by Lexi Ryan
I swallow hard, but my shame leaves a bad taste in my mouth. “You want me to explain that I lied to you?”
She flinches and looks away. “I want you to explain why you’d tell me you grew up in Blackhawk Valley and lost your mom when neither is true.”
“I’ll explain.” I feel my jaw harden. “And then you can explain why Harry still calls you.”
She turns back to me with wide eyes and gapes. “How did you know that?”
It’s like a knife twisting in my gut. I didn’t want it to be true. I wanted Olivia to be grasping at straws, but she was only reporting the facts. “Was that why you were going to marry the senator?” I force myself to say the words. “Were you going to marry a gay man so you could keep sleeping with your mother’s husband?”
She shakes her head violently. “Don’t. Don’t act like you know anything. Don’t act like you understand.”
“I would if you’d tell me. But when I asked you about him five years ago, I got pushed away. I got a fucking Dear John letter.” I drag a hand over my face. I don’t want to do this. I’m such an idiot. I believed we could get through it this time, that we were strong enough to get past the secrets, but I feel it all falling apart.
“Can you just take me home? I don’t think I want to be around people tonight.”
I jam the key back into the ignition and drive home in silence, the roar of panic so loud in my head that I couldn’t talk over it if I wanted to. As soon as the car slows in the drive, she opens her door.
“Emma.”
She stops and turns to me.
“I have to go to the rehearsal, but I need you to promise me something.”
She bites down on her trembling bottom lip, and I want to pull her into my arms so badly. This is killing me. “What?”
“Don’t run. Don’t leave me this time. We need to talk. We all have secrets. I lied to you about where I was from. I lied to you about my mother. And you kept secrets from me too.” I reach out and drop my hand before I can touch her face. “Promise me you’ll be here when I get home. If you want to leave after we talk, then I’ll respect that.”
“I’ll be here.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Emma
The moon shines bright over the oak tree in Keegan’s back yard. It’s the perfect evening, the air is cool and clear, and frogs sing their summertime song in the distance. Sitting in the house and waiting for Keegan to come home was making me want to run away, so I came out here where the walls aren’t closing in on me, where I can breathe and tell myself nothing good will come of leaving. It’s time to talk. It’s time to tell my secrets. Even Zachary never got the whole story. I’ve only ever told the details to my mother—and she thinks I’m a liar.
What if Keegan doesn’t believe you either?
The voice in the back of my mind echoes my greatest fear, and I gulp in the cool night air in an attempt to wash it away. Once, Keegan told me we all carry secrets. Once, he promised that if we opened up about ours, we could make a life together.
“Emma!” The deep voice entering my sanctuary makes my whole body stiffen. I hear the gate click, the soft swish of grass under feet as he walks toward me.
Standing from my chair on the patio, I squeeze my eyes shut and clench my fists at my sides. How did he know to find me here?
I turn slowly to meet my stepfather’s eyes and wrap my arms around my chest as if I could retroactively protect myself from him. I want to protect the little girl I was. I want to tell her not to believe his lies, that she’s good enough without him and doesn’t need his approval. I want to squeeze her hand and promise her she can say no and still be loved.
Harry smiles at me, that slow grin that stretches across his face and makes women, young and old alike, swoon in the seats of their local movie theater. But not me. To me, that smile is a reminder of years of confusion, shame, and guilt. It’s a reminder of secrets that made me first feel older than I was and then later smaller and more helpless than I was. It’s a reminder of his voice whispering for me to hush, just a little longer, of his body pinning me down, of his gentle reminder that this has to be our secret.
I left my career to escape him, and he found his way back into my life. I took on a fake engagement and almost a fake marriage to escape him. And now I’m here. Was I running to Keegan or away from Harry?
“You did it for me,” he says, stepping forward. “You left your wedding for me.”
I flinch. Only Harry would make the ordeal of my canceled wedding about him. “I didn’t.”
He takes another step and reaches out to brush his fingertips across my cheek. My stomach heaves in revulsion, and I scramble backward but he continues forward. “I’ve missed you.”
Tears burn my eyes because somehow just his presence here has me feeling like a little girl all over again—helpless, confused about right and wrong, unsure about what to think of this man I held such affection for doing things I was pretty sure he shouldn’t do. Then I’m eighteen again, scrabbling from the smell of whiskey on his breath and begging him to leave. “This is what happens when you fight me.”
“I’m going to leave your mother,” he says. When he steps closer, I take another step back, only to realize that I’m against the back of the house and he’s too close.
“I don’t care what you do.” I force myself to meet his eyes as I lift my chin. “Whatever you do, it has nothing to do with me. I don’t want you anywhere near me.”
He sighs. “I know I put you in a bad position that summer. I’m sorry you felt like I pushed myself on you. You were running around with that boy to punish me for marrying your mother. You just make me crazy. Don’t you see that? Can you blame me for loving you?”
I turn my head. “Will you please leave? You’re trespassing on private property.”
“I’m divorcing your mother. You and I can be together again. You’re not a kid anymore, and who cares what people think anyway? You know there was a reason you didn’t marry Zachary. Don’t fight it. This connection we have is never going to go away.”
“I feel no connection to you,” I say. “Only disgust.”
He presses his body against me, pinning me between him and the brick as he grabs a handful of my hair. “Did you forget what happens when you fight me?” He yanks on my hair and I take a deep breath, remind myself I’m not a child, that I’m not helpless. I shove, hard. He’s strong and only moves back a step before regaining his footing and pressing against me again.
“The lady asked you to leave.” Keegan’s voice is like cool water on a burn—a jarring relief that stings as much as it soothes. I hate him seeing me here like this with Harry. I hate knowing what he must think, and I hate that I wasn’t brave enough to tell him the truth before.
Harry looks over his shoulder and arches a brow at Keegan. “You again?”
Keegan grabs the back of Harry’s shirt and yanks him off me, releasing him in time to swing and connect his right fist with Harry’s jaw. “Me again,” Keegan says, swinging again. This time there’s a crack when his fist makes contact, and Harry’s nose seems to explode.
“Fuck!” Harry screeches, grabbing his nose. Blood covers his hands and drips from between his fingers. “My face!”
“Get off my fucking property, asshole.” Keegan’s voice is so firm, so strong, that I want to wrap myself up in it.
Harry turns and sneers at Keegan. “You’re nothing more than trash, and someday she’s going to open her eyes and see you for what you really are—an enterprising cheat who’s only in the NFL because his old girlfriend called in a few favors.”
* * *
Keegan
I might never be able to forget the look of terror on her face when Harry had her pressed against the wall. That wasn’t a girl talking to her former lover. That was a victim curling into herself at the nearness of her abuser. And I was so wrapped up in my jealousy that I never saw him for what he was.
Fuck.
He’s gone, and I watch with trembling hands
as Emma steadies her breathing, her chest rising and falling with each deliberate breath.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” She forces a smile. And maybe we have a lot of secrets between us, but I know this woman. I know that’s not her real smile, and I know she’s not okay.
I open my arms. “Come here.”
Her smile falls and her composure crumbles as she shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to involve you like that.”
“Jesus, Emma.” Stepping forward, I fold her into my arms. She leans her forehead against my chest and pulls in big, panicky gulps of air. “Hey, shh. I’ve got you.” I slide my fingers into her hair and kiss her forehead. I can feel her trembling, as if her fear has to exit her body in the form of physical energy. “I’ve got you. You’re with me now.”
“I don’t know how he knew to come here. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t be here. What if Jasmine had been home? What if—”
“Don’t worry about any of that. Just breathe.” I hold her for a long time in the moonlight, reminding her to breathe, reminding her she’s safe. Later, when it seems like she’s calmed down, I take her into the house and have her sit at the counter while I pour her a shot of whiskey. “There you go.”
She looks at the amber liquid then at me. “Seriously?”
I arch a brow. “It won’t change that he showed up here or fix all the things he’s done to you, but neither will shaking as hard as you are right now.”
She takes the shot quickly and grimaces as she swallows. I slide onto the stool next to her and straddle it, propping my arms on the back as I study her. “You never told me about your relationship with him.” I swallow. “I’m afraid I never gave you the chance.”
She looks away, and watching the emotions pass over her face in quick succession is like flipping through a stack of snapshots. Confusion, grief, anger, sadness. It’s all there, and I hate myself for not seeing this before, for not seeing him for the creep he was before.
“Start at the beginning,” I say softly.
“It started when I was thirteen,” she says.
“Son of a bitch.” Anger flares in my chest—hot and renewed. I grip the back of the chair to keep myself planted so I don’t go after him. The black eye and broken nose I sent him away with are way too small a punishment. The man deserves prison time. Worse.
“Had anyone found out about it then, I would have argued that it was consensual, but in retrospect and after a lot of fucking therapy, I can tell you that even though I never told him no back then, those were not the makings of a healthy, consensual relationship.”
“How old was he then? His forties?”
She nods then lifts her eyes to meet mine. “Forty-three.”
“The sick fuck.”
“Yeah. But I was an idiot little girl, and he convinced me he wouldn’t want me so much, that he wouldn’t risk everything to be with me, if I wasn’t special. He said no one would approve of our relationship because I was young, but he said I was so mature for my age. That year was the start of when I was feeling self-conscious about my weight. The press had started to notice that the chubby little girl was turning into a fat preteen, and the chubby cheeks everyone loved on me as a kid were suddenly the subject of public ridicule.” She lifts her eyes to mine and holds my gaze. “I’ve had to work really hard to forgive myself for not telling him no ten years ago. I’ve had to work really hard to place the blame on his shoulders where it belongs. He manipulated me, but I never thought of it that way then. I just thought…” She shakes her head.
“He was a father figure,” I say softly. “And you were still a child.”
“I had such a messed-up idea of what love was, of how it worked. I didn’t have any healthy relationships. Everything was quid pro quo, even with my mother. And so when he’d pull out his dick and tell me to get on my knees, when he’d make extravagant promises in exchange for sexual favors—a gift from Tiffany’s, or a word with the director of a film I wanted to be considered for—I didn’t think he was a creepy pedophile. I thought he was my secret boyfriend and he was trying to be nice to me.”
I reach for her hand and hold it in mine. I’m nauseated, and every word of her story literally hurts, but I know she needs to tell it. I just wish I had found a way to convince her to tell it sooner. I’m not sure I’ll be able to forgive myself for that mistake.
She squeezes my hand. “He’s the reason I quit acting and the reason I pulled out of the Lucy Matters reunion movie. I wanted it to stop, and I felt like as long as I was on that show with him, I’d never be free of it. Then, less than two years later, he took up with my mom. What kind of man does that? He said he wanted to be close to me. That he missed me.”
“That was the summer we were together?”
She nods. “He didn’t like me being with you. He could handle it when I was alone—and I was always alone before you—but when he realized I was with you, it made him crazy.” Her eyes fill with tears. “I was so happy during our months together. I loved you. I didn’t care that you weren’t part of my world—maybe that was part of the appeal. I didn’t care that you had nothing. It was the first time I’d felt real love.” She studies our entwined fingers before lifting her gaze to mine again. “It was real, wasn’t it?”
My chest aches from the guilt that’s eating at me. “Yes. So real it never went away.”
She squeezes her eyes shut and draws in a ragged breath. “The night of the wedding rehearsal, after, he came to my condo with flowers. He was drunk. Before that, when he’d come to me earlier in the summer, he’d seemed kind of pathetic to me—begging me to take him back even as he was planning to marry my mother. But that night he wasn’t pathetic at all. He was drunk and angry. I told him to leave, and he smacked me. It was the first time I told him no. Maybe I always believed that if I could just find the courage to say no, to push him away despite his bullshit manipulations, if I could just make him understand that I didn’t want him to touch me, he’d be out of my life for good. He’d done such a good job making me believe everything we’d done was my fault that I believed I was in control. But that night I did push him away. I did tell him no. I fought back, and it didn’t matter to him.”
I stare at the door, wondering where he went, wondering if I can catch up to him and let my fist finish what it started. Because God fucking damn. He raped her, and when she was acting strange the next morning, I thought it was because she was cheating on me. My father was there taking a picture when the asshole went into her building. I need to punch something really fucking soon or I’m going to lose my shit.
Emma’s not looking at me anymore. She’s staring through the island as if she’s watching her nightmare of a past unfold in the pattern on the stone. “I ran. I couldn’t go to the wedding. I went to France for two weeks, but when I got home, I went to my mom,” she says. “I didn’t want to go to the police. I knew they’d ask questions. I knew the fact that I’d had a sexual relationship with him for years before that night would hurt my case. I knew no one would believe that a girl like me wouldn’t want a man like that to touch her. I was too ashamed to go to you, felt too dirty and used, and so I went to my mom. I told her everything. I told her about my first time with him when I was thirteen. I told her about trying to end it and how he always found a way to pull me back in, a way to make me feel guilty if I wanted to stop. I told her that he’d slapped me that night, knocked me down, bit me when I tried to fight. That he held me down, and that it didn’t take long for me to turn my head to the side, close my eyes, and tell myself I was a statue, to disconnect from my body like I’d done so many times before. She cried with me. She held me and rocked me in her arms.” She blinks, as if coming back to herself. “It was the closest I’ve ever felt to my mother.”
She was too ashamed to come to me. Too fucking ashamed, and I fed that by implying she had an inappropriate relationship with him. “What happened?”
She draws in a ragged breath. “Well, he told her his side.
He’d gone over to check on me because he knew I was taking their engagement hard and I’d been acting funny at the rehearsal. He said I’d begged him not to marry her and then threw myself at him. He described me taking off his shirt and seducing him. He said one thing led to another and that afterward he told me he still wanted to marry my mom if she’d forgive him for what we’d done. He told her that when he said that, I lost my mind. That I started screaming and threatening to yell rape.” Her eyes are dry and her cheeks pale when she adds, “She believed every bit of it.”
The motherfucker stole her mother from her too. “How did he explain sleeping with a thirteen-year-old?”
“He denied that part. He told her I’d always had a crush on him and he’d always discouraged it, but since he didn’t think anything would come of it, he didn’t see the harm.”
“She believed it all. Just like that?”
“In her defense, I’d never said a word before that day, and she was fresh off her honeymoon with the man I was accusing. I think his story was easier for her to believe than the truth. It upset her life less.”
I pour us each another shot of whiskey. She swirls hers in the glass, and I down mine, focusing on the heat in my chest instead of my anger. “If I’d had any idea, I never would have walked away. I never would have let you push me out. I was supposed to be with you that night. I should have been there. I should have protected you.” But instead I was searching for something my father stole from her.
She gives a sad smile as she draws her feet onto the stool, wrapping her arms around her knees. “He wouldn’t have come up if you’d been there. It would have happened after you left or a different time. You can’t blame yourself.”
“Why’d you push me away?” I gulp in air, swallowing hard as if I can suck the question back into my chest where I’ve held it for five years. “Why did you give up on us?”
“Because he made me believe it was my fault. I’m not broken anymore, Keegan, but I was then. I was ashamed. He made me blame myself just enough that I couldn’t bear telling you.”
