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“Stop,” I ground out, trembling hand shaking as I held it in front of me, warning her not to come toward me. “Stop saying my name. Stop acting like you don’t have a goddamn clue what’s going on.”
“Oh?”
My head snapped to the side at LT’s voice, giving me the wickedest sense of déjà vu when I found her standing just inside the kitchen with a satisfied smirk.
Folding her arms over her chest, she slanted her head and asked, “Now, doesn’t this look familiar?”
“Nothing,” I seethed. “Not a goddamn thing has ever happened between us, and you know that.”
“What?” Brandon demanded as Konrad sucked in a stunned breath.
“Do I?” LT asked mockingly, her expression showing just how much she was enjoying this.
“I know what you tried to do,” I shouted. “I fucking know.”
“What is going on?”
And there it was.
That ice that splintered in my veins and gripped at my lungs at the sound of Scarlet’s voice, making it difficult to breathe. That guilt that had been a living, breathing thing inside me for weeks, even if I’d been misinterpreting it.
It’d been warning me of this moment when I would have to tell Scarlet what happened—to hurt her the way this was clearly going to. To cause that doubt I’d been agonizing over all those weeks ago and potentially lose the woman I loved because this was my word against two of Scarlet’s best friends.
One who would do anything to bring me down and another who was wholly convinced we were in love with each other.
And that person? Scarlet trusted her with her life.
“Chase,” Scarlet said,begged, when the edgy silence in the kitchen only lingered and grew heavier.
Turning fully to face Scarlet, I drew in a slow, steeling breath as my fear of the outcome of this conversation threatened to cripple me right there.
This was my fucking nightmare.
This was the end of my twisted memories—my false life. Right here.
“What we thought, whatIwas worried I did, never happened,” I muttered as I gestured weakly to her. But the relief we should’ve felt over that revelation wasn’t there, even for Scarlet, because she knew from the tension building and my tone that I wasn’t finished. “But I didn’t know how to tell you what was going on.”
She shifted. Straightened. Seeming to draw herself up as if putting on armor as she glanced around at the five of us before focusing on me. With a slight lift of her chin, she asked, “Right before your accident?” When I nodded, she asked, “What was going on?”
I stood there for what felt like an hour. Trying to figure out the best way to tell her and coming up empty, just as I’d done in the days before my wreck.
Because there was noeasyway to tell her everything.
Samantha had been the only one of Scarlet’s friends that she’d confided in when Aaron and his cousin had abused her. She’d been the only one Scarlet had let come over when we were grieving the loss of our baby—the only one I’d trusted to stay with Scarlet when Brandon and I had left that night, seeking vengeance. She had been the first person Scarlet called when we’d gotten engaged and was supposed to be her maid of honor because she waseverythingto my fiancée.
How was I supposed to convince Scarlet that she was lying?
I slowly looked at Samantha to find her watching me with the same expression she’d given me a month ago. As if she’d done all of this for me— forus.
What the actual hell?
“It wasn’t LT,” I finally said, voice gruff and full of apology. “The notes I used to get on my truck, and I’m assuming the canvas and my sketchbooks too, were all Samantha.”
Scarlet’s chest shook with the force of her amused exhale, relief filling her features as she drew in another large breath. “Funny.”
My head listed as apology after apology after explanation gathered on my tongue, trying to figure out how to fall.
And when nothing came out, when no one laughed with her or offered anything else, Scarlet’s expression fell. Disbelief and surprise and hurt clashing on her beautiful face as she took a step back. “What? No. No, because—no.”
