Lies We Tell

by Jeana E. Mann

  “Sorry.” I crouched to restack the books. She crouched in front of me and bent to help. Our skulls cracked together. Stars exploded in front of my eyes.

  “Shit.” She pressed a hand to her forehead.

  “Are you okay? I’m sorry.” I brushed the hair from her face, noting the red bump above her left eye. “You’ve got a knot.”

  Her forehead crinkled. “Yeah. No worries. I’ve got a hard head.” One corner of her mouth twitched, like she wanted to smile and couldn’t. Why was it so hard for her to be happy? It was all I’d ever wanted for her. I’d given up everything to make it happen, but it hadn’t been enough.

  “Stell.” I cupped her cheek, savoring the puff of her breath against my palm. Her violet gaze turned up to mine. The sight of the pain and longing in their depths knocked the breath out of me. We were close—so close that I could feel the heat from her body. One shift—one slight adjustment and our mouths could meet. Desire welled up inside me, stronger than the greatest hunger. I brushed the pad of my thumb over her bottom lip. She bit the tip, something she’d done often when we were together, sending a jolt of arousal into my groin. Despite the years and the lies between us, she had an effect on me like no other woman.

  A gust of wind rattled the old windows. Realization flashed across her face, washing away the emotions, and snapping the bond between us. She cleared her throat, scooped up the sheets, and stood. “It’s late.”

  “Right.” I took the linens from her arm. “I can do it.”

  “All right.” With her hands in her back pockets, she eased away until several feet separated us. “Goodnight.”

  “Night, babe.” The endearment slipped out before I knew it had happened. Embarrassment heated my face. A furrow deepened between her brows. Epic mistake, Henry. There was nothing I could do to take it back, so I winked at her like a douchebag, trying to make light of the situation. Her eyebrows lifted.

  “Right.” Without another word, she pivoted and strode into her bedroom.

  Inside the bedroom, I fluffed out the fitted sheet, tucked the elastic corners around the mattress, chastising myself the entire time. What was wrong with me? Now she either thought I was a dick or a fool—maybe both. I stripped down to my boxers. With a grunt, I flopped onto the bed. After sleeping on a prison cot, the bed was comfy, but it was hotter than blazes. The breeze blowing through the open window did little to alleviate the humidity.

  I tucked a hand behind my head and stared at the ceiling, noting the familiar cracks. We’d had sex here a few times when Stan and Marianne had been gone. The memory brought my cock to attention. At this rate, I’d be awake all night.

  Fifteen

  Stella

  Present Day

  In the middle of the night, I awoke to a powerful thirst and sweat-soaked sheets. Grit burned beneath my heavy eyelids. Instantly, I remembered Owen in the next room and cursed. What kind of idiot invited her ex-boyfriend, a convicted murderer, to sleep in her house? Oh, yeah. That’s right. This girl. With a sigh, I threw back the top sheet and swung my bare feet onto the wood floor.

  I padded down the hall to Owen’s room. The door and windows were open, but the moon had retreated, leaving the house in total darkness. I stared into the black hole of the doorway, waiting for my eyes to adjust, my heart thundering. After a few seconds, the clouds shifted again. The dim light revealed his long body on the mattress. One arm rested above his head, fingers curled loosely. Rippled abs rose and fell with his even breathing. The dark ink of his tattoo—a winged bird—spread over his chest. My heart stuttered. A line of hair trailed over his smooth, suntanned belly, leading from his navel into the waistband of his boxer briefs and to the bulge below. An impressive bulge. Geez, if I didn’t back away, I was going to get pregnant from looking at him.

  “Stella?” His deep, sleepy voice made me jump. “Is everything okay?”

  A furious flush heated my face. Thank goodness it was too dark for him to see. “Yes. Um, yeah. I was—” What was I doing? The sight of his big body on the tiny twin bed had shorted out my wiring. “I’m going downstairs for a bottled water. Do you want some?”

  “Sounds good. It’s hot as fuck in here.” In a graceful motion, he rose to his feet. The silky sheen of sweat glistened on his chest. “I’ll go with you.”

  With a throbbing ache between my thighs, I headed downstairs. He followed me. His nearness pebbled the skin on my arms into gooseflesh. In the bright light of the kitchen, I became acutely aware of the tiny shorts barely covering my ass and my braless breasts. After exploring third-world countries with a group of men, sometimes sharing sleeping quarters, I’d lost all semblance of modesty. Standing in front of Owen, however, was an entirely different thing. To hide my embarrassment, I dug in the cooler for a water and tossed the bottle to him. He caught it with one hand. I took one of the ice cubes and dragged it over my neck and collarbone. Sweet, fleeting relief followed. The chill from the ice tightened my nipples. The melted water evaporated immediately, leaving me hotter than before.

  “I don’t remember Indiana being this sweltering,” I said to break the uncomfortable stillness.

  “You’ve been away a long time.” In the quiet, his voice held a soft, intimate quality. “I’m sure you’ve forgotten a lot.”

  “I have a memory like an elephant.” I lifted my chin and met his eyes. That goddamn penetrating gaze of his sliced through all my barriers and knocked on the door of my soul. “I remember everything.”

  “Everything but the heat.” He rolled his lips together. His gaze flitted from my eyes to my mouth and back again. The cadence of my heart doubled, beating so loud I was certain he could hear it.

  “At the time, the heat wasn’t important.” But you were. You were everything to me, and you went and fucked it up. The words screamed inside my head. I bit my lower lip to hold them back.

  “Come on.” Without explanation, he left, pushing through the back door and onto the porch. Against my better judgment, I followed him. On bare feet, he traversed the gravel driveway. I winced as the sharp stones cut into my tender flesh. He shook his head and came back to meet me in the middle. In an easy sweep, he lifted me into his arms and carried me to the grass on the far side, then set me down. It was something he’d done a dozen times when we were kids, always followed with a wisecrack about my city-girl feet. The bittersweet sting of nostalgia sliced through my chest. We’d been so happy back then—before the world had turned to shit.

  “Where are we going?” I asked when I’d finally found my voice.

  “You know.” He kept walking, and I followed him because I couldn’t help myself.

  The dry grass tickled my ankles. The yard needed to be cut, but I hadn’t bought a mower yet. One more thing to add to the list of homeowner responsibilities. Overhead, the clouds had cleared, showing a bright moon and a velvet carpet of stars. Crickets and bullfrogs sang in voices loud enough to drown the banging of my heart against my ribs. A few yards beyond the garage, water trickled over stones, beckoning. The river—this river—had been our meeting place. I’d been avoiding it to evade the significance it held for me, but now, scanning the tumble of boulders along the bank and the covered bridge in the distance, my stomach did a nervous flip.

  “No way. You’re not serious.” I halted. During my one summer here, we’d swam in the river nearly every day—me, Owen, and sometimes Lanie.

  “Totally.” From the bank, he cast a taunting glance over his shoulder. “Last one in is a rotten egg.” Before I could draw my next breath, he’d stripped out of his underwear. The taut, white firmness of his buttocks gleamed in the moonlight. I stifled a groan at the sight of him, proud and wild, overlooking the river. He waded out a few feet, the water swirling around his strong thighs, before sinking up to his chin into a deeper pool. “Are you coming in, or are you going to stand there gawking?”

  I swear the man had eyes in the back of his head. After shaking my head, shifting from one foot to the other, and ticking off a dozen reasons why this was
a bad idea, I shimmied out of my shorts and tank top. The water was warm but still a few degrees cooler than the air. The mucky bottom squeezed through my toes. I picked my way around the protruding rocks until I was a few feet from Owen and sank into the pool. Immediate and satisfying relief washed over me. I closed my eyes and moaned, letting the coolness seep into my skin. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt anything so delicious.”

  “Really?” he asked, his tone dry. By now, I’d developed a fondness for the way he arched his left eyebrow, the one with the scar, whenever I said something provoking.

  “Okay. That might be a slight exaggeration.” The mild current had pushed us together until we were less than a foot apart. I hovered in the water, weightless. Moonlight shimmered on the ripples created by our movements.

  “I used to daydream about this. About us. Here.” He ran a hand up the length of my arm to the crest of my shoulder and back down. “Sometimes it was the only thing that got me through the endless days of waiting.” When his hand reached my wrist, he gripped it with his strong fingers and drew me through the water in a lazy circle around him. I let the momentum roll me onto my back, soothed by the sounds of the night. The stars rotated through the black sky above us, infinite and mysterious like the man at my side. “It kept me sane when everything else begged me to become a monster.”

  I put my feet on the river bottom, his confessions overwhelming. He stared at me. Beads of water glistened on his chest. I took a step closer and placed my hand over his heart. It thudded strong and steady against my palm. Tears blurred my vision. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  “Stop saying you’re sorry.” The tone of his voice turned angry. “Fuck the apologies, Stella. It’s way too late for that.”

  “But why? Why did you do it?” The tears streamed down my cheeks. I didn’t try to hold them back. I needed answers. “Make me understand.”

  His nostrils flared with a deep, chest-swelling breath. He blinked, giving me that spellbinding, penetrating stare. “You know why. I did it to save you.”

  Sixteen

  Stella

  Present Day

  One minute, we were staring at each other and the next minute, I was launching myself through the water. He grabbed the hair at the nape of my neck as my arms snaked around his shoulders. I opened my mouth, eager to feel those beautiful lips and his tongue dancing against mine. His fingers tightened in my hair. I hissed at the forcefulness of his possessive grip. Before my mouth found his, he yanked my head back, forcing my gaze upward. His eyes were dark, glittering, and threatening.

  “I’m not the same guy, Stella. You don’t know who you’re messing with. You don’t know who I am now.”

  “I don’t care.” I tried to break away from his hold to claim his taunting lips, but he held fast to my hair. “I know who you were, and that’s all that matters.”

  “You should care. The boy—the one you knew—he died in that prison cell, and he’s never coming back.”

  My heart ached with a pain greater than anything I’d ever felt before. “You blame me. I get it. I blame myself. It’s okay if you hate me. I hate me too.”

  “I’d do it again if it meant keeping you safe.” He released my hair, but he didn’t deny hating me. With gentle hands, he pried my arms from his neck and put distance between us. The little girl inside me folded on herself. Everyone abandoned me eventually. My parents. Michael. And now Owen. I could take rejection from anyone but him.

  The water, which had been refreshing in the beginning, sucked at my legs as I sloshed toward the bank. Owen grabbed my bicep to stop my retreat. His touch seared my skin. Without looking back, I said, “If you cared so damn much, then why did you send me away when I came to see you at the prison?” I broke loose and kept wading. Part of me wanted to hear his answer, but the cowardly part feared what he might say. I’d thought I was over the hurt, but being with him had reopened the wound.

  “I had to. If they thought we were together in any way, they might have come after you, and I couldn’t allow that.”

  “You don’t know that.” With short, angry jerks, I stabbed my legs into my shorts and yanked the tank top over my head.

  “My confession closed the door on the investigation. I took a plea deal for a reduced charge of voluntary manslaughter instead of murder. They were satisfied to have a member of the Henry family in custody.” The water hissed and splashed as his footsteps followed me.

  I retreated a few paces toward the house then turned back to him. The hurt and anger I’d been repressing for the past eighteen years exploded. I shoved him. Hard enough to make him stumble, but he regained his balance and held his ground. “It was a stupid thing to do. Stupid.”

  “Don’t talk to me about stupid. I did what I had to do, and because of me, you’ve got a beautiful life.” His words brought me to a complete standstill. My mouth dropped open. I placed a hand on my chest, feeling like all the oxygen had been sucked out of the air. He stepped into his boxers and pulled them up to his hips before capturing my gaze. “You were always destined for greater things, and I knew that.” His voice dropped, becoming tender, underscored by sadness. “Look at you, Stell. You came from nothing, and now you’re a great photographer. You’ve circled the globe.” He took a step forward to sweep a tendril of hair from my temple. “I’m proud of what you’ve accomplished.”

  The anger melted from my body. I stared at him, flexing my fingers, warring between the desire to punch him or kiss him. After a beat, I growled, releasing my frustration, and shook my head. “You broke my heart.”

  “Then I guess we’re even,” he said.

  I ran back to the house, heedless of the sharp gravel and my bare feet. The screen door banged shut behind me. I thundered up the stairs and into my bedroom. Owen didn’t follow, but I knew he was close by. I could feel him in my bones, in my heart, and in my soul. Like it or not, we were bound to each other forever, bound by our secrets and the death of his brother.

  We didn’t speak to each other at all the next day. When Dad and the boys arrived, I set up a table on the back porch and served coffee and donuts to the crew. Owen stayed by the garage, staring at me with dark, pensive eyes. His brooding gaze made me want to scream. The tension between us escalated until I couldn’t do anything but fret about his confessions. For distraction, I threw my anger and frustration into cleaning.

  In my heart of hearts, I knew Owen hadn’t killed Chris, and that meant the killer was out there somewhere. While I worked, I ran through the events leading up to the murder. No matter how hard I tried to remember, the details remained fuzzy. The pain of those days stayed with me. The ache of Marianne’s death, Stan’s illness, leaving Owen without the chance to say goodbye—all those things tumbled around in my head, the facts distorted and confused by emotions and time.

  Only one other person could help reconcile the situation. I called up Lanie’s number in my phone. She answered on the fourth ring, sounding out of breath and irritated. “Hey, Sis, can I call you right back?”

  “No.” After eighteen years of misery, I didn’t want to wait another second.

  “Hang on.” She put me on hold before I could draw breath to continue.

  With a sigh, I took a seat on the third stair. Humidity coated the walls and my skin. I dragged a clean rag over my face. A fly buzzed in lazy circles around the room before taking refuge on the ceiling, out of my reach. After five minutes passed, I hung up. Lanie called back immediately.

  “Sorry,” she said without greeting. “I had the landlord on the other line. He’s hounding me for rent. You never sent that check.”

  Lanie’s financial situation had been the last thing on my mind over the past week. I rolled my eyes. She wasn’t going to change unless I forced her to take responsibility for her life. “Seriously, Lanie. You need to figure out a way to handle this on your own. I can’t keep cleaning up your messes.” Her anger transferred through the phone in the form of silence. Even though my chest ached for her situation, I held my ground. “You
know I’d do anything for you.”

  “Obviously, not anything,” she huffed.

  I ignored the jab and tried to soften my tone. “If the kids need clothes or school supplies, I’m happy to buy them. Do you need food? I’ll send you a gift card for the grocery store.”

  “They’re fine. I’ll manage.” Her clipped tone signaled the end of the topic. “What’s up with Owen? Did you get rid of him?”

  Owen. The sound of his name awakened butterflies in my stomach and a throb in my center. I pressed my thighs together. “That’s why I’m calling. He’s outside, working on the back porch.”

  “Seriously! What are you thinking?” The pitch of her voice climbed higher.

  “Look, we talked about Chris last night. He didn’t do it.”

  “Jesus, Stella. Of course, he’s going to say he didn’t do it. You’re so gullible.”

  During my lifetime, I’d been called a lot of things but never gullible. I snorted while fighting back anger at her insult. “Says the girl who believed her first baby-daddy worked for the CIA.”

  “Okay, well, I’ve made some mistakes. I’m not going to deny it.” I heard her fingernails tapping on the table, one of her most irritating habits. “Does he know who did it?”

  “I don’t know. We didn’t get that far in the conversation.” I twisted a loose strand of hair around my finger. “Do you remember anything about that night? Anything at all?” Over the years, I’d avoided the topic to protect her, but I needed answers now, answers that only she could provide.