God.
Why had he waited so long to tell me the truth? He had let me do all those things with him while he knew exactly who he was. He’d made the decision for me, and I thought I might always hate him for that.
My thoughts turned back to Grandpa Willy. The new information about Landon put the video and the list into a new light, and I thought I was starting to see how the pieces fit together.
Maybe he had always intended to try to set us up? No, that didn’t make sense. But it might have been an idea that came to him near the end—like a dying wish. Or maybe he thought it would somehow redeem him if he could connect the son he’d screwed up raising with the adoptive daughter he felt he’d done a better job with?
I decided I didn’t care anymore. It was going to take time to repair my idea of Grandpa Willy, and I didn’t think there was enough time in the world to repair my feelings for Landon.
Bree let herself into my room a few hours later. She found me eating a room service cheeseburger and fries on the bed. I was watching some cheesy horror movie about a basketball that came to life and terrorized a small town.
Bree surveyed the situation, then sat down with a serious expression on her face beside my bed. “Want to talk about it?”
“Well,” I said. “I’m pretty sure this guy—he’s like the star basketball player for the high school team—is going to end up shooting the death ball through some kind of hoop and ripping an epically corny line to wrap this thing up. I was thinking, ‘lay down.’ You know? Like a play on a layup.”
Bree squinted one eye and raised her other eyebrow. “I was talking about this.” She gestured to my mini feast on the bed.
“Got hungry,” I said, popping a fry into my mouth.
“What happened?”
I let out an annoyed sigh. As much as Audria could irritate me with her clinical coldness, Bree was worse. Trying to hide something from her was about as fruitless as trying to convince a dog that bacon wasn’t cooking in the kitchen. I paused the movie and spent the next few minutes explaining most of what had happened, minus the awkward sexual bits.
Bree was frowning when I’d finished. “And you believe all of this?” she asked. “About grandpa, I mean.”
“It kind of makes sense. I mean, he never talked about his past or ex-wives or anything, but didn’t you always kind of feel like he’d led a different life before us?”
“Yeah,” Bree said. “Maybe. Does Audria know?”
“No. I went straight for room service. I’ve been punishing this hamburger and fries. That’s it.”
Bree worked her lips to the side. “Want me to tell her?”
“No, it’s okay. I feel like this is all my mess, somehow.”
“Well, I have some good news,” Bree said. “I actually stopped by to remind you about Dana’s wedding. With everything going on, I kind of figured you forgot. Annnd judging by the look on your face, I was correct.”
I grinned. “Yeah. Totally forgot.”
“Well, she sent us tickets to Florida yesterday. I was thinking you, me, and Audria could go get our dresses tomorrow.”
“A few hundred miles between me and Landon sounds perfect. Sign me up.”
“You’re already kind of signed up,” Bree said.
I sighed. “It’s a figure of speech. I’m just saying I’m in.”I spent the two days after my naked encounter in the sensory deprivation tub aggressively avoiding Landon, fiddling with some writing projects, and catching up on some Netflix. I’d been wrong about the high school basketball star’s corny line, too. He had said, ‘nothing but dead,’ which was a completely lame play on “nothing but net,” when he shot the death ball into a trash compactor.
Putting two days between Landon’s big reveal had only made me feel more confused. There was a small, small, part of me that felt sorry for him. That part of me could kind of understand how awkward it was to explain the truth to me. But the rest of me was still firmly of the belief that he’d knowingly deceived me and hid the truth for way too long. The bottom line was I couldn’t trust him, and that was enough to convince me to end the little BDSM experiment, along with any hopes of claiming my share of the inheritance.
Landon had admitted he planned to give me the share of the hotel whether I finished his list or not, but somehow, I suspected that promise only held when he thought he had a shot with me romantically. Now that I was firmly out of the picture, I didn’t doubt he’d change his mind.
If nothing else, I knew I was going to be stuck in Florida for a week. That meant even if I had ill-advised urges to give him a second chance, I’d be too far away to act on them. It was an opportunity to let all the chemicals in my system flush out, along with the raging hormones he seemed to cause.