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“Finds out what? What will he do? Hope, sweetheart, you’re not making any sense. Slow down and talk to me.”
“He will hate me!”
“Hope, no one could hate you.”
“My mom did.”
“She was a bitch.”
“You don’t understand White. I lied to him! I told him we were married!”
“Uh, Hope… Sweetheart you aren’t making any sense.”
“I didn’t fix the railing. I should have, but I didn’t and he told me to. He said I’d get sued. He threatened and he was so mean and we slept together and then he was even more mean and then—”
“Hope stop. Take a breath. I’m trying to keep track here, except you’re throwing around a lot of information, but not enough for it to actually make sense.”
“None of this makes sense,” I cry helplessly. “He wasn’t supposed to be nice. If he was mean and hateful I wouldn’t have cared about lying so much. But, then, poof he was nice and sweet and… he holds me and he… he’s sweet! He shouldn’t have been sweet. How can he be sweet, White? How?”
“You slept with Aden?”
“I guess. I mean I was sleeping in bed alone and then he was there and he was undressing me.”
“He forced himself on you? He broke in on you sleeping and forced himself—”
“No! I mean, well not really. I was in his bed.”
“You were sleeping in his bed?”
“I fell asleep. I took this new medicine and I had been sick. I think they interacted and I was just so tired. He demanded I change his sheets and…”
“Jesus. You’re harder to follow than my mother. Did he or did he not force himself on you.”
“No,” I cry. “He didn’t have to. I fell on his dick like a cheap whore because I hadn’t had sex in way over two years.”
“Uh… I really didn’t need to know that.”
“Also I might hate him, but he’s really hot.”
“I…”
“And when he’s using his mouth for things besides screaming at me—”
“And… let’s stop there.”
“I need to stop. I need to tell Aden the truth. He’s going to hate me and he’ll probably sue me and have me thrown in jail. Do you think your mom could take care of Jack. He likes her and he’s kind of shy around people.”
“Why would Mom need to take care of Jack?”
“Because I’ll be in the big house.”
“In the big house?”
“Prison! Aden will have me thrown there when he finds out what I’ve done!”
“What did you do?”
“I married him!”
“You’re married to Aden?”
“No!”
“I am completely fucking lost.”
“I’m not married to him.”
“Good, then—”
“But he thinks I am! You see?”
“Not even a little bit. Maybe you should start at the beginning, Hope,” he tells me and I take a blubbering breath and let the whole story out. Starting with how Aden showed up, the hateful way he treated me, sleeping with him and the horribleness that was the next morning, and I kept telling him all the way up to the fall and the hospital. I didn’t stop until I ended with how amazing last night was, but I might have left out the details there, mostly because White asked me to. If he hadn’t, I was so lost in finally confessing my lies, that I would have never stopped talking. When I finished… there was nothing but silence. I figured White was as disgusted with me as I was myself, but I should have known my cousin better than that. He is after all, a man.
“You told him he had to use Viagra?”
“I was trying to discourage him from wanting sex! I was doing him a favor.”
“Christ.”
“Hope, sweetheart, I love you but—”
“I’m in trouble,” I finish.
“I’m afraid you might be.”
“He’s going to hate me.”
“I’m… yeah,” he finally says. “He might… I can talk to him. Maybe I can—”
“I need to be the one to tell him.”
“It needs to be soon, Hope. People are already missing him. They’re going to come looking for him.”
“I’m scared, White.”
“I know. I’ll come there and be with you. Maybe he won’t take it as bad as you think. I don’t think he’ll have you arrested.”
“I’m more scared of losing him, White,” I confess quietly.
“Fuck,” he whispers back, and that pretty much sums it all up. “What can I do to help?”
“Can you tell me about his life, things he will want to know. Maybe if I can give him some of his past—his real past it will help…”
“I’m not comfortable telling you about his life. That needs to be something he gives you,” he responds.
“Is it bad? God, is he married White?”
“No… not married. Shit, Hope… You’re not going to like it and I’m just not sure I should be the one to—”
“There’s no one else.”
“Tell her, White,” this comes from Kayla in the background.
“Buttercup…”
“Tell her. I know a lot about loving a man who isn’t available to you. She needs to know everything.”
