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I felt my brow dent. “When?”
“When I came to you after Thaddeus crashed into your car. I saw it in your eyes. And I realized I felt the same.”
“You didn’t say anything.”
“At first, I was too pissed at Thaddeus. Then I decided I’d tell you Christmas Day. Figured it wouldn’t kill you to sweat a little longer.”
I gaped. “You’re such a dick.”
A low chuckle vibrated his chest. “So I’ve heard.” He dabbed a soft, lingering kiss on my mouth. “Can’t really deny it.” He smoothed his hands from my face to my hair, holding it out of the way as he studied my expression. “You all right after that scene?”
I inhaled deeply. “Yeah. I don’t think any of them will give us any more issues. Not even Lowe, despite his threat. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but who’s Hartman?”
Sighing, Dax ever so slowly released my hair. “Going through a dead person’s belongings can be hard. What’s harder is discovering something they were keeping from you. Gracie had an online friend—one she’d never met in real life. They spoke daily. She confided in him. Flirted with him a little.”
I winced. “Shit.”
“She was using a different identity, which meant she could claim to be single,” he continued, his voice remarkably even, his expression just as neutral. “And that’s what she did. They talked of meeting up, but she always made excuses at the last minute.”
A protective annoyance surged through me, hot and jagged. “Were their messages …”
“Sexual in nature? No. They didn’t exchange explicit photos or do anything other than mildly flirt. There were no ‘I love yous’ either.”
Well, at least there was that, though it didn’t make the situation much better.
“I think, for her, it was simply a bit of fun. Excitement. And maybe a way to get back at me for insisting on moving at my pace rather than hers.”
That didn’t make it acceptable. At least not in my book. “I’m sorry.”
He only shrugged, but I didn’t buy that he was over it. How could he be?
“Did you tell anyone?”
“No. What would be the point? It would color their memory and perception of her. I saw no need to do that. And it wasn’t as if she had a deep, dark, terrible secret.”
It was terrible in my eyes, because it was betrayal of a sort. Hadn’t he suffered enough of that?
God, this had to have exacerbated his trust issues tenfold. “How do you think Mimi knew about it?”
“Maybe Gracie told her about her ‘friend,’ who knows? I’m not surprised that Mimi said nothing of it to me. She loved her sister more than life itself. They were extremely close. She wouldn’t throw her under the bus like that. It wasn’t until recently that she even began hinting there was something I didn’t know.”
I wondered if maybe Mimi had started to resent that she’d held back Gracie’s secret, perhaps thinking that if only she’d long ago turned him against her twin then he might be married toMiminow, not me.
“I think she thought if she prodded me with enough ‘maybe you didn’t know Gracie as well as you think you did’ comments, I’d pressure her into telling me. Then she wouldn’t feel quite as guilty for confessing.”
Possibly. “It must have been a shock for you to find out about Hartman.”
“Not as much as you might think. I’m not a trusting person. And when you walk through life expecting the people you meet to let you down or fuck you over, such things don’t hit you as hard.”
Maybe.
Dax cupped my chin and swept his thumb along my jaw. “You haven’t let me down. Haven’t screwed me over. Haven’t once broken my trust.” He dipped his face to mine. “And you love me.”
I curled my hand around his wrist. “Yes, I do.” And I saw now that Brooks had been right. I’d loved Lake and would have been happy with him, but he hadn’t been the love of my life. No, that was Dax. The contentment I felt with him … it beat anything I’d felt before with anyone else.
“The only thing about this situation that pisses me off is that I stupidly let you go once. I shouldn’t have.”
I understood why he had, though. He’d been even more closed-off back then than he was now. Probably because the hurt from all the betrayals and other shit he’d suffered growing up were still fresh. He hadn’t had the chance to work through them, process the anger, and develop an ability—however weak it had been—to trust.
