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Harriet and Marius share a look before facing me.
“I’m not sure of the exact details,” Harriet begins. “And saying they’re together might not beentirelyaccurate.”
“How so?”
She leans across the table, throwing out all her etiquette training. “You know how Creed moved in with Rory after Adam died, right?”
Again, this is news to me. “I do now.”
Harriet straightens, sharing another look with Marius.
“Will you two stop looking at each other and tell me what you know?” I exclaim, getting more and more irritated with every passing second.
“Why do you care?” Marius presses. “You’re happy, aren’t you? We’ve seen how you are with Tristan whenever we visited in Paris. He loves you. And you’re obviously quite enamored with him. Why rehash the past?”
“I just…” I blow out a breath. “I just want to know. That’s all.”
Marius sighs, then glances at Harriet, the two of them having an unspoken conversation. After several seconds of brow raises and head tilts, Harriet finally faces me.
“Well, after Adam’s death, Creed moved in with Rory to help with AJ.” She pauses. “Youdoknow who AJ is, right?”
“Of course.” I roll my eyes. “Adam Junior.”
“Okay. Good. Apparently, he was only supposed to live there for that first year. Then a year turned into two. Then three.”
“And they’re still living together?”
Harriet nods.
“In the same house Rory once shared with Adam?”
“If you ask me, it’s just a bad situation for all involved,” Marius states. “She’s probably only sleeping with him because he reminds her so much of Adam, at least in looks. And he’s probably only sleeping with her because of some misplaced obligation he feels toward his brother after his death. Rumor is, they got into a pretty big fight the last time they spoke.”
“It was about me,” I say, not even having to question it. I know it was. Adam implied as much when he told me his brother punched some sense into him the night he died. He even had the bruise on his jaw to prove it.
“It was?” Harriet scrunches her brows. “Why?”
I chew on my bottom lip. I never told them everything that went down those last few weeks between Creed, Adam, and me. While they knew I’d ended things with Creed, I claimed it was getting too risky, as they saw for themselves. While that was certainly true, it wasn’t the sole reason. They didn’t know Adam essentially begged me to do so.
After his death, I considered telling them the truth but decided against it. Not like it would have changed things. Nor will it change things now, but it might help them understand better.
“Because Creed realized that Adam forced me to break things off.”
“He did?” Harriet exclaims, eyes wide, jaw dropped.
“And you never told us?” Marius adds, his expression mirroring Harriet’s.
“It was painful enough to essentially rip Creed’s heart out of his chest and stomp on it, destroying any hope he had of a future with me. I didn’t want to relive that by telling you what I’d done. Hell, I called him the hired help.”
“But he eventually figured it out,” Harriet states.
“He did. Or so Adam implied the night of the King’s Day gala. Claimed Creed even punched him. Then…” I pause, drawing in a deep breath before confessing my next secret. If the memory of calling Creed the hired help is still painful to admit, this next one is even more so. “Then Adam gave me a choice. He’d take me to the palace where Jameson Gates would propose. Or to Creed’s so we could set things right.”
I study my friends’ reactions, expecting to see their shock increase. Instead, all I see is sympathy.
“You chose Creed,” Marius exhales. “You weren’t on your way to your mother’s grave, like the royal household claimed. You were on your way to Creed’s.”
I slowly nod.
