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“Who’s Kayleigh?” Her facial expression didn’t change, her mouth barely moved but there was a chill in her words that he felt to his bones.
His brows tugged down in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t you mean, GoodGirlKay?”
Although he hadn’t eaten anything yet, his stomach roiled, ready to empty itself and he stopped cold. Silence stretched between them as he worked out how the hell to handle this. She waited patiently. He could sense her guard was up, she was coiled, ready to strike at him and he needed to handle this carefully.
He held out his hands, pleadingly. “Kay, I know how it looks. I was going to tell you, I swear it. But I didn’t know how to come out and say ‘Hey, I’m your friend online whodidn’tmove halfway across the country to be near you’.”
Her eyebrows flew up. “Are you seriously trying to be funny right now?”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “No, honestly no. I’m scared and don’t know how to handle this. I love you, Kay. Please.”
She scoffed and shot up from the chair, grabbing her shoes that she had kicked off last night in their desperation to get to bed. God, he’d give anything to go back to then and fix this before it got out of hand.
“So you’ve just been pretending to be someone else?”
“No! That’s not it at all, I don’t need to pretend to be someone else.”
She reared back, her mouth dropping open. “What, like me you mean?”
“No, Kayleigh, that’s not what I meant at all. I just meant I didn’t change how I acted from the guy you knew online because thatisme and I wanted you to connect with the real me.”
“This isn’t something you do to someone you love. How could you keep this from me? Did you think I wouldn’t find out? That I wouldn’t notice? Oh my God, that’s why you pulled back online, isn’t it? I feel sick.” She paused, pressing a hand to her mouth.
His heart ached. He made her feel sick? That was not good, at all. Desperation began nipping at his heels.
“Yes, but only because I didn’t want to continue developing a relationship online, I wanted to do it in person, for real. I couldn’t mess you around and play with your feelings. You’re my best friend in the whole world, you mean so much more to me than words could ever express. I came here for you. I needed to escape my family and reset my life, and the way you talked about this place, the pull it had, and you being here…I just needed to see, see what could happen.” He was rambling but his words only made her put her shoes on faster and his panic began to spiral.
“Kay, please. So many times, you said you wished I could move here, so I did.”
She stood up and pointed a finger at him. “Youusedme! You faked it.Everything. God, I’m such an idiot that I didn’t even put two and two together and realize I was talking to the same person. It makes so much sense now, the connection I felt for you, how it felt like I had known you so long, howrightyou felt. Christ, I’m an idiot!”
“No, you’re not. You’re perfect and kind and luminous andeverything. Kayleigh, you’re everything.”
He tried to take her hand, but she pulled it out of his grasp. “Don’t touch me right now.”
“Please, you have to know. This was only ever meant to be about caring for you. That all I wanted was a chance.”
“You really don’t see what you did?” A tear slipped down her cheek, gutting him.
“I do, I do see it. I was going to tell you, I swear.”
“When? When we fucked a third time?” He flinched at her words. “When we got married? When we hadkids?”
She headed for the door and he was close behind her, his desperation pushing him forward. “Please don’t leave, let’s talk about this?”
“I have nothing to say to you. You said I was your friend. You pushed me and supported me and I was falling for you. I defended you against your family, and this whole time you were keeping it secret that we already knew each other? That I had known you fortwo years? I can’t even be around you right now.”
With that she left the room and he stood there, reeling from her words. In the distance the front door slammed, and he sank onto the bed wondering how his life had gone from glorious to empty in five minutes flat.
*
Chapter 16
Kayleigh swiped furiously at her tears, trying to stop the little whimpers from slipping out as she walked past people from town who tried to ask if she was okay. She didn’t want to speak to anyone because she wasn’t okay. She had just discovered that someone who had burrowed under her skin, that she’d let inside her, had been keeping something huge from her.
She had got over the Elvis thing. The fact that he didn’t tell her about his passion that was such a huge part of his life had hurt, but she understood why, when he had shared what happened the last time he told someone. He didn’t owe her an explanation about that. But this?
