Shame (Secrets and Lies Book 2)

by Ainsley Booth

  “What?”

  “I just want you to fight for us.”

  It's the way he repeats the same pathetic plea he made in the restaurant, like we hadn’t agreed to let the conversation go. It makes my head explode. Fight for us. That's all I've done for the last twenty years. I have protected him, I have protected his family. I have loved him when he is the most imperfect man ever.

  I have wanted him desperately. And he has never returned any of that effort, not nearly enough of that desire. And now he wants me to keep fighting. I have fought enough.

  “Are you kidding me?” I burst out. “If you want us to survive this somehow—and frankly, I don't think that's possible—you have to fight for us. I’m done. You want me to fight for us with you? I've already done my part. Now it's your turn, you spend the next twenty years fighting for us. The way that I have fought for us. And then maybe we'll be even. Okay? Enough of that. Don't dump yet another problem in my lap. Another Luke-fucked-up and Grace-will-fix-that situation. That's not what this is.”

  “That’s what I mean,” he cuts in, his breath surging out of him now as he bends at the knee, trying to keep eye contact with me. “I’m saying this all wrong. I don’t know what the right thing to say is. But I want to fix it. Do you want me to fix it?”

  “I don't know what I want.” I’m numb inside. “I know that I wanted you desperately. I loved you far too much. Right now, I just want to get my show going. I just—you know, for a long time I have supported your career, through good and very bad.”

  The numb feeling is warming into some sizzling anger again. I’m so tired of this cycle.

  I roll my neck, exhale, and shake it off. “Now it's my fucking turn. I need you to get out of my way for a little bit. That's what I want. I don't have the energy to fight about this right now. What I need is to work. And it's going to be really fucking challenging as it is, so please don't make it any harder.”

  “Okay. I hear you.”

  “And I need you to get out of the apartment, because I can’t sleep at Sam’s again.” I gesture in the direction of his brother’s building. “I’m not ready to explain…”

  He swallows, his eyes wide, and he nods. “I’ll go to a hotel.”

  “Look for something more long term than a hotel,” I mutter.

  He steps back, and I open the door to my car. Then I close it again, swearing, because I need to put Sam’s sheets in the fucking dryer.

  “What is it?”

  I shake my head, and he follows me to Sam’s building.

  “Go away,” I tell him, exasperated.

  “Maybe I’ll stay here,” he says as I use the key fob I should probably stop using. Sam and I have had a co-dependent relationship for too long, and he’s in a relationship now. I’m no longer his stand-in mother or big sister, and he’s no longer my safe space.

  Ergo, his apartment is no longer my safe space.

  My heart aches a bit as I realize that, albeit not for the first time. It’s been an adjustment process for me because I’m so fucking needy. And as it turned out, I had good reason to be needy, because my husband was fucking around.

  “Unless you don’t want Sam to know we’re struggling.”

  “Separating.”

  “Temporarily.”

  “Permanently.” I sigh as the elevator takes its time to arrive. “You can tell him if you want to. He’d let you stay here. He’d love an excuse to go to Hazel’s full time.”

  Luke doesn’t say anything to that.

  He doesn’t speak again until we’re in Sam’s place, and I’m turning over the laundry. “I’d rather not tell him,” he admits. He shrugs. “I don’t want to tell anyone. But if you want me to, I will.”

  I roll my eyes.

  Likely story. I keep telling him to leave me alone and he ignores that. Why am I letting him follow me around like a puppy?

  I come to a stop, staring at the button on the dryer. Run cycle. Why am I letting Luke do this? I turn around slowly and glare at his back. He’s standing at the window in the living room, which has the most amazing view of the CN Tower.

  “This is a great apartment,” Luke says without turning around. “You did a good job picking it out for him.”

  “He chose it. I just helped.”

  “Why haven’t you told him? I thought you would have called him.”

  “About the affair?” My mouth goes dry. “I don’t know.”

  Because Sam doesn’t want to know my drama anymore. Rejected by Prestons at every turn.

  He finally twists on his heel and looks at me, his expression unreadable, but he shows his hand, anyway. “Because it would make this final.”

  “No.”

  “But yes, maybe.”

  “That’s not it,” I snap.

  I’ve given myself away.

  “No?”

  “Shut up.”

  He doesn’t bite.

  I’m tired and sad, and I want Luke out of my space, but I’m not ready to tell the world, either. It’s not just Sam. This is my own personal hell I’m trying to survive. I don’t need gawkers, people who mean well, caregivers, friends, fans, or foes to have any clue of what I’m struggling with.

  I don’t want Caitlyn to know I’m struggling, either.

  I gasp quietly.

  I’m not admitting that to Luke for sure. I don’t want him to know I even know her name, have looked her up. Better that he think it’s all about his brother.

  “All right, I don’t want Sam to know because it will be final then. Yes.”

  “He’ll take your side.” Luke doesn’t sound upset, but it’s still hard to interpret his expression. He’s made a career of being unreadable, even when desperate.

  I nod. Yes, Luke’s brother would choose me in a divorce, no question. It hurts my chest to think about. “I can’t do that to you.”

  “You always wanted us to have a closer relationship than we ever did.”

  “You own a firm together. You are closer than you think. And you are all the other has.”

  “He has Hazel.”

  “He’s all you have, then.”

  The corner of Luke’s mouth pulls up, a sharp slice of misplaced optimism. “I have you.”

  “No.” That boundary is so hard to maintain while I’m letting him follow me around to breakfast and this laundry errand.

  As if he can read my mind, he dips his head and tries again. “As a friend, then.”

  I take a deep breath. “Yes. That’s fair. I don’t like you right now, to be clear—”

  “That’s clear as hell.”

  I will not laugh. I cannot laugh. I bite the inside of my cheek. “But I want the best for you.” And because I’m not that altruistic, I layer in some snark. “Even if you don’t want it for yourself.”

  A direct hit. Those shouldn’t give me as much pleasure as they do.

  Stop hurting him.

  I will. Later.

  “I guess I deserve that.”

  I frown. “Stop that.”

  He hunches his shoulders and now he won’t look me in the eye. “You just said—”

  “I’m aggrieved. I have the right. You need to be kinder to yourself.” I take another deep breath— I’m so tired of breathing deeply, calm blue oceans—and move to the door. I’ll let Sam think the sheets in the dryer are there because he did laundry. I need out of this apartment. I need to get away from Luke before I say something else kind and he takes it the wrong way.

  He follows, standing too close as we wait for the elevator. As it opens, he leans in and murmurs, “I really do hear you, you know.”

  Time will tell. “Good.”

  “I’ll let you know when I’m out of the apartment later?”

  I don’t turn my head to look at him. I stare straight ahead and nod. “Thanks.”

  In the lobby, I march straight ahead, trying to outpace him, but he has longer legs than I do. When I get to the sidewalk, he’s right beside me again.

  “Thank you,” he mutters. “For n
ot telling Sam.”

  “For now,” I tell him. “I’ll keep this secret for a while. For my own reasons, not for yours. But you need to take care of yourself, and get some help, because we are going to tell him at some point soon.”

  “What do you mean, get some help?”

  I unlock my car for the second time this morning, and this time I’m first to the door. I pull it open. “Therapy, Luke. You’re all messed up, and not my problem anymore. It’s time for you to pay someone to care about your feelings.”

  10

  Luke

  “Tell me why you’re here.”

  I glance around the therapist’s office on the second floor of a converted house just off College Street. Getting straight to the point. “My wife found out I was having an affair a week ago. It was the worst day of my life. I moved out, because she needs space, but she told me to get some therapy.” I let out a rough breath. “So I’m here. And I want to do this for me, I guess, but also for us. I want to figure out where I went wrong, so I can maybe show her I won’t do it again.”

  “You want to repair your relationship.”

  “Yes. And I don’t know how.”

  “Is that something she’s interested in?”

  I hesitate. “I need to do this. I need to try.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I love her.” The words rip from my chest and leave a wound. “I know how that sounds. Why would I cheat on her if I love her?”

  “It’s a good question.”

  “Why does anyone do anything?”

  “Like what?”

  I shrug. “You tell me.”

  He nods. “Okay. Well, I mean, we could start with your childhood.”

  I tense up.

  He notices. I notice that he notices, and he scribbles something on the notepad he’s holding. “Maybe we’ll come back to that. How about substance use?”

  “I drink a bit.”

  “How much is a bit?”

  “Not daily.”

  “And when you drink?”

  “My brother is a gambling addict,” I blurt out. “We know about addiction.”

  “Have you been treated for something like that?”

  “I don’t have that same addictive personality,” I mutter.

  He nods. “And sex?”

  My mind goes blank. I swallow hard. “Excuse me?”

  “Was the affair sexual?”

  Flashes of mistakes. Regret. “Yes.”

  “Can you tell me about it?”

  “The affair?”

  “Yes.”

  No. My chest hurts. “It was a mistake.”

  “You mentioned that.” He shifts positions. “We’ll come back to that, too. You mentioned that you love your wife. What does love mean to you?”

  “I think that’s changed in the last week.”

  A pause. “Interesting.”

  “It’s like I woke up from a bad dream. There’s old Luke, and I’m looking at him, who he became. Like we branched from the same trunk person, who I used to be, but I don’t recognize myself like that. That’s not who I want to be. It’s not who I am right now. I’m—I spent last night sobbing in the shower. I’ve never cried like that before. And it’s fine. It felt gross, but it was necessary. The new Luke cries.”

  “And thinks crying is gross.”

  “New Luke is still working on word choice.”

  “I cry,” he offers. “It’s cathartic. It feels good.”

  “I’m not there.”

  “That’s okay. It’s a process. And so is repairing your relationship with your wife. But that’s a two-party process. She needs to decide what she wants. You can’t make her try to repair the relationship if she isn’t interested.”

  “I know that.”

  “Do you?” A small smile tugs at his mouth, but it doesn’t feel like he’s laughing at me. His eyes are warm, creased with lines at the corners.

  I think he understands. Did you ever fuck around on the perfect woman? Did you ever blow your life up for no good fucking reason?

  “I do,” I say haltingly. “I get it. But we have a bond. We have—had—a really good relationship. It just went off the rails a few years ago. And I need to be better to her. But she loves me. I know that deep down.”

  “That sounds confident.”

  “I don’t lack in ego.”

  He makes a non-committal noise and scratches something on his notepad.

  “Tell me about your wife.”

  I frown. We’re not going to dig into the ego thing? But I’d rather talk about Grace any day. “She’s amazing.”

  “What else? What would the old Luke have said?”

  “Which one?” College Luke was in awe of Grace, too. When did we lose that?

  “The one who had an affair. What would he say about Grace?”

  “She’s too good for me.” I’m getting used to the poignant pause after I say something significant. I shift in my seat. “She’s elegant. Smart. Successful.”

  “What made you bristle?”

  “Stupid shit.”

  “Was it stupid to you then?”

  “I had a short temper. I’d pick fights with her.”

  “And now?”

  “I want to learn how to communicate better. I want to figure out why I picked fights with her.”

  “Do you think it might have anything to do with the fact she’s elegant, smart, and successful?”

  “No.” I scowl. “She’s also warm, funny, sexy.”

  “And you value those things more.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  He nods. “No.”

  Fuck. “I never meant…”

  “Do you still see her as elegant?”

  I picture her face, tear-stained and puffy, asleep on our bed. “Yes.”

  “Remote?”

  I jerk my head up and glare at him. “I never said I thought she was remote.”

  “Aloof? Cold? I’m just asking. Those are sometimes synonyms for elegant.”

  “This isn’t her fault.”

  “No. You made a decision you regret. This is all about you. But it’s also about the stories you tell yourself to justify that decision. You need to unpack all of it, including the negative things you thought about your wife then. Turn them around.”

  I stop at the bookstore on the way home and buy every book on the reading list the doc gave me. Then I pick up a grocery order, because I don’t plan to leave my temporary lodgings for a few days. The less I come and go, the better.

  It’s a solid plan in theory. But it gets blown out of the water when I pull into my parking spot, and Grace is walking across the garage from the private access elevator at the same moment.

  She frowns. “What are you doing here?”

  I shrug.

  “Luke…”

  “I found a place a stay,” I tell her. It’s the truth.

  “Then why are you here?” She’s dressed for work. Faded jeans, long-sleeved t-shirt. A duffle bag slung across her small body. She looks like she did when I first met her, a gorgeous little art student, way out of my league.

  Still true.

  “I’ve rented a place.”

  Her eyes narrow. “Where?”

  I shrug again.

  “Luke!”

  “There was an empty loft on the second floor.” As I say it out loud, it sounds less clever than it felt when I discovered it on the leasing agent’s website.

  Grace purses her lips, takes a deep breath, then matches my shrug with a coolly indifferent one of her own. “That’s a choice, I guess. That will get awkward when I start dating.”

  My mouth runs dry. “Are you…”

  She rolls her eyes. “You have no fucking right to finish that question.”

  “Fair.” I shove my hands in my pockets so she can’t see me ball them into fists. “Yeah. I guess that’ll be hard for me. I need to live with that.”

  She keeps glaring at me like that will make me back off. Like I’ll be scared of a look. But
the thing is, she’s looking at me. I don’t care why. If she’s looking at me, she might see me.

  Or maybe I’m hinging all my hopes on something she’s done for two decades that never made a difference before.

  You didn’t let it make a difference.

  Well, now I’m going to be a different man. Slowly. Over time. I move to the trunk of my car and open it. Giving her the space to walk past me to her car.

  She gives me a wary look, expecting me to get in front of her again, stop her in her tracks. Force her to talk to me.

  I want to, of course, but it won’t work. The doc’s words reverberate in my head. “She needs to decide what she wants. You can’t make her try to repair the relationship if she isn’t interested.”

  “I’m in 2B,” I offer. “If you ever want to talk.”

  Then I grab my shopping and head for the lobby.

  It feels like I handled that well. I get settled with my reading, and the afternoon passes.

  When I hit a rough chapter about the relationship between fathers and sons, and tears prick the back of my eyelids, hot and uncomfortable, the therapist’s words again ring in my head.

  Cathartic. This doesn’t feel cathartic. It’s deeply uncomfortable.

  Cathartic was letting Grace look at me with anger burning in her eyes. That at least feels like it’s getting me somewhere. Like maybe she could singe me to a crisp so I could rise from the ashes.

  Crying just makes my eyes hurt.

  I jump off the couch, leaving the book behind. That’s enough reading for one day. I need some food.

  I’m halfway to the small kitchenette—these lofts were not created equal—when there’s a knock at the door.

  My heart fucking leaps, like God answered my fucking prayer, and I sprint to open it.

  Grace is on the other side, still in her studio clothes.

  She’s looking down at her phone, rage radiating off her.

  My heart sinks as I stand in the doorway, waiting for her to look up, realizing that she’s not going to.

  “You fucking asshole,” she hisses, her hand shaking, her face still hidden. “Why does she call you Master?”

  And just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, it does.

  11

  Grace