’d made love for the first time. They’d had a few glasses of wine, but she hadn’t drugged him.
Sione sipped more scotch, trying to manage the wild, wayward thoughts whipping through his mind.
Spencer couldn’t be the Trojan horse…could she? Ben had sent her to Belize to deliver fake passports and money, not to make a damn fool of him. And yet—
“John, why are you sitting in the dark?” Spencer’s voice floated through the darkness toward him, slipping around him like a caress.
Glancing up, he saw her standing in the doorway to his office. Backlit from the wall sconces in the hallway, she appeared as a sly, seductive silhouette.
Staring at her, he took another sip of the scotch.
“I didn’t know you were back,” she said, venturing into the office. “When did you get home?”
She walked to his desk and turned the lamp on. The room brightened to a cozy glow. She looked beautiful without any makeup on and her hair piled on top of her head with loose tendrils framing her face.
She looked like the prettiest girl in the world, just like she had with the frangipani bloom behind her ear. Sione could hardly breathe as he remembered the flower he’d given her and how the velvety white petals had curved around her left ear, where he’d hoped she would put it.
How could he be with her now, knowing what Ben had sent her to do? Knowing that their entire relationship was built on lies?
“How was the game?” Sione asked as she settled onto his lap, slipping an arm around his back.
After giving him a few kisses on the mouth and one on the cheek, Spencer said, “Exciting.”
“Did the Rockets win?” Sione asked, trying to ignore the effect of those intoxicating kisses, trying to remember that every touch, every kiss, every caress, and every smile was all a lie.
“Yeah,” Spencer said. “They played really well.”
“And you had a good time with your friend from high school?”
“Yeah, it was great to see her,” Spencer said. “So, did your dinner with the investor go okay?”
“Everything went fine,” he said. “I was just sitting here thinking…”
“About what?”
“About us,” he said, glancing at the bottle of Blue Label. “I was just remembering when I first saw you. I had this feeling about you. I thought you were so beautiful, I couldn't believe it, just breathtakingly gorgeous. I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
“I felt the same way,” she told him.
She sounded so sincere Sione almost believed her.
“All I wanted was just to be around you.” He cut his gaze to the bottle of Blue Label and then glanced at Spencer again. “Everyone kept trying to warn me, but I wouldn’t listen. They kept telling me not to have anything to do with you.”
Smiling, she said, “I’m glad you didn’t listen to them.”
“I should have,” Sione said. “Or maybe I should have talked to William Bermudez.”
“Why would you want to talk to William Bermudez?”
“Well, I am curious about something,” Sione said, stroking his chin and staring at her. “Bermudez said that he told Ben Chang that Fong had kidnapped you and was keeping you in that shack. He told Ben Chang where to find you.”
Spencer said, “Bermudez lied to you. Ben wasn’t at that shack that day.”
“Well, you wouldn’t have known anyway, right?” Sione said. “Because you have never met Ben Chang, right?”
Spencer said, “No, I’ve never met him.”
“Are you sure?”
Spencer asked, “What do you mean?”
“I’m just asking because I’m remembering something that Bermudez said.”
Spencer said, “You need to forget all those lies he told you.”
“Bermudez said Ben Chang cared about you,” Sione went on, “but at the time, I thought that makes no sense. How could Ben Chang care about you? He doesn’t even know you.”
Spencer said, “Exactly. Ben doesn’t care about me. I mean nothing to him.”
“You sure about that?”
Spencer frowned. “What?”
“You mean more to Ben Chang than you think.”
Spencer shook her head. “I’m just some dumb girl he used.”
Shaking his head, scoffing, Sione said, “And I’m just some dumb fool who should have listened to those people who told me not to trust you.”
Her smile waned a bit as confusion and wariness clouded her features.
“If I had listened,” he went on, “then I never would have gotten involved with you.”
“Are you upset about something? I don’t understand why you’re saying these things. Are you mad at me, or—”
“Am I upset? Am I mad at you?” He pretended to consider her questions, trying to quell the rage he felt surging through him. “Upset and mad would be a gross understatement of the way I feel right now. But, yeah, I am upset and I am mad because I have been lied to and tricked and made a fool of, and I have no one to blame but myself for being so goddamn gullible and stupid.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked, rising from his lap. “Who tricked you and made a fool of you?”
“Who tricked me? Who made a fool of me?” He glared at her. “Are you going to pretend that you didn’t lie to me about your relationship with Ben Chang? Are you going to deny that Ben Chang didn’t send you to Belize to get close to me so you could find his envelope?”
“What are you talking about?” she asked, staring at him. “Who told you that?”
“Someone who would know told me.”
“Did you talk to Bermudez? Did he tell you that he sent me to Belize to scam you?” she asked, and though a spark of anger flashed in her brown eyes, Sione still heard the fear in her voice. “He lied to you, John, I told you why I came to Belize.”
“You didn’t tell me the truth!” he said. “You lied about why you came to my resort, and you lied about your relationship with Ben Chang.”
“You can’t believe anything Bermudez says!”
“I can’t believe anything you say!” His voice became even louder. “You said you never met Ben Chang. You said all you know about him was that he owned the payday loan business that you borrowed money from. You said you didn’t even know his name. You said the owner didn’t want to meet you because if you got arrested delivering fake passports, the owner wouldn’t want you to be able to tell the cops about him. You said the loan manager was acting as some kind of liaison between you and the owner, but you insisted that you never met him face to face!”
“John, please!” Spencer said, her voice shrill. “Will you just let me—”
“But that wasn’t true,” Sione said. “The truth is that Ben Chang is in love with you.”
“What?” Her voice rose several more octaves as she stared at him, several shades of horror passing across her face. “No, that’s crazy! I don’t know why Bermudez—”
“The truth is that you and Ben used to be together,” Sione said, taking a step toward her. “You would still be with him if you hadn’t—”
“I was never with Ben Chang!” Spencer shrieked, taking a few wobbly steps back. “I would never be with him. I couldn’t be with someone like him.”
“But you were with someone like him,” Sione said. “You were with a man who sent you to trick me, and I have to admit, you did fool me. You made me think you wanted to be with me, but really it was just a trick, and I fell for it and you—”
“How can you think that I don’t really want to be with you?” A tremor entered her voice, and Sione heard unmistakable traces of fear and panic. “Why would you believe Bermudez’s lies? John, don’t you remember the frangipani flower you gave me? As soon as you gave it to me, I put it behind my left ear to show you and the whole world that I was taken!”
“Yeah, taken by Ben Chang.”
“No, taken by you!” she insisted. “I’m with you, John!”
“You
and I are not together. You are not with me and you never were. You just made me think that because that’s what Ben Chang told you to do!”
“You have everything wrong!”
“No, I had everything wrong when I thought you were the woman that I might fall in love with and spend the rest of my life with!”
“I am that woman,” she said. The conviction in her voice was so confident it was almost comforting.
“You are not the woman I almost fell in love with,” he said, though he regretted that she really was. “You’re the woman Ben sent to get close to me. The woman who was supposed to trick me into liking her!”
Shaking her head, she stared at him. “Will you please let me explain?”
“Explain what? How you agreed to drug me so you could look for that fucking envelope?”
She rubbed her eyes with shaking fingers. “Did Bermudez tell you that I was going to drug you? Because that’s not true! I would have never drugged you! I would never have done something so sick and vicious like that to you!”
“Bermudez didn’t tell me a damn thing!” Sione said. “Ben Chang told me.”
“Ben Chang?”
“The guy you met tonight at the Toyota Center,” Sione said. “You were supposed to be watching the game with an old friend.”
“John, I can explain.”
“You mean you can come up with another lie?”
“Why did you follow me?”
“Because I wanted to know the truth, and I didn’t think I could trust you to tell me, and I was right.”
“The truth about what?”
“About where you were really going tonight.”
“So when I told you where I was going, why didn’t you believe me?”
“A few days ago, I overheard you talking to your sisters about a burner phone,” he said. “Didn’t hear the entire conversation, but I heard enough to know you were worried about the burner. Then, as luck would have it, I found the damn phone wedged beneath the pillows. I saw the text messages about you meeting up with someone at the Toyota Center tonight to make some sort of exchange.
Shaking her head, she said, “I can’t believe you spied on me!”
“So I spied. You lied.” He shrugged. “We don’t trust each other.”
“No, you don’t trust me!” she said. “If you trusted me, you wouldn’t have been snooping around, following me!
“If you really trusted me, you would have told me the truth a year ago! You would have been honest with me about your relationship with Ben Chang!”
Glaring at her, he fought the urge to pull her into his arms as he struggled to hold on to the hatred that would give him the courage to tell her to leave. He didn’t want her to go. And yet, he knew she couldn’t stay.
“John, I need you to understand that I never wanted to lie to you, and I never—”
“You’re finally telling the truth,” he said. “You’re admitting that you lied to me.”
“I lied because Ben put me in a position where I didn’t have any other choice—”
“So, Ben made you lie to me?” he asked. “He’s got that much control over you? You can’t make your own decisions? He tells you to run and you ask him how far?”
“I had to do what Ben told me to because…” She looked away.
“Because what?” he demanded.
“I don’t know how to tell you!” she screamed, tears streaming down her face. “I’m afraid that if I tell you the truth I’m going to lose you!”
Sione was afraid, too, but not that he would lose her.
He was terrified of giving up a chance at happiness with Spencer because she wasn’t perfect. But she was loyal and supportive. She could be kind and compassionate. There were so many moments when she was selfless and generous. She was willing to be vulnerable with him, willing to trust him with the sadness of her childhood.
Still, she’d lied to him about everything.
Sione didn’t know if he could get past her lies. How could he forgive her for her part in Ben’s scam?
“I’m afraid that I won’t be able to make you understand how I feel about you,” she said. “Because that’s all that matters.”
“That’s not what matters to me,” he said. “I’m not interested in hearing you lie about how much you want to be with me.”
“But I do want to be with you!” she said. “Because I love you, John. You know how much I love you!”
I love you…
Those three words filled Sione with a host of conflicting emotions. He felt blindsided, confused, and strangely relieved. He tried to tell himself that her I love you didn’t matter, but that was a lie. Those three words mattered more than they should have.
I love you…
Sione couldn’t take her words to heart, he wouldn’t. She was a liar, not to be trusted, and he couldn’t believe a damn thing she said. Spencer was desperate. All her lies had been exposed, and she was grasping at straws, saying what she thought he wanted to hear.
I love you…
Sione loved her too, maybe too much.
15
The Woodlands, Texas
Carlton Woods Gated Community
Heart pounding, Spencer stared up at John, trying to gather her scattered thoughts, trying to think, and trying to breathe.
Their relationship was exploding all around them. Bombs were being dropped, hand grenades were being thrown, and all the feelings between them were going up in smoke. She had to fight for their love. She couldn’t let their hopes and dreams disintegrate into a heap of charred ashes surrounding her. She had to find some way to make John understand how much she cared about him and how sorry she was for hurting him and how she hated herself for her stupid mistakes.
Thinking about the baby, the child she was carrying, the miracle created by their love, Spencer knew she could no longer react out of drastic desperation. All her lies would have to be exposed no matter how painful, no matter the risk.
She and John had been shattered by her lies, but now she realized the truth she’d hidden was the only way to fix what was broken between them.
Spencer could only hope that John would believe her.
She had to convince John not to give up on them, and what they had, and what they could have. She had to prove to him that she was worth his love. Yes, she had made some mistakes—horrible, dangerous mistakes—she wouldn’t deny that. And she could make amends. She would make it all up to him.
But they had to stay together.
She had a sinking, sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that John was going to tell her to leave. She couldn’t let that happen. She had to make him change his mind, had to persuade him not to give up on her. She was afraid he had already lost his faith in her, afraid he no longer believed that the frangipani bloom belonged behind her left ear.
“I should start from the beginning,” she said. “I need to tell you the truth.”
Shrugging, John sat back down in his leather chair and stared at her, waiting.
Spencer took a deep breath. “When I met Ben, I’d been out of work for almost a year. I had been laid off, and I had a lot of debt, bills that were getting behind. So, things were becoming very desperate for me, financially. I was a month away from being evicted from my apartment when Rae came to me and…”
“And what?”
Wiping away her tears, determined not to look away from his hazel eyes, Spencer took another deep breath and told him everything about the “dating,” how she’d met Ben, and how her plan to “date” Ben went so horribly wrong and ruined her life.
As she spoke, John glared at her, his face betraying his emotions: shock, confusion, anger, and disgust. Eventually, he looked away from her, rubbing his eyes. When she’d finished the sick, twisted, pathetic tale, John was quiet. His silence scared her. Why wouldn’t he say anything? She’d expected screaming, yelling, and cursing. The non-reaction was worse.
“John?” she ventured, though she risked igniting his ire or invoking the rage he was s
truggling to contain.
He remained silent.
Faltering, Spencer stopped to get her nerves together, to push away the panic and mounting fear. “I know you hate me, but—”
“I would have to care about you to hate you,” he said. “I don’t give a damn about you.”
Spencer felt like he’d plunged a knife in her gut. “Yes, I did lie to you, but you’re a liar, too. You lied to me and you’re lying to yourself.”
“Oh, really?”
“You know you love me,” she said, forcing herself to go on. “You feel the same way about me as I feel about you.”
“Is that right?” John gave her a dubious look as he folded his arms across his chest. His muscles reminded her how wonderful it felt to be wrapped in his protective embrace, a place she would never be again.
“You want me as much as I want you,” she said, finding her voice, compelled to tell him what was in her heart even though he might not care—even though it made her feel too much like her mother, made her feel too much like “that wife.”
“I do?” John stared at her, an expression in his hazel eyes that she couldn’t understand.
“I don’t expect you to admit it to me, or to yourself, but you know it’s true.” She stopped to take a breath, already regretting her impulsive outburst. “No matter how you feel about me, it won’t change how I feel about you. I’m going to be miserable without you and hating myself for ruining what we could have had.”
“Something tells me you won’t be too miserable,” he said.
“Something tells me I won’t be the only one who’s miserable,” Spencer said. “You’re going to be miserable without me, too.”
“I’m already miserable because I made the mistake of getting involved with a woman who made a fool out of me.”
“I didn’t want to make a fool out of you,” she said. “I didn’t want to lie to you. I didn’t want to steal from you. As soon as I saw you, I just wanted to be with you, and I think you felt the same way about me.”
