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“Why?” I ask him, not elaborating. There’s no need, we both know the score here.
“You were just starting to settle in. I got you that internship with the force—”
“You mean the internship I had to sign all those damn forms for and while I was signing them, you just slipped this one in.”
He ignores my remark and pushes through. “You were flirting back and forth with that pretty blonde clerk,” he adds, and I close my eyes, feeling the bitterness begin to boil over. “You remember her, right?”
I don’t reply, but I do remember her. We did flirt back and forth. She liked me. She reminded me of Luna. Her hair was similar, her smile was familiar, and she helped distract me from the fact that Luna didn’t try to contact me, that she pushed me away and didn’t change her mind. In the beginning I was so sure she’d call. I thought she would see that we needed to be together. I had no idea of the hell she was going through back here in Stone Lake.
“It wasn’t a coincidence was it?”
“What?” he asks, but even I can tell he knows what I’m asking. Still, if he wants me to spell it out, I will. At this point, it’s just a matter of hearing him admit to all of it.
“You had Monica be the clerk who had me sign the internship papers because you knew I’d just sign where she told me to and not read a damn thing.”
“Yeah,” Dern says, rubbing the side of his face and taking the shot of whiskey the waitress put in front of him and ordering another.
“She was in on it,” I tell him. It’s not a question, it’s a simple sentence because I know it’s true. She had to be. I’ve been thinking about it for hours. Papers where hidden behind papers and she would never lift them completely so I could see them. She’d just say, “And this is a medical release paper, this is our privacy paper.” She’d lean over as she explained and point to the highlighted signature line. Each time she leaned over I’d get a glimpse of her tits and fuck it had been a year since Luna was in my life. I had no idea she was back in Stone Lake, having given birth months earlier and still in the hospital because of complications.
That was something else I learned secondhand in all of the unopened letters…
How can Luna even look at me and not think that I’m a piece of shit?
“She was. I offered her a little money, but mostly told her that it was a girl back in Maine that was trying to destroy your life and I wanted to protect you. Monica liked you enough she probably would have done it without the added money…”
Probably would have done it without the added money…
Christ. The betrayals and the hits just keep coming.
“Why, Dern? Just fucking why? You knew I loved Luna. You knew she meant everything to me. Why would you alter the direction of my whole life like this? I don’t understand. I just can’t piece it together.”
“Her father was out for blood. If you had gone back, he wouldn’t have stopped until he destroyed you, Boy.”
“That was my fucking choice to make, Dern.”
“Maybe.”
“There was no fucking maybe about it. It was my choice and you knew me. You had to know that Luna would be my choice. Fuck, it’s thirteen years later and she’d still be my choice,” I growl, letting the truth hang between us.
“I knew.”
“There’s more to the story. You’re not telling me something. I want to know it. I want to know all of it.”
“What’s the point? It’s over now. Nothing can be gained—”
“I want to know the fucking truth,” I yell, taking my hand and raking my arm across the bar, causing my glass, the bottle of whiskey and Dern’s glass to crash to the floor. The crowded bar goes quiet. I ignore it all including the bartender asking me to calm down. All of my attention is on Dern.
Something flashes across his face and then it’s like his entire posture slumps. It’s the same thing that happens when I finally get a suspect to break. He’s given up. He brings his gaze level with mine and then lets me have it.
The real truth.
The real reason he betrayed my trust and cost me my son… and maybe Luna. Because, I know if I had gone back and become a part of my son’s life there’s a chance that I might have been able to win Luna back. I know I would have tried to do that with everything inside of me. Dern’s choices took everything from me.
Everything that mattered…
“Your brother and Luna’s father showed up at my doorstep a few days before that. They told me that Luna had moved on with her life that she was set to marry Atticus, but before that could happen, they needed you to give up all rights to the child. My first instinct was to tell them to go to hell, I swear to you, Gavin, it was.”
