A creaking sound snaps my eyes to the open door of the office. The dim light behind her places a shadow of contempt across her hurt gaze and pouty lips. Her small hands are balled into fists gripping the hem of her gray sweater. Even enraged, she’s in pain. It’s etched into every detail of her. Fuck.
“Bethany.” Her name tumbles from my mouth as I stand up, feeling the thrum of disaster in my blood.
Bethany
“I can explain,” Jase repeats as he rounds the worn leather chair. Through my blurry vision I can barely make out Seth backing away from both of us as I stalk into the room.
I’m shaking, trembling, on the verge of a rage I didn’t know was possible.
“I hate you,” I sneer and how my words come out so clearly, I’ll never know. They strike him, visibly, across the face as he stops with both hands up a foot away from me.
“What did you hear?” he asks me calmly and I want to spit at him. I can already see him spinning a new lie in his head, just waiting to know what I heard so he can manipulate it. Betrayal is a nasty thing, twisting a knife deeper into my rib cage.
All I can remember is how I felt standing in the threshold of my kitchen, too afraid to speak or move, and knowing I had nowhere to run. “It was Seth? It was your men all along?”
My vision blurs with the present and the past.
“I sent him to check on you. I was with Carter and Aria; I couldn’t come so I sent Seth.”
“Seth crept into my house. It was Seth.” I repeat it and I still can’t believe it. I can’t believe it’s true.
“He was only going to stay with you because I thought someone was threatening you–”
“Someone?” I question, feeling raging tremors run through me. Even now, he hides from me.
“It doesn’t matter–”
“The fuck it doesn’t!” I scream out of nowhere, shocking both of us.
“It’s all right.” I can hear Seth but I don’t dare rip my eyes away from Jase.
“Get out,” Jase gives his partner in crime the command and I listen to his heavy footsteps as he leaves. I can’t even look him in the face. He didn’t come just to stay with me, that’s bullshit. It’s all bullshit.
“Who?” I demand.
“Marcus.” Jase’s chest rises higher and falls deeper, moving slower as he tries to stay calm and collected. I take a step to my right, and he takes a step to his left.
“So you sent your men?”
“Seth said you weren’t there, that you took off or something happened. So I sent every man I had.”
“He didn’t knock. He didn’t try calling me or saying my name when he walked in.” Shaking my head, I deny the innocence that he’s trying to portray.
“He thought he may have frightened you into hiding.”
I complete the series of events for him. “You thought that would be good. Scare me into your arms.” My glare lifts to the specks of gold in his dark eyes. “You thought it would be easier to convince me, didn’t you?”
I can hear the deep inhale he takes as he sucks in a breath. “I made a mistake.”
“One fucking lie after the next with her.” I repeat the words he used before he knew I was outside the door with a taunting flourish. “How many lies, Jase?”
He doesn’t answer me; he merely steps closer. “Can you even remember how many you told?” My voice gets louder with each question. Still, he doesn’t answer.
“How about the debt? I just found out Carter never knew about it.”
Jase doesn’t react, he doesn’t falter, still hiding behind a hard façade.
“Are you going to say there was truth to that? That my sister did what? What do you want to say she did, what did she do to rack up that debt? Tell me all the horrible things she did.”
I can’t explain how the pain flows; the best way to describe it is to say it’s like a river flowing over jagged rocks. “You’ll never know how much it hurt me to think she’d done something horrible to have a debt like that.” I can’t even speak the sentence clearly as I brace myself on the furniture.
“I’m sorry.”
“So it was a lie too?”
“Yes.”
“And the break-in? It was all you all along?”
“Yes.”
With heated cheeks and a prick at the back of my eyes, I remember how I fell out of the cabinet that night and called for him. I remember how awful I felt the next day for ever thinking poorly of him.
How stupid I was. All I am with him is a step behind and foolish.
“You held me after. You knew and you held me after.” I feel sick. My body leans to the left as my head spins and the bastard dares to reach for me.