The Truth About Him (Everything I Left Unsaid #2)

by M. O'Keefe

  Annie jumped to her feet.

  “Hi,” she said, sounding far too chipper. Do not, she told herself, ask him if he wants tea.

  “You must be Annie,” he said with a soft voice and plenty of charm. “You are as lovely as Dylan said.” He was even smiling, but those eyes of his, green like glass, they were not friendly.

  “Would you like some tea?” Dummy!

  “No thank you,” Blake said with chilling manners.

  “I’m Tiffany,” Tiffany said, coming to her feet. She held out her hand. After a long, strange pause, Blake shook it.

  “My brother’s secret wife.” He made it a joke, like they were all in this strange situation together. But somehow it wasn’t comforting.

  “And you are my husband’s secret brother,” she said back. “Well, my soon-to-be ex, I suppose.”

  “Right,” he said quietly. “Where are your kids?”

  “Don’t worry about my kids,” she said.

  “You don’t trust me?” Blake asked, his voice dangerously silky.

  Tiffany didn’t even hesitate. “Nope.”

  “That seems about right,” Blake said, stepping in closer. “I don’t trust you much, either.” His eyes scanned over to Annie, like he was encompassing her in that statement, too. He was a big man. Tall and wide. Annie pressed her back against the wall, like she was trying to make some room. Trying to put as much distance between her and his barely concealed dislike.

  But Tiffany didn’t cower. Not even a little. She stood there with her chin up, her mutual dislike battling it out with his.

  Annie was inspired and impressed.

  “Well, this is off to a great start, isn’t it?” Tiffany asked.

  “Right, let’s just skip to the end.” From the inside pocket of his suit, Blake pulled out a checkbook and a pen.

  “I’ve never done this before,” he said, his tone faintly mocking. “So I assume you’ll let me know if I’m doing it wrong. Will ten thousand be enough?”

  “For what?” Tiffany asked through white lips.

  “To make you go away.”

  Annie gasped. “Blake, no, you don’t—”

  Blake’s eyes sliced Annie open. “You’ve done enough, haven’t you?” he asked her.

  “What have I done?” she snapped.

  “Tell me,” he asked Annie. “If I give you ten thousand dollars will it make you go away, too, so my business partner and I can get back to work? I’m assuming you’re in it for his money, so how about we just save some time and do this now.”

  Dylan. He was talking about Dylan.

  “You’re wrong,” she said, her whole body vibrating with anger.

  “We’ll see, won’t we,” Blake said and turned back to Tiffany. “Now, for my ten thousand I want assurances from you that you will not try to contact my mother. Should you take my money and contact my mother anyway, after a DNA test to make sure that whatever children you have are related to me, I will take them from you. And you will never see them again.”

  Tiffany put one hand behind her, bracing herself against the table.

  “Get out of here,” Annie said, throwing open the door. “Now. I won’t have you—”

  “No,” Tiffany said, her face pale, her eyes bright. “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay—he’s being an asshole. You do not have to stand here and take this, Tiffany!”

  “That’s the check?” Tiffany asked, pointing to Blake’s checkbook.

  Blake handed it to her and she took it with shaking hands. She took her time reading it.

  Tear it up, Annie thought. You don’t need that money.

  “Make it fifteen,” Tiffany said, “and it’s a deal.”

  “Ten’s my offer,” Blake said.

  “Then I guess Margaret will be getting a phone call, won’t she? And now I want twenty.”

  Annie gasped, stunned.

  Blake took the check, tore it in two, and wrote her another one. The sound of him tearing it from the book was nearly violent. Tiffany took it, her hands steadier this time, and she tucked the check in her bra.

  Blake sneered, his eyes following her movement.

  “Pleasure doing business, asshole,” Tiffany said, and stepped out of the trailer.

  Annie stared at Blake, her mouth agape.

  “What about you?” he asked. “I can write you the same check. I won’t say a word to Dylan—you can break it off however you want.”

  “Get out of here,” she said, her voice shaking. Her fists ached, they were clenched so tight.

  “I’ve known that man, worked beside him for almost ten years. My dad used to love these backwoods illegal races and that’s where he met Dylan. And that’s all we heard about for a year—this fucking kid with the driving gift. My dad gave him a job after he got out of jail. Trained him. Helped him. After the fire my mom practically saved his life, nursing him back to life. According to my sister and younger brother, my dad loved Dylan more than he ever loved us. And frankly, I think it’s probably true.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because he’s only ever treated my mom like an employee. And he’s only ever treated me like a business partner. We’re not friends. We’re not brothers.”

  “You sound jealous,” Annie said, just to be mean.

  “I was. I was fucking jealous. For years. But then I got wise. And I’m suggesting you get wise now before you get hurt. Because he’s broken. His family—Max, his old man—they broke him. And you know that. The sex is good, I imagine. And he’s followed you to this shit hole, but that’s not about you, is it? Not really. It’s about his family. It will always be about his family. And himself. Deep in your heart you know that and you’re trying to convince yourself that you can save him. And you can’t. There’s no saving Dylan Daniels.”

  DYLAN

  Watching Blake go into the trailer, I had to put the odds of a happy ending for Tiffany and the kids and Margaret at about…minus 10 percent.

  Blake was going to pay Tiffany off. And then threaten her until she took the check.

  That is what Blake did: he bought outcomes. And when it came to his mother and her happiness, no price was too high.

  “Have you seen my mom?”

  I turned around at the sound of a little kid’s voice, and behind me was Tiffany’s oldest. Her son. He was rubbing his eyes, and his hair stood up on the back of his head in a crazy rooster tail.

  Great. Just what this situation needed.

  “She’s in Annie’s trailer,” I told him. “Why don’t you go back to bed?”

  “I want my mom,” he said, and started shuffling toward Annie’s trailer.

  Crap. No.

  “Hey, kid, you ah…want to help me fix this car?”

  That got him. The little boy whirled around, all sleep out of his face, nothing but excitement now.

  “Really?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said.

  Shit, I thought.

  This was Miguel’s grandson. Cars were in his blood. And affection softened me. This boy should have been learning at Miguel’s shoulder, or Blake’s. Not mine.

  But my shoulder was here.

  “Let’s see what we’ve got, okay?” I lifted him up on the edge of the hood. “Don’t fall,” I told him.

  “No way,” he promised. I smiled and bent down to pick up some of the boxes Blake brought with him.

  “What’s your name again?” I asked.

  “Danny. What happened to your face?”

  For a moment I just blinked at him and then I laughed. Because goddamn, wasn’t there something refreshing about that. “I was in a fire.”

  He winced. “Did it hurt?”

  “Very much.”

  “Sorry,” the kid said. “Sorry you got hurt.”

  Christ. The kid was sweet. I hoped Blake wasn’t in there ripping Tiffany to shreds.

  A screen door shut not too far away, and Danny and I both looked up to see Pops step out of his trailer. He caught sight of us and stop
ped for a second.

  Ignore us, old man, I thought. I’ve had a shit day and it’s about to get shittier, and I can’t handle you and your guilt on top of it. I just can’t.

  But of course, Pops always had an instinct about doing the opposite of what I wanted him to and he walked our way.

  DYLAN

  “Do you know Ben?” Danny asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, using my foot to pull my toolbox closer. “I know him.”

  “Sometimes he fixes stuff in our trailer.”

  “Your dad didn’t do that?”

  “Dad’s never around. So Ben did it. He’s grumpy.”

  You don’t know the half of it, I thought.

  “You got an assistant?” Ben asked as he got closer. He had a strange smile on his face, like he was trying to hide the fact that he was smiling.

  “I’m helping fix the car,” Danny said, lifting his wrench as proof.

  “This brings back memories,” Ben said. Before I was Danny’s age, I’d been handing Pops his tools while he worked on some project car in our driveway. And the memories were good ones. I couldn’t pretend otherwise, no matter how much I hated the man. Toward the end, before Max went away the first time and we started stealing cars, Pops and me, we’d gotten so good working together that he didn’t have to tell me what he wanted. I just knew.

  I just knew the old man’s brain.

  He was watching me out of the corner of his eye, waiting for rejection. And that much hope directed my way was painful. So I ignored it.

  “Help me open these boxes, would you?” I asked Danny, and he jumped down from the car.

  “I saw Max today.” Maybe it was the memories or all the goddamn hope in the air, but the words just happened. Fell out of my mouth without thought.

  “Where?”

  “He was sniffing around Annie in the field.”

  Pops was silent and I glanced over at him. The thought of Max close to Annie bothered him, too.

  “She okay?” Pops asked.

  “Fine.”

  “What can I do to get her to leave?” Pops asked. “I mean, I know she’s staying because of me and the chemo—”

  “She’s already said we can leave,” I told him, and despite his asking, I could tell he was stung by her willingness to go. But he only showed me that for a second.

  “Then what the fuck are you waiting for?” he asked.

  “Swearword!” the boy cried from the ground, where he was surrounded by a moat of packing peanuts.

  “Come on, kid,” I said. “Let’s keep this clean.” I started shoving the packing peanuts back in the boxes before they could blow away.

  “You’re waiting for Max, ain’t you?” Pops asked. The hair on the back of my neck stood up so hard it hurt. “You think he’s going to come back—”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t. I think he’s going to get killed.”

  “And you’re going to stop it?” Pops laughed.

  “No.” I’d given up enough for my brother. I wasn’t giving up whatever kind of future I had with Annie. I wasn’t going to go to that strip club and try to rescue him. He’d made his way. I just…couldn’t leave. Not yet.

  “Son,” Pops sighed, and I didn’t have the fight to tell him not to call me that. “What has he done to make you so loyal to him?”

  I didn’t know how to explain that it wasn’t about anything Max had done.

  It was that he was Max. I was only given one brother and we just kept sacrificing our lives for each other.

  Tiffany came out, stormed out really, leaving a trail of smoke behind her. “Danny,” she said to her son, “come on, honey.”

  “But I’m fixing the car,” the little boy said. He held up new windshield wipers as proof.

  “We’ll have a chance later,” I said to him, which seemed to mollify the kid. Solemnly he handed me the windshield wipers.

  “Everything okay?” I asked Tiffany, though I knew the answer was going to be bad.

  “Your friend is an asshole.”

  Yes. Yes, he is.

  “Mom!” Danny yelled with glee. “Swearword.”

  “I’m a grown-up,” she said, taking his hand, leading him back through the rhododendron. “I can swear.”

  A few seconds later Blake was out the door, looking unruffled. “What did you do?” I asked him.

  “I took care of things,” he said. “That’s what I do, remember?” He glanced over at Pops. “You must be Ben.” His tone was nothing but accusation wrapped up in a sneer.

  For a second, brief and strange, I felt the compulsion to defend my father. But it passed. Thank God. “What’s wrong with you?” I asked Blake.

  “What’s wrong with me?” Blake asked, looking around the trailer park. “Dude, you are one of the richest men in the country. What are you doing here? Playing house with some—”

  “Don’t,” I said, taking a gliding step toward my friend. We hadn’t fought. Not in years, and I knew Blake was some kind of bare-knuckle boxing lunatic, but if he said one bad word about Annie I would take him apart. “Don’t say another word.”

  “Fine,” he said, lifting his hands. “But you’ve got a fucking company on the edge of a huge breakthrough. And we can’t finish the job without you.”

  He was right. Totally right.

  “Monday,” I said. “I’ll be back by Monday.”

  “Yeah, how will you be back? Like you were before? Distracted and on your phone all goddamn day or will you be the Dylan Daniels I need you to be?”

  “I’ll be back on Monday,” I said through my teeth. The Dylan Daniels he needed me to be—the workaholic hermit—fuck, I wasn’t that guy anymore. But I didn’t answer to Blake. I would figure this shit out.

  He watched me for a long time and then finally pulled his Porsche’s keys out of his pocket. “See you Monday.” He said nothing to Ben, but got into his car and roared away, spitting dust and gravel into the air.

  “Nice guy,” Pops said, but I ignored him and went into the trailer to find Annie sitting on the settee, staring down at the cracked linoleum of the trailer.

  Christ, I thought, I am one of the richest guys in the country. How did I get here?

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “He gave Tiffany twenty thousand dollars to never call him or his mother again.”

  I whistled long and low. That was a pretty dick move, even for Blake.

  “She talked him up from ten,” Annie said.

  Well, that surprised me. Or maybe it shouldn’t. Tiffany was a survivor. “Then I guess they both got what they wanted.”

  “He offered me ten thousand dollars to break up with you.” Her eyes were narrowed, dry and hot.

  “I’m guessing you said no.”

  “You say it like it’s no big deal he tried to buy me off, Dylan.”

  “You didn’t take the money,” I said. “I don’t know why it needs to be a big deal. Christ, Annie, don’t look at me like that. If I’d met Tiffany three months ago I would have written her a check. I would have written her two checks so I wouldn’t have to spend any time with her son.”

  Annie gaped at me, her judgment rolling off her in waves. I opened her fridge. There was a bunch of Diet Coke and a plate with Margaret’s grilled chicken on it.

  “Let’s go get a good steak,” I said. “With a baked potato with the works. We’ll get dressed up and go out.”

  “How can you say that, Dylan?”

  “Because I’m hungry.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

  I shut the fridge door.

  “Because everything’s different.”

  “What’s different about now and three months ago?” she asked, ignoring the steak proposal.

  “You. You are what is different. You have changed everything.” It was the unvarnished truth. As close to love as I was capable of getting.

  But that rigid set of her shoulders did not relax, and she was still looking at me like she didn’t quite believe me.

 
“Did something else happen with Blake?” I asked. There were all sorts of things the man could have and would have said to her to make Annie look at me like she’d never seen me before.

  “He said you’re never going to love me,” she finally answered. “That you can’t.”

  I breathed deep. Immobile and silent.

  “Part of me worries he’s right,” she said, driving her words in deep.

  “No,” I said. My hands in fists. No, you just got here. You just gave me this love; you can’t take it away. Not yet. Not because of fucking Blake.

  “But I really want to believe he’s not,” she said. She was looking at me for confirmation. Like I could just say to her that he was wrong. That I wasn’t broken, that sooner or later I would be able to love her the way she wanted.

  But I didn’t have that answer. And what I did have didn’t seem like enough, but I gave it to her.

  “You changed me, baby,” I told her, stroking her cheek. “I barely recognize who I was before you came into my life. And I don’t…I don’t want to go back to being that way.”

  Is that enough? Please, God, let that be enough.

  Some of the anger fell from her shoulders, and though she wasn’t smiling, I could feel her beaming at me. It was an internal thing. An awareness thing.

  And it was powerful.

  Way more powerful than all my money.

  “You said something about a steak dinner,” she said, and relief rolled through me, making me light-headed.

  “I did.”

  “I don’t have nice clothes.”

  “I can take care of that,” I said. It was crazy how meaningless my money was with her, how I had to find ways to spend it on her. To use it on her behalf.

  For years I was used to holding the influence with people because I had the money. But Annie had all the power between us and I didn’t know how it had happened. Or if she knew.

  Or, frankly, if I cared.

  This is what Blake didn’t know. This feeling. This moment. When the money he held so dear meant nothing.

  Annie couldn’t be bought, one way or the other, and that made her priceless.

  “We could do that here,” she said. “Go to the store and get big steaks and potatoes.”

  Even if her home was a tin-can trailer on the edge of nowhere, Annie was a homebody. Which, frankly, I loved.