And without trust, there was no deeper world. Or, at least, no access to it.
She didn’t trust him, either. Because of a phone call that may or may not have been truth, their world had been obliterated. Fact.
If Reese had been unfaithful to her, they’d both been responsible for the demise of their relationship. That didn’t change things. But it mattered.
“I asked you to a party the Friday night before homecoming,” she said, just as she’d rehearsed. No accusation. No emotion or drama. “You had night drills.”
He actually jerked. She felt it in the brush of his calf against hers.
“I know this is not a current-business question, Reese, but I’m asking you to believe that it’s taking me straight to what I’ve brought you here to tell you.”
“And this thing you have to tell me...the thing after a different question other than the one you’re currently asking...this thing is current business?”
Not fire business. But... “Very much so.”
He nodded and sat up straight, his legs farther away, his elbows on the arms of his chair. “I remember the night you’re referring to,” he said.
“Did you go out with Susan Shepherd that night?”
His eyes narrowed. And she knew. He didn’t have to answer. She just knew.
“This is important why?” he asked, sounding less professional, and less friendly, by the second.
There was no script for that. So she went with the truth, just as she’d planned.
“It’s important to my mental and emotional health.”
He studied her, as though looking for the lie in her story. Looking for how she was trying to get something from him. At least that was how his reaction seemed to her.
She found herself doing something she’d warned herself, over and over again, not to do. She was getting defensive.
Her tongue started moving before she could stop it.
“I knew, Reese.” How could the betrayal feel fresh all over again? “Joey Moore called. He told me you’d turned me down because you were going out with Susan.”
Shifting in his chair, Reese leaned forward. And then back.
How could a man look so incredibly good to her as he sat there with guilt written all over him?
“That’s why I told you not to come to homecoming at all,” she said. “Because I knew.”
She could see the movement in his jaw as his muscles tensed.
“I wanted you to break the date. To come to my Friday night party. To prove to me that I meant more to you than she did.”
“You didn’t think about just...I don’t know...asking...”
Later, she had.
When it was too late.
“After that weekend, I...” No, wait. She had to follow her script. “By the end of the weekend, I’d convinced myself that I’d been wrong. And that I’d done you a huge disservice. I’d tried to manipulate you into doing what I wanted, and I’d acted out of jealousy without ever giving you a chance to explain.”
He nodded. That was all. Just a nod.
She couldn’t leave it at that.
“But if I was right, Reese, if my sense that what Joey said really was true, then I’ve spent nine years erroneously mistrusting myself. Nine years when I needed to be able to trust myself more than anything else in the world.”
Damn the tears that came to her eyes. She’d promised...
He bit his lower lip. Jutted his chin some more.
“Did you go out with Susan Shepherd that night?” She had a plan. Couldn’t move on without an answer.
He looked her straight in the eye. “Yes.”
* * *
THERE WAS MORE Reese could say. So much more.
He could tell Faye how he’d been observing a fire scene earlier that week. He’d watched a burning beam fall on a fireman, hitting him across the back of his shoulders, knocking him unconscious.
He could tell her how he’d kept the incident to himself because he hadn’t wanted to scare her or give her a reason to doubt his career choice. The accident had made him look at his life differently, had messed with his brain. For a few days there, he’d been consumed with fear.
So he’d asked Susan out just to be sure that he wasn’t making a mistake, spending his entire life with one woman. He’d gone out with Susan to make certain that Faye was the one.
And to run from the truth that had come home to him. If he married Faye, he could also be asking her to sign on to early widowhood.
If they had a family, he might leave his kids fatherless.
As Reese sat in that charming backyard, sipping sweet tea with two lemons, it all came rushing back to him. With more clarity than he’d seen in...ever.
He could have shared the clarity with Faye.
But this was her meeting. Her business.
He was her boss.
The kid he’d been had gone on a group date with Susan as his companion. He’d never touched her. He’d been in his own bed, alone, by midnight.
Faye eventually married the other man she’d dated that same weekend. Married him and had his son.
She’d broken up with him in a text message. Because she’d known about Susan.
He didn’t want to dredge up the past any more. He’d worked too long and too hard to get his present just the way he wanted it.
* * *
HE’D BEEN UNFAITHFUL to her. He’d blown her off to go out with another girl. The news should have been catastrophic. Should have hit her like bricks to the head.
Instead, while her heart bled a bit, Faye was overwhelmed with the knowledge that she’d been right. She’d known. She grieved. Had been grieving for nine long years.
Now, along with the pain came a sense of relief. Like she’d been holding something so tightly for so long that she quivered with its release.
She’d known.
Had been trying to tell herself.
Finally, she was capable of hearing.
She wanted Reese to go, but she wasn’t done.
Elliott deserved the chance to not be Frank Walker’s son.
The first time Frank had abused her, within a month of their son’s birth, she’d discovered a place inside herself. A safe place. A little “room” she could go to deep in her mind. It blocked out the physical pain—mostly. If she could concentrate hard enough on the room, on being there, on what she was doing there, on which imaginary person was there with her, she could endure whatever else was happening to her.
For a moment, sitting in the garden with Reese, she tried to access that place in her mind. To find peace, and the numbness that would allow her to get through the rest of the interview.
Interview—that was a good word. Impersonal.
She was interviewing Reese.
That was all.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“I HAVE A STORY to tell you.”
Sweating, ready to lift dumbbells twice his weight and then toss them across the street, Reese welcomed Faye’s words.
Because a story in the present left the past behind.
And got to the point of a visit he was deeply regretting.
He hadn’t touched Susan—hadn’t been able to get Faye out of his mind long enough to even relax with the other girl. Couldn’t even picture her features clearly anymore.
Faye had known?
Joey’s face, not looking so good, flashed before his mind’s eye, and he knew he had to get back to work.
The past was done.
He couldn’t change any of it.
Not Susan. Not Faye. And not Tabitha, either.
“Before I start, I need your word that you will let me finish without interruption,” Faye was saying now.
What was it with the wo
man and all her rules? Her need for control?
Had being abused given her some kind of obsessive compulsive disorder?
“I won’t interrupt.” He gave her what she asked for with one purpose in mind. Getting out of there as quickly as possible.
Her nod seemed like a good sign. And then she bit her lip.
If she started to cry again, he wasn’t sure he could stop himself from taking her in his arms and begging her to forgive him for Susan.
But his date with another girl hadn’t been the only problem between them. With clarity came truth. Faye had needed more from him than he’d been able to give.
As much as he’d loved her, the college boy he’d been, and the man he’d grown into, hadn’t believed enough in the bone-deep kind of love she’d needed.
They might have had a lifetime together, maybe. If they’d worked hard and were lucky.
If they could make it through the differences of opinion that would be inevitable.
But their love hadn’t been strong enough to make it through one...
Enough. No more going back.
She was taking a sip of tea. Seemed to have collected herself.
Thank God.
If he had to see a therapist because of this meeting, he was billing her.
The thought was beneath him. But satisfied something in him, too.
Until she opened her mouth and started to speak. Telling him about Carrie’s boyfriend, the brother that had driven down from San Francisco. About agreeing to go out with them, to keep the brother company so Carrie and her boyfriend could dance and have some time alone together.
By the time he got that she was explaining something he didn’t want to know, he was already in too deep. It wasn’t his promise that kept him from interrupting.
It was his inability to speak at all.
She’d spent the evening drinking to shut up the pictures in her head of him with another woman. Had talked about him all night.
The idea of it made his heart pound.
This didn’t sound like a woman who’d break up in a text message. Not even because of Susan.
She’d been so drunk she’d been unable to walk by herself?
Stunned, he couldn’t even picture Faye in that state.
Even with all that, nothing prepared him for the next part of her story. She told it in a calm tone. As though speaking about someone she didn’t know.
Like a man watching a train wreck he knew was going to happen but couldn’t prevent it, he listened as she spoke about the next morning.
Blood surged through his veins. His teeth were gritting together so hard he had half a thought that they might break.
“You were raped.”
It had never occurred to him. Not once. Not even in his craziest, darkest moments. Faye had been raped?
She was one of the college statistics? The unconscious girl raped after having had too much to drink and trusting her companions?
One of the girls who didn’t come forward.
Reese heard roaring in his ears.
Closed his eyes against the rage.
He’d hated her for so long...
Hadn’t been able to forgive...
And now he knew...
He knew why she’d sent that text message.
Reese had promised her he wouldn’t interrupt. He hadn’t promised he wouldn’t leave.
Half-aware of the chair falling backward behind him, he left the table. Headed toward the gate.
She didn’t call out to him.
But he felt her back there. Sitting alone.
He turned around. Saw her there. Shoulders straight. Watching him without a shred of emotion on her face.
This was what that bastard had done to her. Stripped her of the open, nurturing heart that Reese had cherished.
But he hadn’t cherished her. He knew that now.
Reese wasn’t sure who he hated more in that moment—the brother. Or himself. Truth was, he was a bit angry with her, too, for going out at all.
And that made him hate himself more.
Bitterness became acid on his tongue.
He wanted it there. Wanted anything that would take away awareness of the gaping hole deep inside him.
He strode back to the table. Looked her right in the eye. Meant to say something decent. But couldn’t get his mouth open.
He just kept staring into those beautiful blue eyes.
And felt his own grow moist.
God, what had he done?
* * *
ELLIOTT. SHE HAD to think of Elliott.
Reese was going to have questions. He was going to want to know how she came to be married to Frank after that disastrous homecoming night.
She had to give him the truth. To paint the picture exactly as it was. It was the only way to help him trust her.
And he had to trust her. If any of them were going to get through this and find happiness on the other side.
She’d cried her tears. Would be crying them for the rest of her life. This pain she could handle. Most of the time. She’d learned how to manage.
But Reese...
In all of the years she’d known him, she’d never seen him cry, or even express any deeply intense emotion. Other than passion.
“It’s okay, Reese,” she said. And then did the unthinkable. She took his hand. “Please sit back down.”
He did. But she wasn’t sure he’d be staying long.
“I’m so...” He hadn’t let go of her hand. Started to pull her toward him.
The way her free hand came up to stop him wasn’t planned. She didn’t know who was more surprised, him or her.
If he’d been any other male, she’d have understood and expected the reaction. But this was Reese. And she’d recently discovered that he was the one man her psyche would let near her.
She’d been making love with him in her sleep for weeks. Waking up turned on as hell.
“You said you wouldn’t interrupt.” The words came because they’d been rehearsed. He had no idea what Frank had done to her over the years.
And she wasn’t about to tell him.
The conversation wasn’t about details, or her current sexual inabilities.
She’d cry about that again later, when she was alone and could hug herself. Hide her wounds. Let herself nourish the damaged woman inside.
As quickly as she could, she told Reese about finding out she was pregnant a month later. About calling the brother. She told him what he’d told her about that night, how he’d said they both agreed it was the best sex they’d ever had.
Reese stood up again. “That’s it. That’s enough. I get that you must have a need to be cruel to me, Faye. That you blame me for what happened. And if it makes you feel any better, I blame myself now, okay? But I’m not going to sit here and listen to you telling me in detail how sex with another man was far better than...”
She was afraid he was really going to go. He couldn’t. Not until they were done here.
She got up, too. Stepped right up to him, face-to-face, until they were almost touching.
How could a man still smell the same after so many years?
How could she remember the scent?
And how could she, so damaged by Frank’s abuse, get wet from just a whiff of that scent?
She’d ask Sara or Bloom. She’d think about it later. She couldn’t get distracted. She’d almost made it through.
She wasn’t going to let Elliott down now.
As always, thoughts of her son gave her strength.
She put one hand on his chest.
He stepped back.
“Please, Reese. I asked you to trust that there would be reason for telling you this. I’m not saying wh
at I’m saying to be cruel. I need you to understand...”
“I have no need to understand that you enjoyed...”
I didn’t! The words screamed from inside her. They didn’t make it past her throat.
“If I don’t tell you this part, you aren’t going to understand the next...”
Whether it was her tone of voice, a look in her eye or some need he had to hear the rest, she didn’t know, but she was glad when Reese sat back down.
She did, too, keeping her knees close to him. Allowing herself that comfort.
She told him how the other man adored her. How he wanted to make a home, a life, for her and their son. She told him about her hope that Reese would argue with her about breaking up with him. That he’d call. Come to get her.
And how, when he didn’t, she knew she had no choice. She trusted that she’d loved being with the other man because she couldn’t trust anything she’d felt with Reese. Because she couldn’t trust Reese.
She knew when his eyes narrowed again that he’d figured it out.
“Frank.” He bit out the word. “The brother was Frank. You married the man who raped you.”
That he had used that word again felt like a gift.
A lift to her soul.
And, maybe, a paving stone to the question she had yet to ask him.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
HE HAD TO GO. Reese couldn’t stand looking at Faye.
Couldn’t stand being close to her.
He couldn’t stand himself, either.
Shaking his head, he was at a loss, almost numb, unable to process everything.
He was her boss.
The idea sat well with him suddenly. Became almost a godsend. He’d dealt with inescapable, almost unbelievable tragedy during the course of his work.
He knew how to do that.
When he was working, he had to focus on the facts and determine how he could best help.
The facts.
Had Frank Walker raped Faye? Or had she enjoyed the sex as he’d told her?
It was possible she had. Reese had been her first lover.
He’d been pretty much as green as she’d been when they’d started out.
But he’d never been inside a woman before. Never even touched a naked woman before Faye.
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