“Funny, isn’t it, how you always manage to have a woman to give you support, but you sure as fuck never manage to return the favor, do you, Tate? To miss something, it has to belong to you, become a part of you. I never missed you, because you can’t miss what you never had.”
Chapter 13
Tate heard the pain in her voice that the darkness kept hidden from him. He reached down, turning on the lamp sitting on the table at the end of the couch. Sutton blinked at him several times when the dim light flooded the room.
“I’m going to bed.”
“Why did you come back?”
Her head fell back against the wall. “I don’t even know. Perhaps to tell you the truth, to make you feel as miserable as I was. I honestly don’t know.” She brushed the tears away from her cheeks with her shaking hand. “I told myself that I only wanted to see you and explain. I couldn’t bear it that you hated me, that Rachel hated me.”
Tate stared at her hard, feeling as if he had overlooked something important. “What did you want to explain?”
“Nothing that matters anymore.” This time, she managed to slide along the wall until she reached her bedroom. When she went inside and would have shut the bedroom door behind her, he reached his hand out, pushing the door open, and she stumbled, almost falling. Tate grabbed her arm then helped her sit down on the side of the bed.
He crouched down in front of her. “Tell me now. Pretend Lisa wasn’t there that day. What were you going to tell me?”
Her lips remained stubbornly closed. Her injured pride of seeing another woman with him would never allow her to tell him.
He hadn’t asked Lisa to be there that day. He hadn’t been aware she was in the courtroom until the hearing was over and she had come up to him.
His hands went to each side of Sutton’s hips, spreading out flat on the bed and pinning her in place.
“Go away, Tate. Just go away! God knows it won’t change a damn thing.”
“One thing you never learned about me is I’m stubborn as shit. I’m not going to leave until you tell me.”
Sutton’s shoulders slumped. “I never cheated on you with Cash.”
“You went out with him, told him I broke up with you.”
“I did,” she acknowledged her deception. “You’re not going to leave, are you?”
“No.”
She sighed dejectedly. “I didn’t think so.” Sutton fell back on the mattress, her arm covering her eyes. She remained silent so long he thought she might have fallen asleep.
Her voice when she began talking was so matter-of-fact it was like she was discussing someone else, not them. It was as if she was distancing herself to get through the explanation so he would leave her in peace.
“My dad told me after you were arrested that he would make sure you went to jail and lose custody of your brothers and sister if I didn’t break up with you.”
Tate remembered the day he had called her and her father had answered the phone. He moved to sit down on the bed next to Sutton as she continued to tell him what had happened.
“I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want you losing your temper with my father if you knew he was trying to break us up, so I called Cash and asked him out. I knew, when you found out, it would be over between us.”
“You fucked him to keep me from going to jail?” The harshness in his voice made him wince. He felt like the ass she was calling him all the time.
He saw tears sliding down from under the arm she had pressed to her eyes.
“I didn’t sleep with him. I know it seemed like I did, but I didn’t. I looked like hell because my dad and I got in a fight when Cash showed up to pick me up the night before, and I fell down the steps. Cash caught me and took me to the emergency room. I spent the night there. When I got out, Cash drove me to school because I didn’t want to go home.”
Tate remembered how stiffly she had moved, thinking it had been because she had spent the night losing her virginity to Cash. Instead, she had been injured while trying to protect him and his family.
He bent over, burying his face in his hands. “Jesus, all you had to do was tell me, Sutton. I would have fixed it.”
She gave a bitter laugh. “How exactly would you have fixed it? You would have just ended up in more trouble, so I let you believe it and went to prom with Cash. I even watched you drive away from the prom after only being there for an hour with Lisa. I left town as soon as I had that diploma in my hand.”