All the Secrets

by Charlotte Byrd

  He tries to kiss me again, but this time I pull away.

  “Are you okay?” he asks.

  I look down at the floor. It's black and white alternating tiles. The white ones are a lot less clean than they should be.

  I'm not much of a homemaker and when I was growing up, we always had a housekeeper. It has been quite an adjustment to realize that the house has to be cleaned every week or so, that is if you actually want it to be clean. I now schedule in my vacuuming on Wednesdays, but it's the end of the week and the kitchen tends to get a few crumbs here and there.

  “Is something wrong?” Liam asks, taking me out of my trance.

  “I have to talk to you about something,” I say quietly. I'm tempted to lead him to the bed, but I’m afraid he’ll say no.

  “Okay, go ahead.”

  “My boss wants me to do a follow-up story on you,” I say.

  “Whaaaat?” he asks, elongating the word.

  “We're getting a lot of reads on that article and it’s being reprinted by a lot of other publications. There's a big conversation on Twitter about it. People want to know more about you. She wants me to write another follow-up article with more details.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, in the first one, I just found you. We talked about your writing, but there weren't too many personal details about who you really are, like your parents, where you went to school, and basic things like that. She wants an overview of the story by early next week and then a draft soon after.”

  Liam takes a deep breath and turns away from me. I wait for him to respond, but he doesn't.

  Instead he just stares out the window drinking his cup of coffee and watching a little girl play hopscotch on the street corner.

  The sun streams through the window illuminating his face, but it doesn't make it any easier to read his expression.

  I wait and I wait some more.

  “The story is very important,” I say, clearing my throat. “Before I wrote this, I was stuck writing quizzes and basically little fluff pieces to fill in the gaps in the magazine. All of the little mini stories of about two hundred words about styling your bedroom. Few words and many pictures. She only let me write the story because she thought that I would fail. Now that it took off and actually has a chance of saving the magazine, I feel like things are different between us.”

  “So, that's why you want to do this?” Liam asks, looking out the window. “To please your boss?”

  “This is my career, Liam. This is what I do for a living. I'm a journalist.”

  “I thought you worked for a lifestyle magazine and you wrote stories about styling bedrooms.”

  His voice is detached and distant. He doesn't even turn around to say this to me.

  “You don't have to be so cruel. That's what I was writing, but that's not what I want to write. It was one of the only places that was hiring. I wanted to be a writer so I thought that I could do other stories if I showed them what I was capable of. Finally, this story landed on my desk. I just happened to drive out there and find you. You just happened to talk to me.”

  “The only reason I talked to you was because you were Alex's fiancée or ex-fiancée. Whatever the hell you are. The only reason I talked to you was because we had met earlier. I trusted you. I had no idea that every single thing I said was going to show up in print.”

  “I don't understand why you're doing this. Everyone else out there wants promotion, marketing, and stories to be written about them. Why don't you want anyone to know anything about you?”

  14

  Liam

  I look at her, unable to believe what I'm hearing. All I want to do is stay in that moment after we made love. It was sweet, comforting, and everything that I have missed in my life and had, frankly, given up on.

  Now talking about the article again and how far she went without my permission, it just makes me feel regret for everything that has happened.

  A part of me thinks that she should know the truth.

  She deserves to know exactly why I can't have anything about me out there.

  Another part of me resists that.

  She's pushing me.

  She wants what she wants and in the heart of that, the more she pushes, the more I withdraw.

  “I don't owe you an explanation,” I finally say. “You want a story and you want to save your career, but the reasons why I don't want anything written about me are mine alone and that's it.”

  “I don't understand,” Emma pleads. “Authors want to be known. They tell stories to become famous.”

  “That shows how little you know about people and writers in particular. I like my privacy. I like to do a conference when I want to and not be bothered the other ninety-nine percent of the time. I don't need people poking around in my personal life. I don't need to be in magazines and newspapers. That's not why I write.”

  “Why do you write?” she asks.

  “For me. For my readers. For my characters. I have all of these stories inside my mind. I create fantasy worlds to talk about what I see going on in this world and to show people what is really going on. None of the storytelling has to do with me.”

  “Of course, it does,” Emma says, shaking her head. “That's what you just said. You see the world in a particular way and you write novels that try to show that to your readers.”

  I sigh deeply.

  I turn my body away from her.

  “I thought that we had something nice here. I had no idea that the only reason you slept with me was to get a story.”

  I start to put on my shoes, and she grabs my shoulders.

  “That's absolutely not what happened and you know it,” Emma says sternly like a teacher talking to her first-grade class.

  I want to believe her, but I don't.

  “To tell you the truth, Emma, I feel used. I thought that we made a connection. I like kissing you. I like doing everything that we just did, but I don't like this. I don't like this pressure.”

  “I know,” she says, sloping down her shoulders and melting onto the floor as if she were a puddle of water. “I just want you to know that this is not why we just did what we did. I really wanted to be with you.”

  “I wanted to be with you, too,” I say, stepping into one of my shoes and tying the shoe laces.

  “I just had to tell you about the fact that I have to write the story. If I don't, then I'm going to lose my job.”

  “What happens if you were to tell them what really happened in the first story?” I challenge her.

  Her eyes get big and she stares at me.

  It looks like she's about to cry. I feel bad for her.

  I don't want to make this threat. Under normal circumstances, I never would, but the situation is anything but normal.

  She has put me into real danger with what she’s done. The only problem is that she has no idea.

  She buries her head in her hands and when she finally looks up her eyes look moist.

  I can't help but feel bad. I want to tell her all of the reasons why and I want her to understand.

  I'm afraid. We don’t know each other that well and she has already betrayed my trust. She's a journalist. The truth would be a story that would make her career.

  No, I have to keep this to myself. When I look at her big wide eyes and the sorrowful expression on her face, it pulls on my heartstrings.

  It's more than that. I want the chance to get to know her better. Something tells me that there's a lot more to her than I can see on the surface and I'm eager to find out.

  “Okay,” I say slowly, still ruminating about exactly what I want to put forth. “What if I were to make the same proposal to you that I did earlier?”

  “What are you talking about?” she asks, rising slowly to her feet.

  “Come to the desert with me for a week. You can work there. I will work there. We can get to know each other better and in exchange you can write a story about me.”

  She crosses her arms and raises one eyebrow
higher than the other while tilting her head.

  “You don't have to do anything you don't want to. I just have this need to get to know you more and I need to go home. I have a deadline that I have to meet.”

  “You want me to spend a week with you at your house?” she asks.

  “Yes,” I say quietly. “I don't want to offend you with this offer. There's nothing nefarious about this arrangement. I just need to be home so that I can work and if you're going to write a story about me, then I want it to be as accurate as possible.”

  “You promise that you won't tell my boss that you didn’t go on the record with the first story?” she asks.

  I nod.

  Emma takes a moment. She bites her lower lip. She tosses her hair from side to side and then twirls one strand around her index finger.

  I wait while she thinks about it.

  I have no idea what her answer will be.

  She turns around and says, “Okay, let's do this.”

  There's a big smile across her face and I can't help but smile back.

  “Are you sure?” I ask.

  “Let's just see if you're sure about it.”

  15

  Emma

  Liam takes off an hour or so later. I promise to come over later tonight. I want to take my own car, but I also want to run this past Corrin.

  I know that she wants the story, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to get a whole week off.

  “Hey, sorry to call you at home,” I say nervously into the phone.

  “No problem,” she mumbles.

  “I have something going with the D. B. Carter story. I talked to him again and he agreed to a follow-up.”

  “He did?!”

  “Yes, but he wants me to come out to the desert and stay with him. He wants this to be sort of a day in the life of or rather a week in the life of.”

  “Really?” she asks.

  I bite my lower lip. I don't know how else to explain it.

  “Something going on between you two?” Corrin asks.

  A moment later, before I can answer, my phone rings and when I look at the screen, I see that I have a FaceTime call coming in.

  “Shit,” I mutter to myself and then plaster a smile on my face as I click the Accept button.

  “You don't have to do anything you don't want to do,” she says with the tone of a concerned friend.

  She's wearing a large floppy hat and sitting in front of a pool with big Jackie Kennedy Onassis sunglasses.

  “No, nothing is going on. I guess we just developed a rapport. He went to school with Alex many years ago and I guess he trusts me as a journalist.”

  “Okay,” she says, her face barely moving and therefore impossible to read. “I do want you to consider why he's being so open with you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, Coast Magazine isn't exactly a hard-hitting investigative magazine. We aren't really known for that. Until…” Her voice drops off.

  I furrow my brow and wait for her to explain.

  “Okay,” she says, taking off her sunglasses and letting me see her eyes with their perfectly winged eyeliner and expertly applied lashes. “If this goes well, then maybe we can talk about some other stories with a similar slant.”

  “There are other reclusive authors out there?” I joke.

  “No, not on authors,” she says, “but unusual disappearances. People going missing. That sort of thing.”

  “Crime stories?” I ask.

  “I think that it might be a good angle for bringing in new readers. I don't want to make Coast entirely focused on true crime, but one big feature in each issue might go far in helping us expand our readership.”

  “Yeah, that sounds good,” I say, nodding.

  Actually, I'm really interested in this idea. I like working on more serious investigative stories.

  Of course, I don't say any of this out loud. It's not that all interior design stories are fluff, it just so happens that the ones that I have been assigned tend to be a little bit on the lighter side.

  “As far as the story is concerned, I want you to find out who Matt Lipinski is. He's the one that pointed you to D. B. Carter and it makes me wonder what he has to gain from it. If there's nothing, then that's fine, but that could be an interesting angle on what happened.”

  “Yeah, I was thinking of pursuing that as well,” I say.

  “You got the PI's info? Feel free to contact him. He has been quite useful in my divorce and he knows how to do his job well.”

  That is the first time that she has mentioned anything about her personal life to me.

  “You used him in your divorce?” I ask.

  “Yes,” Corrin says with a shrug. “Unlike you, I was not lucky enough to find out that my husband is a lying and cheating piece of shit until after we were married.”

  “I'm really sorry about that,” I say quietly, staring straight into her eyes.

  We share a moment.

  She has always made me so uncomfortable in her presence that I pushed her away and tried to write her off.

  Now I realize that we have actually had a lot more in common than I ever knew.

  “I just want to say that I'm sorry about what happened between you and Alex, but I'm also glad that the truth came out before you invested anymore time into that relationship. You deserve to be with someone who loves you unconditionally and who treats you as such. We all do.”

  “Yes, I know,” I mumble.

  “I also know that relationships are complicated,” Corrin continues speaking almost to herself rather than to me. “So, if you decide to take him back, you don't have to be embarrassed about admitting that fact to me. Maybe to other people, but not to me.”

  “You think I should take him back?”

  “No, absolutely not. I made that mistake with my husband, twice. I thought that he had learned his lesson. He had begged my forgiveness and then as soon as I let him move back in, he did it again. I just want you to know that just because I think that you should find someone new that doesn't mean that’s what you should do. You have to go with your heart and a little bit with your head.”

  “I'm not going to take him back,” I say sternly.

  “Okay,” Corrin says, nodding her head, but in her gaze, I realize that she does not believe me.

  After I hang up, I stare at my phone for a long time thinking about the conversation that I just had.

  I have never talked to Corrin like that.

  Frankly, I had no idea that we could even have a conversation that honest.

  It also threw me off a little bit that she had so little faith in my ability to keep true to myself.

  Is she right? Will I take him back? Is all of this for nothing?

  “No,” I say to myself, shaking my head.

  Alex has hurt me and despite how much I may still love him, I'm not going to accept him treating me like that.

  Then suddenly my blood runs cold.

  That word, love, it just pops into my head.

  Is that true?

  Could I still love Alex?

  No. I tap my fingers on the table. Alex has done something unforgivable and that means that I will never be able to forgive him.

  But what about love? Do I still love him?

  I think back to our relationship and to all of those times that he made me laugh until my stomach hurt.

  I think back to all the fun that we had and all of the stories that we shared. I have told many other men before him that I have loved them, and perhaps I did, or at least I did at the time.

  With Alex, things were different.

  With Alex, I was certain that he was going to be my future.

  I was certain that I was going to spend the rest of my life with him and then one day all of those dreams and hopes were shattered.

  The person that I loved is gone. Perhaps, he never existed anywhere except in my imagination.

  It hasn't been that long and I know that I still miss him terribly and that I still have
lingering feelings of love toward him because those kinds of feelings can’t just be erased in one moment.

  But am I still in love with him?

  No, I’m not.

  I can't be because the man that I had devoted my life to and the man that I had promised to spend the rest of my life with never really existed.

  He was a figment of my imagination.

  The real man was a liar, a cheater, and someone who is a stranger to me now.

  16

  Emma

  When I pull up to Liam's ranch, the butterflies in my stomach make my hands wrap tightly around the steering wheel. This is how I felt when I first got here, but it's also a little bit different.

  The first time that I drove here I wasn't sure who I was going to meet.

  This time, I'm not sure what is going to happen.

  I arrive with a small suitcase and a backpack with all of my electronics. I wasn't sure what to pack so I decided to just take what is absolutely necessary.

  A few changes of clothes, nothing fancy, and two pairs of shoes. I also packed a small makeup bag along with the hair straightener, which I rarely use.

  Liam hears me pull up and his little dog, Skylar, runs up to greet me with a cacophony of barking.

  I kneel down to pet her, but she continues to bark aggressively at me until he quiets her down.

  A few moments later, she's rubbing her body against my ankle so that I will give her a pet.

  The first time that I lay my eyes on him, my stomach does a somersault. His dark hair falls slightly in his face and he licks his lips and rubs his chiseled jaw in that casual manner that makes me want to get undressed right here, right now. Unfortunately, that's not what happens.

  I walk up to give him a hug and instead of kissing me on the mouth, he simply turns his face to the side and kisses me on my cheek.

  Immediately, something between us seems off. It's almost as if there is some sort of tension that didn't exist before and I have no idea why it suddenly appeared.

  “Thanks for coming,” Liam says.

  I give him a slight nod and let him take my suitcase. Instead of rolling it, he picks it up and carries it by the handle. It isn't particularly heavy, but he makes it seem like it weighs a pound.