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It made me wonder if anything else he’d said or done over the past ten days had been genuine or part of some other lie.
We entered the city limits in what felt like record time.
He pulled into his building’s parking lot. When the ship sat down, he didn’t move to leave.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I brought you into this. You didn’t deserve it. Neither did my mom. I’m sorry.”
“What is done is done,” I said.
I climbed out of the shuttlecraft and approached the elevator. He joined me a moment later. Together, we returned to his apartment.
Where his home had felt modern and chic before, now it only represented his den of lies. The place he hid so he didn’t have to live his true life.
“Are you hungry?” he said.
“No,” I said.
I marched through the apartment to my room. I switched on the door lock. It was the first time I felt like I needed it.
I grabbed a bag and began to stuff it with my things. I wouldn’t need much for the trip home.
The tears came to my eyes and spilled down my cheeks.
I kept returning to the image of his mother and that sad, broken look on her face.
The look of someone who’d lost all hope.
It had been her own son who’d done that to her.
And I had been a part of that plan.
A timid knock came at the door.
“Can I come in?” Dyrel said.
“Not right now,” I said, struggling to keep my voice from breaking.
“Can we talk?”
You can if you want.
When I didn’t reply, he took it as confirmation he could speak.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that tonight,” he said. “I didn’t think she would learn about what happened. But the truth is… although trying to keep my inheritance might have been my original plan, it wasn’t what I wanted later.”
You wanted more?
“Things changed when I met you. I never thought I would care so much about you. This thing we have, it was always meant to be a business relationship, as you said. But it’s so much more than that now. At least, to me, it is.”
A hot wad formed in the back of my throat and my breath rasped through my nose. It stung and turned hot.
I didn’t want to weep.
Not now.
Not when I’d already made up my mind about what I was going to do next.
I took a series of deep breaths and moved to the bathroom. I removed my makeup and the pins holding my hair in place. I washed my face and moved back into the bedroom.
