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“I’ve got these.”
I followed her out to the little table we’d eaten so many meals at, drank so many glasses of wine, spent so many hours talking over. I pulled out her chair, and with a flicker of surprise in her eyes, she sat down.
I sat down opposite her, but I didn’t pick up my fork. I just stared at her. I’d driven all over town to find her, but now that I had her, I had no idea what to say. “What are you doing here, Willow?”
She set her fork down and swallowed hard. “I came to apologize.”
“For what?”
“For…foreverything.”
Willow looked skyward, and I realized it was because her eyes were filling. Instinctively, I reached for her, then pulled my hand back before she saw. I had to fight the other instincts, too. The ones that told me to go to her, to wrap my arms around her. I wanted to, but I wasn’t ready, not yet. I had to hear what she had to say first. “What’s everything?” I asked, my voice calm but with an undergirding of iron.
“I don’t know where to start.”
“The beginning always works.”
“Exposition or initiating event?”
I didn’t smile. “Wherever it began.”
Willow took a deep breath and began. She told me a little of what I already knew–she’d grown up in the shadow of Fletcher’s infidelity. The bastard of the bastard. She’d never quite fit in with his family, though his wife was alwayssokind, she added with a fervency I didn’t understand. Eventually she’d stopped trying, preferring to make her own way in Hollywood. It wasn’t easy. She was living on box macaroni and cheese when he called with an offer.
“The offer to fuck me over?” I asked.
Willow nodded. “Not in so many words, but yes.”
“And you said yes.”
“Yes, but Ineverplanned to actually do it. I just wanted to get my foot in the door. Even before we–” she searched for a way to describe what we had been and came up short. “Even before, Inevergave him good intel,” she finished, her eyes finding mine, imploring me to believe her.
Landon had said as much, but her confirmation made one of the knots in my stomach unwind. “What did you give him?”
Willow furrowed her brow, trying to remember. “Not much. He was always getting frustrated with me. I had him doing a PR campaign that was supposed to make O’Conner think he was a really good guy. Then I suggested he finance the anti-veganism documentary.”
The hard line of my mouth softened. So Landon had been right again. Willow hadn’t just fed Fletcher bullshit, she’d fed him poisonous bullshit. She really had been on my side. Another knot loosened. I reached across the table and took her hand.
Willow threaded her fingers through mine and squeezed, her eyes meeting mine directly. “I never would have hurt you,” she said, her voice nearly a whisper. “Not once I–” a hesitation “--knew you.”
“What happened next,” I said, not ready to go down that path yet. “I know it was something.”
Looking as though she’d rather forget about it altogether, Willow reluctantly told me the story of Fletcher telling her the mission was off. He’d lost, and oh by the way, I was engaged to Shelly Monroe.
“That motherfucker,” I muttered. “He knew she was engaged to Dana.”
“That still doesn’t explain why you didn’t tell me your sister was engaged,” Willow said quietly. “I thought you wanted me to get to know your family.”
I heard the note of vulnerability in her voice. Fletcher had found one of her few insecurities and preyed on it masterfully. “I did. Ido,” I reiterated in a stronger voice. “But this is the third time Dana and Shelly have been engaged. I was waiting to see if they’d actually go through with setting a wedding date.”
Willow searched my eyes and saw I was telling the truth. Her breath came out in a ragged exhale, and the last of the rigid tension drained from her body. “God, we’ve been so easy to manipulate, haven’t we?” she said in nearly a gasp.
“Too fucking easy,” I agreed, tightening my grip on her fingers. “It’s always easy when there are secrets.” I stood up and pulled her to her feet. “We’re not going to let that happen again, Willow. No more secrets.”
“No more secrets,” she agreed, but there were still a few inches of space between us. One last secret she had to tell me before we could close it. My chest tightened as the seconds dragged on. Surely, she was going to fucking tell me.
Wasn’t she?
33
