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I could see her eyes misting over, her bottom lip trembling as if she was already on the point of tears. Her face looked defeated. She shook her head. “I…”
“Shit,” Easton hissed quietly.
I just couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t tell me. Why would she blatantly lie, for months. I’d told her everything about myself. All of my fears, all of my shortcomings. I’d worked to show her she could trust me. The level of trust between us had been the foundation everything else was built on. That level of trust that existed our entire lives felt as if it was falling out beneath our feet. That world-leveling earthquake Penelope always talked about had just begun to tremble, but only I could feel it.
She told me about her mother. She told me about all her insecurities, her fears.
She told me all of her soulmate theories, the reasons she didn’t believe them, and I thought I had shown her all of the reasons she should. I even thought that maybe she had…had started to believe.
So why wouldn’t she tell me she dated a professor? A detail inconsequential to so many others she’d disclosed to me. Why wouldn’t she trust me with something as simple as this? I tried to think through what about her dating a professor would make her so secretive. Oxford was one of the top universities in the world, so he had to have been highly qualified, experienced. Was he old? Was that why? It still didn’t seem like a large enough reason to hide for so long.
To lie for so long.
“Why lie?” I found myself asking.
She stepped closer to me, shaking her head. Her mouth was gaping with no response.
“How old was he, Penelope?”
She stopped again, her head hanging in defeat. “Thirty-seven…when it started.”
A gasp echoed my own, and I realized Dan was still here too.
“How old was he when it ended?” Dan asked.
“Thirty-nine.” Her hair was a curtain across her face.
“It happened for two years?Two years, Penelope? You were nineteen!” Dan sounded more shocked than I even felt, and I began to wonder how much she’d been keeping from her family too.
“Was he married?” I asked. I hated that I even had to tolerate the question. It was the only thing that made sense to me. Hooking up with a professor who was eighteen years her senior was embarrassing, being rejected from the University because of it was humiliating and disappointing, but none of that was enough to hide it from everyone she knew.
Not enough to make her hate herself.
She brought her hands to her face, covering it.
My heart dropped into my gut and was dissolved by my stomach acids.
She lifted her head, and as her eyes met mine. They told me everything I needed to know. They answered the question her mouth couldn’t bear. I may vomit my acidic heart out onto the table. Right on top of all the words I just told her father.
I felt my throat tighten, and I stood on instinct, my body begging to get away from the environment. My name was a whisper on her lips as I turned my back to her and walked toward the pool house. The conversation continued behind me, her brother’s voice raising above the rest, but I couldn’t hear them. I’d heard enough. I slammed the door behind me and stared blankly at the wall.
I wasn’t sure how much time had passed while I stood there. There was a numbness between my ears that didn’t allow me to think, or move, or even react. All I could do was stand. It dulled as I felt the pressure of the front door against my back. Someone was trying to open it. My instinct was to shut it again, but Penelope’s soft, broken voice made me pause. “Carter, please.”
I stepped out of the way and she stepped inside, shutting the door behind her. Penelope took a few steps into my room and turned to face me. I couldn’t read her expression entirely. I saw despair, regret, and fear. Maybe even, defiance?
I was sure the only expression my face was producing was devastation. Maybe pain.
“You’ve been lying to me for months.”
“I know,” she whispered. She closed her eyes and took a calculated deep breath. “I just… I was trying to process it. I am still trying to process it. I wasn’t ready to share everything yet.”
I scoffed. “Right, so you conveniently picked and chose what details you wanted to disclose. I got one story, your parents got another, and the truth is something else entirely.”
Her hands came to her hips as she craned her neck toward the ceiling and blinked. “Carter, this ismytrauma. Something thatIwent through. Alone. I am the one who gets to choose who knows, how much they know, and when I tell them. Easton was wrong to say that. He—you—nobody knows what the hell I went through.”
“Because you didn’t tell me shit, Penelope!”
“I planned on it. Once we moved. I planned to tell you everything. I just needed to get out of this environment. I needed time to process things.”
