Strange Secrets

by Lexy Timms

  But if I was being honest with myself, I knew that I still lived my life in thrall to what had happened back there. Back before I had changed everything. I still kept this life to myself—I still made sure that nobody got close to me, because the thought of it was enough to scare the shit out of me.

  In fact, perhaps that was why I was being tormented with the dreams of what had happened to me before. Maybe someone, somewhere was trying to tell me that this was what I deserved, that this was what I was inviting if I actually went on that damn date on Friday night.

  I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her, or the plans that the two of us had put together for the weekend. I knew that I should have been a little more careful, but it felt like so long since I had actually allowed myself to have anything in the way of fun that I was starting to get restless. And I knew that restlessness was enough to make me go a little crazy. I needed this. I needed a chance to break out of my routine and do something new, something different.

  And maybe, deep down, there was some part of me that want edto be able to tell someone the full truth of what I had hidden all this time. I knew that it was never going to happen, not really, but still—there was something tantalizing about knowing that I might not always have to hide the truth of what I had done from everyone I met. There had been a moment, when I was in that interview with her, when I really considered just going for it and coming out and telling her everything that I had been hiding all of this time. It would have been so easy—just lean forward, lower my voice, and share every detail that I had promised that I would never let anyone hear out of my mouth.

  But it wasn’t just me that I had to think about. I rose from bed and went to get myself a glass of water, but changed my mind at the last minute and chose to get a scotch instead. I needed something that was going to help wipe away the memories that had been pressing at the front of my mind all night long, and water wasn’t going to cut it. It might have washed your sins away when you were a baby, but now I was a grown-ass man, and I knew I needed something with a little more bite to it.

  I sipped on my drink and looked out of the window again, watching the quiet streets of Kingston around me. I knew that my brother was probably still up, putting the restaurant to bed, and he would have flipped his shit if he thought for an instant that I was even considering coming clean about everything to someone who wasn’t him. He didn’t even know just how serious it all was, just how far it all went. I had fought to keep it away from him for a long time, and I didn’t intend to change that now, not if I could help it.

  But I couldn’t live like this forever. I couldn’t just shut everyone out of my life until something better came along. I had been waiting for that something better for such a long time now that I was sure that it was never going to turn up, and I knew that there was something to be said for keeping everyone who wanted to get to know me far from me and everything that I had known.

  There were two sides of me, the side that I had known before, and the side that I had tried to build here. I had helped so many people for such a long time now—so why couldn’t I let go of everything that I had been before? Why couldn’t I just move on and accept that I wasn’t always going to be that guy?

  Maybe I didn’t believe that I actually deserved to. It was hard, sometimes, to even think about that—to think about how much I wished things would just change, how much I prayed that I could just detach from the reality of what had been and move into something more real.

  But what did a new reality look like for me? Was it me, alone, in this house, waiting for someone to come along and change things? Was it shutting out everyone who got close to me and hoping that nobody ever found out the truth?

  Or was it stepping forward, doing what I had to do, and unleashing something that I had never imagined that I could before? Did I dare actually allow myself to be honest? I had no idea. But I knew that I had to start somewhere. And maybe, just maybe, this girl was the place that I needed to start. The place that I began to unwind the stress of hiding my truth.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Sarah

  AS I ROSE FROM MY DESK and stretched my arms over my head, I couldn’t help but smile. Only one more day left of work—and only one more day before I got my date with the most eligible bachelor in Kingston.

  I had just sent in my work to Allison for the day, and I was planning on heading home and tucking myself up under the covers to relax for the rest of the evening—or, at least, I had been, before I was intercepted by Mo on my way to the door.

  “You have a minute?” he asked, and I checked my watch.

  “More than a minute if you want it,” I replied. I was feeling social, bright, and buzzy, and I didn’t want to waste the chance to get to know some of my new coworkers a little better. “You want to go for a drink?”

  “Yeah, that sounds good,” he agreed. “I’m not sure that Allison would appreciate me talking about this in here, anyway.”

  “Ooh, sounds mysterious,” I teased him lightly, and he smiled at me.

  “I think it is,” he replied. “Come on, I know a bar nearby. We can get a drink and I’ll tell you what I found out.”

  I followed him down the street, wondering what kind of place he could have known about that I didn’t—I wasn’t aware of any bars around here, and I prided myself on knowing the ins and outs of the nightlife in this place pretty much back to front. But he led me down a small side alley and through a little red door, and I found myself in the middle of a little room that was filled with people sipping on drinks and looking as though they wanted to be left the hell alone.

  “How have I never seen this place before?” I wondered aloud, my jaw hanging open as I tried to work it out.

  He shrugged. “I guess it’s one of those places that you just have to know,” he remarked. “Come on, I could use a beer...”

  He headed to the bar, and then to a small booth near the door, as though he wanted to keep an eye on everyone coming and going. I wondered just what he had found out that seemed to require him to play his cards so close to his chest. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t totally intrigued. I couldn’t imagine many stories in this town that I didn’t know about already—but perhaps Mo had access to more than I ever knew.

  I took my beer from him and had a long sip—I didn’t want to get drunk or anything tonight, given that I was going to have to be in fighting shape tomorrow to make sure that I didn’t let anything slip through my fingers. I needed to make sure that I was ready to take on anything that he threw at me —and I wanted to break down every inch of what Jesse decided to share, to try and get a little closer to the truth of what he had been keeping from us this whole time.

  “So I was down at the public library yesterday,” Mo explained as he pulled out his phone. “I was just looking up some old newspaper reports for a story that I’m putting together, nothing serious. And I was going through some old Nashville Post stuff to find references to this specific musician, and I came across something that looked familiar...”

  He pulled out his phone and fiddled with it for a moment, and then held it out to me so that I could get a better look at the screen. I peered down at it—and my eyes widened when I saw what he was gesturing to.

  “Is that...?” I asked him, taking the phone from him to get a closer look. And, sure enough, it was—or at least, if it wasn’t, it looked one whole hell of a lot like him.

  “Yeah, I think it is,” Mo replied, peering down at the screen as though to confirm his hunch. “It sure looks like him, right? If it’s not him, then I’d say he needs to look out, because he has a doppleganger in Nashville, Tennessee.”

  “Holy shit,” I muttered. The small, slightly blurry picture was of someone who looked like Jesse—strikingly like him, his dark eyes and dark hair so clearly his that it almost seemed ridiculous to suggest for a moment that it could be anyone else.

  “That’s pretty much what I was thinking,” he replied. “And look—he’s not going by his name, either. Jesse M
cCoy. That’s what he’s using, not Jesse Miller.”

  I handed the phone back to him and shook my head. I couldn’t get over the coincidence of him finding something like that—and I couldn’t get over the shock of realizing that there really might have been secrets that this man was trying to keep from me that I might not have wanted to hear the answer to.

  “Shit,” I muttered again, taking a long drink of my beer. “What do you think it means?”

  “The only thing that we know for sure is that he changed his name at some point, and he moved up from Nashville,” he explained. “We can’t take anything else from it—at least, not yet.”

  “I guess so,” I conceded. But it seemed like such a strange step forward, like we had dug something up about him that should never have even been on the table.

  “You still planning on going out with him tomorrow night?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Even more so than before,” I replied. “How could I not? I have to see what he’s doing, changing his name, coming all the way down here...it just doesn’t make sense.”

  “Don’t mention that you know anything about Jesse McCoy,” he replied firmly. “You don’t want to put him on the defensive.”

  “Sure I couldn’t just slip it in to the conversation?” I teased lightly. “Shit, how funny would it be if I just told him that my surname was McCoy? You think he’d break character to make sure we weren’t related before anything happened?”

  “That could be a good way to figure it out.” He laughed, shaking his head. “But I’m pretty sure that he’ll have already worked that out, given that he’s seen your byline by now and all.”

  “Hmm, good point,” I agreed, pulling a face. “I’ll have to come up with something else to get him to come clean.”

  “I guess you will,” he replied, and I sat back in my seat and stared into space for a moment. I didn’t know what it was going to take to get Jesse Miller—Jesse McCoy—to tell me the truth about his past, but I was totally intrigued by the thought of it. What was he hiding? It could have been as basic as a name change—maybe he just didn’t like it—or perhaps it was something that went way deeper than that. I hoped it was. Yeah, I hoped that I could unwrap the truth of what had happened to drive him to a place like this, when it was clearly so far from where he had started.

  “Be careful, okay?” Mo remarked, furrowing his brow at me.

  I laughed. “What are you talking about?” I replied. “It’s just a date. The worst I’m going to do is twist an ankle because I’m stupid and decide to wear heels.”

  “I’m talking about...shit, Sarah, just look out for yourself,” he explained. “I know that it sounds like I’m fussing over nothing, but I don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t want you to get caught up in something you can’t handle.”

  “And who’s to say that I can’t handle this?” I replied, tipping my head to the side and hitting him with a pointed look.

  He smiled at me. “I’m not saying there’s anything that you can’t handle, but a guy like that, who’s tried to put that much distance between himself and whatever he was before—well, there has to be a reason for it,” he pointed out. “And maybe there’s a good reason, too. Maybe he doesn’t want anyone to know what he’s been hiding all this time because he knows that it’ll change the way they look at him.”

  “Then I think it’s only fair that people have the full story,” I pointed out. “Isn’t that what we’re here for? To give people the full story?”

  “I guess,” Mo replied. “But that doesn’t mean that you have to be the one to go get it.”

  “Well, if I don’t, who will?” I replied. I knew that I was acting cocky, but I had a right to—I had just gotten a date with one of the most desirable men in the whole state, and I wasn’t going to let that slip through my fingers. It might be hard for him to wrap his head around, but I wanted to make the very most of this that I could. I didn’t care if it landed me in trouble. Maybe I was even looking for a little of that, for a change. Find something that nobody else would ever think to go looking for. Wasn’t that the job of any good reporter?

  We had our drinks, and then I got a round, and we chatted about work and the paper and Mo told me some more about himself—his wife, his kids, all of that. He seemed like a sweet guy, and I was glad that I had someone like him looking out for me. Though I was determined to prove that he had no reason at all to be worried. I could handle anything that came in my direction, and that was just the way it was going to work. No matter what.

  I walked the rest of the way home when we were done and tipped my head back to look at the gorgeous night sky above me. It was dark, speckled with stars, and I wondered how anyone could ever want to live in the city when this was right here for them to enjoy. Who would want a world where nobody knew who you were? I was certain that I could make a name for myself here, and that I would prove myself every step of the way. There was never anything that could hold me back, never anything that could slow me down—this place was mine, and I was going to make sure that every damn person on Earth knew it, once and for all.

  I couldn’t help but wonder if Mo had a point, though. About needing to be careful around a man like that. I could play like I didn’t care till the end of the day, but the truth was, I found myself pretty nervous about the thought of what he might have been hiding. People with that much money rarely got their hands on it by playing by the rules, did they? Maybe he had dark secrets. Maybe he had dark secrets that I could be the one to dig up.

  Or maybe I would wish I had never picked up my shovel in the first place. Shit, I had no idea, but it was sure as hell too late to back out now. I had a date. And I was going to make the very most of that date that I could. It might not have been the most normal way to break a new story—but hey, when had I ever done something as boring as being normal, right? That had never been my thing. And I wasn’t about to start with something so boring now.

  Not when I was on the brink of getting close to the story of a lifetime.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jesse

  I BANGED ON THE DOOR to my brother’s apartment, trying to quell the rush of fear that was threatening to take control of me. Okay, I could handle this. I could handle this. Nothing bad was going to happen as long as I just kept my head and kept calm...

  I had headed down to the restaurant first thing that morning to catch up with Luke. We had agreed to meet for breakfast there, and I was starving-hungry, ready to put away as much as I could fit in my mouth at one time. But when I had gotten down there, the staff had told me that he hadn’t come in that morning—and I knew at once that there had to be something seriously wrong. My little brother never crapped out on his duties at the restaurant, and I was certain that something bad had happened to him.

  I’d tried to call him a couple of times but didn’t get anything in response, which didn’t do much to soothe the panic in my system. I texted as I headed over to his place, letting him know that I was on my way and that he better be ready with a damn good explanation for worrying me so much first thing in the morning.

  I couldn’t help but wonder, somewhere, in the back of my mind, if the dreams I’d been having had somehow been prophetic. I wondered if they had brought back some part of my life, some part of the life that I had lived before. I hoped to fuck that they were just what they seemed, a bad dream sticking to me because I was too weak to shake them right now. Because the thought of something happening to my brother because of me—no, I couldn’t even entertain it, not for a moment. I couldn’t stand the thought of him losing anything to what I had once been.

  I could hear movement inside his apartment—that was something, at least. I wanted to get in there and see what the fuck was wrong with him, but I got the feeling that he was going to throw down and try to ignore me as best he could while he was still able to. But I was his big brother, and he knew that I would take this damn door off its hinges if that’s what needed to happen. I was going to make sure that he was okay, no matter
what it took.

  A moment later, and much to my relief, the door opened a crack—and there he was. Luke. His eyes were stained red and bloodshot, his skin looked pallid, and he seemed as though he hadn’t slept in days. The door was still on the chain, like he wasn’t entirely sure yet that he was ready to let anyone in.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I demanded as he unchained the door and stepped back to let me inside.

  “Nothing,” he muttered. “Sorry, I was up late last night, forgot that we had that thing...”

  I looked around his apartment. I would bet that he had forgotten about everything but the sound of his own name, judging by the amount of beer bottles that were strewn around. He must have been drinking hard since the moment he came back through the door last night. The place was filled with weed smoke, and I saw a blunt sitting in an ashtray, still smoldering. He only ever used that stuff if he was seriously struggling, and I knew something bad must have happened to trigger this kind of behavior.

  “What the fuck is going on?” I demanded, and I turned to face him, crossing my arms over my chest. Sometimes he needed to remember just who the big brother was.

  “I’m sorry,” he muttered again, rubbing his hand over his face and looking like he would have done pretty much anything in the world to get out of having this conversation if he could manage it.

  “Don’t tell me you’re sorry, tell me what happened,” I replied. “Why did you get so drunk last night? And where did you get that pot from?”

  “Something happened at the restaurant last night,” he explained, flopping down onto the couch as I headed to the kitchen to get him a glass of water. He must have had dry mouth from here to hell and back, and I needed him able to talk so he could tell me what the fuck was going on right now. I was worried. I knew that my brother didn’t act like this for just no reason at all. There had to be something that had triggered this strangeness.