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Since I had some time to kill before dinner, I decided to sit out on my balcony with a book. I’d been reading more since moving here, and I preferred thrillers lately. Sitting out on the balcony gave me an elevated view of the street below, and I loved listening to the kids playing and music in the distance from a neighbor who practiced bagpipes down the road. Sometimes I’d take my cello out and play alongside him, but today I’d just enjoy the bagpipes from afar with my book.
Just as I’d settled into the chair, my phone rang. I looked down at the screen to find it was Rafe calling.
Rafe?
There were a couple of things wrong with this scenario. Number one, he and I only ever talked via video chat. Number two, we mainly spoke on Sundays, aside from last week on Thanksgiving. It was not like him to call me in the middle of the week. Something’s happened back home.
My heart sank as I answered. “Rafe? Is everything okay?”
He let out a deep breath. “Not really.”
I placed my hand over my heart. “What’s wrong?”
There was a long, uncomfortable silence. My terror grew as my mind raced to imagine what might have happened.
“Why did you never tell me about you and Dax?” Rafe finally asked.
Shock closed my throat. I tried to catch my breath for a moment. “What?” My stomach churned, and my vision went blurry. “What are you talking about?”
“You and Dax,” he repeated slowly, as if I hadn’t heard him the first time.
My heart pounded as I went back inside the apartment. “What about me and Dax?”
“You’re gonna make me say it?”
“Well, I need to know what you’re talking about.”
“You were a thing. You had sex. All that shit. What the fuck? How the hell did I not know?”
The room started to spin. How the hell did he know? Did Dax tell him? No way he did. No way in hell.
I kept my questions as generic as possible. “Where are you getting this information?”
“First admit it, and then I’ll tell you.”
Tears sprung to my eyes. I was frozen. I couldn’t lie to him, but I didn’t want to betray Dax, either.
I raised my voice. “I’m not saying a damn thing until you tell me where you got this information, Rafe.”
“I read his journal.”
Oh. Oh my heart. “Why?” My voice trembled. “Why would you do that?”
“I swear, I didn’t mean to. I went to his bedside drawer to steal a condom before I went over to Kelsey’s house. I saw this cigar box. I was going to snag a cigar and smoke it. But there were no cigars inside. There was just a notebook in there. I opened to one of the pages to see what it was, and the first thing I saw was your name. So I kept reading. I read the whole damn thing.”
All I could think to say was, “You’re having sex?”
“Are you seriously trying to change the subject on me?”
“I’m sorry.” I shut my eyes tightly. “I’m so sorry, Rafe.”
“Sorry for what?”
His question confused me. I had lots of reasons to be sorry. Especially since I didn’t know how explicit the journal was. I needed to assume the worst in that regard. He knew we’d had sex. Couldn’t get much worse than that, I suppose.
The phone shook in my hand. “What happened between Dax and me started before I knew who you were. I just…fell for him really hard. It had nothing to do with his role in your life. We connected as individuals. But we thought it best not to continue things because we didn’t want to hurt you.”
“He was in love with you.”
My heart did somersaults. “What…what are you talking about?”
“The last entry in the journal was the day you left. He wrote about how much he loved you, how it was killing him to let you go. But he had to.” He paused. “He never wrote anything again after that day. That was the last entry.”
I shut my eyes and breathed into the phone for several seconds. I didn’t want this information as the result of such a violation of privacy. But if there was one thing I wanted to know, it was that. Dax loved me? I’d always imagined that he cared deeply for me, but I would have never categorized it as love. I loved him. That was for certain. To know those feelings were returned was mind-blowing.
But then the guilt set in, because neither Rafe nor I was supposed to be privy to this information. I shook my head. “Don’t tell me anything else. Neither of us has a right to know what he wrote in there.”
Rafe sounded panicked. “He can’t ever know I read it, Wren. He’d kill me.”
“He was so scared to hurt you, Rafe. I can’t stress that enough. You were always our priority. That’s why we ended things as soon as I—”
