I shrugged. “He told her in case the other woman came around demanding shit for the kid.” At least, that was what Lindsay had mentioned. She also said there would never be a kid coming around, and I wasn’t too sure how she knew that part. It made me wonder is she had known who had been messing around behind her best friend’s back. Then something else clicked. “She wasn’t pregnant,” I told Ever.
“How did Lindsay know that?”
“No, I meant Lindsay,” I admitted. “They did an autopsy. Her family insisted after I told everyone she had been pregnant. Her mother said she didn’t think Lindsay was capable of having children after what she had gone through a few years back.”
Ever gasped. “She lied about the pregnancy?” Her brows rose and her cheeks filled flush with anger, this time, on my behalf. “Who the hell does something like that?”
I shrugged again. “Takes all kinds. That night, at Christina’s, she said she knew I had been about to tell her we were done. I think the lie was her way of keeping me around for a little bit longer.”
“I’m really sorry, Jay. That sucks. All of it sucks.”
“The part I feel the worst about?” I questioned, asking if she wanted to know. She nodded her head at me. “That girl there,” I tipped my head in the direction her car had gone. “Not being able to know her, having the possibility of it snuffed out before it could happen. Does that make me a horrible person, Ever? I feel like the worst sort of human for thinking that, especially today, but…”
“But you never loved Lindsay, and towards the end, I could tell you didn’t necessarily even want the friendship with her either. It was obvious, Jay.”
“Still,” I countered, though I didn’t really know where I was going with the argument.
“No. I know you feel guilty about everything, but in light of Lindsay’s lies, I don’t think you should. Actually, you shouldn’t have felt bad to begin with. You weren’t feeling it, Jay. I think you were doing the right thing by trying to end it.”
I was still staring off after the car that was no longer in sight. “What do I do about that, though? She feels just as guilty as I do. I don’t think there’s any overcoming that.”
Ever cringed, making me even more positive I was right. “It’s going to take time, Jay. I do think she should be told that the baby wasn’t real though. That makes a huge difference, but more importantly, it takes a burden of guilt from her shoulders.”
“I’m going to see if I can catch her at her apartment,” I told Ever.
“In Savannah?”
“Yeah,” I told her as I headed toward the loaner bike my father had given me to use until the insurance claim on my trashed Harley came through.
“Are you even supposed to be riding, Jay? You’re still hurt.” I looked down at myself and wondered if my ribs were up for the ride. Probably not.
“Think Deck would mind me borrowing his truck?”
“You know he wouldn’t. Still, don’t you think that…”
“You said yourself that she should know to help alleviate her guilt. If that’s the only thing I can ever give to make her life easier, then I want to be able to do that. Ever nodded and gently patted my arm, a sign of affection that was rare between us, and one I probably didn’t deserve from her.
“Jay?” She called out after I’d taken a few steps in the direction of my bike.
“Yeah?”
“I hope it all works out for you,” she offered with a small smile, reminding me of the little girl who had once been one of my best friends.
“I’m not sure I deserve that from you,” I told her.
She waved off my words as if they were nothing more than a gnat irritating her. “Of course, you do. You made a mistake when we were young. You couldn’t have known how it would snowball. Jay, you need to stop beating yourself up about. I forgave you a long time ago. The only thing holding you back now is your inability to forgive yourself.”
Jesus. Her words nearly brought me to my knees. My hand immediately moved over my chest, massaging the ache I felt there. All these years, I thought she hated me still. I thought she’d never forgive me, especially when mine was the only tattoo she would never explain. As if sensing what I was thinking about, Ever spoke again. “You already figured it out, you just don’t realize it yet.” A moment later, I watched her retreating back as she moved to go stand with my brother, just up the hill. He was a lucky son of bitch, and I now knew the difference between infatuation with an idea and a real chemistry you felt with someone who might be made for you. I never felt my touch sizzle against Ever’s skin. Never felt anything like it until Christina.
I pushed myself to get my loaner bike to Deck’s house where I gladly swapped it for his truck. Then I took off to Savannah, Georgia to find Christina and explain to her that this hadn’t been her fault, and her best friend had been a liar.
Christina wasn’t home when I got there.
I stayed.
I waited.
Three days, and nothing. She never showed up. I even had the apartment manager open up her apartment to do a wellness check, considering her history with her husband having committed suicide, I suddenly wondered if she would ever see that as an option. She wasn’t there. The mess Lindsay had made of her apartment with the paintings Christina had done still remained. It appeared there wasn’t anything missing, aside from some of the drawers in her dresser being pretty empty. Then again, I wasn’t sure how much she had in the way of clothing before. I sat there for a bit, just staring at all of her things and absorbing the slightly fruity scent she’d left behind in her wake. It was on everything. It was a subtle scent – pears and cucumbers – if her shampoo bottle were any indication. I sure as fuck didn’t know about those things.
Three days of torment was long enough though. There were other ways to get shit done and sitting on her apartment like a fucking stalker wasn’t doing it. Instead, I drove back to the people I had lost my faith in, swallowed my pride, and tried to remind myself that they weren’t all bad. At least I hoped they weren’t, because for once, I needed my club to get behind me and help find Christina. She deserved to know. More than that, I needed to see her too.
I dropped my problems in my club brothers’ laps and resigned myself to wait until they could come up with something useful. In the meantime, I wondered what it would be like to see her again. Would she listen to what I had to say? Would any of it be a relief to her? Would it change the way she saw me? The last was just me being selfish. I knew I shouldn’t be.
“You want to tell me why it’s so important to find this chick?” Deck asked as he walked into the room I’d been using at the clubhouse since I got back the day before.
I shrugged my shoulders. “Honestly, I’m surprised Ever didn’t fill you in.”
“Oh, she did,” he chuckled. “I want to hear it from you though. It’s not really up to you to take away this woman’s guilty conscience, so why bother?”
I turned cold eyes on my brother then. “Are you seriously saying that to me right now? I’ve talked to you about Christina before,” I reminded him.
“I know you did, little brother. The thing is, you talked about her like you wanted her. What I’m asking is if you’re doing this to make her feel better, or if you’re doing it just so you can see her again.” I didn’t answer at first, so he continued. “If it’s the latter, then I need for you to rethink things. What if she doesn’t want to see you again? What if it makes things worse for her and not better? She was apparently oddly obsessed with you too, right? You mentioned the paintings when you were still in the hospital.”
“Yeah, that’s true, but even if I did want her, want to get to know her, I know what the odds are. The thing I most want is to let her off the fucking hook for whatever guilty trip Lindsay has her on.”
“Lindsay has her on?”
“You know what I mean. The way we left that night, she made it sound like the situation was Christina’s fault and she couldn’t stand to look at her, but that was
the farthest thing from the truth. Christina had already found out who I was and never once tried to contact me on the sly, never tried to throw it in her friend’s face. She would have gone on, never saying a word about who I was to her. How many people do you know who would be that selfless for a friend who, as far as I can tell, was a shitty one?”
Deck shook his head. “You’re right. I don’t know a lot of people who would have kept that information to themselves once it was discovered. Somehow, I don’t think Christina will see it that way though. I think she’ll see that as what the norm should be.”
My brows furrowed tightly together. “What makes you say that?”
“She sounds a lot like Ever, in a way, and it’s what she would do.”
I nodded my head, because that much was true. She was the only other person who I thought might have kept quiet for her best friend’s sake. Selfless. I don’t know why I hadn’t seen that quality in Ever long before now. It would have saved us a lot of trouble had I realized it when we were still kids in high school.
Deck patted me on the back. “I have to head out on a run for a day. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“If they find out where she is, I might not be around when you get back,” I explained to him.
He smirked at me. “I’ll take my chances. Good luck,” he called out as he left.
Over the course of the rest of the day, the one thing that kept coming to mind was the fact that Lindsay had somehow convinced Christina I was her soulmate and that was why she was so enthralled with me. Considering the example, I had growing up had been my parents’ rocky relationship, I never even gave a thought to things like soulmates. It was a load of horse shit as far as I was concerned. The more I thought about it, the way it felt when I’d briefly touched her, the way my mind always strayed back to her, the way just a brief encounter had stuck with me all these years, had me wondering if I’d been wrong. I’d never believed in anything far-fetched, magical, or that couldn’t be explained away with good old-fashioned science, but now… Now, I wondered. Now, I wasn’t so sure what I believed in.
Chapter 18
Guilt
Christina
Mountain life and waterfalls weren’t actually the cure-all I once thought they were. I spent two weeks there with Steven’s ex-best friend. Cody had moved a couple of weeks prior to Steven’s death and when I first got there, I hadn’t put two and two together yet. A couple days in, I finally asked the question that had begun to nag at me.
“Did you know?”
Cody glanced over at me, his icy blue eyes penetrating as they attempted to stare through me instead of looking for any depth in my gaze. He blew out a breath before scrubbing his hands down his face. “I honestly thought this would have come up a few years ago,” he confided.
“Did you know?” I repeated my question for him.
“I knew,” he admitted. “That’s why we hadn’t been so tight in the past couple of months before…” I knew he had been about to say before Steven died, but he changed course mid-way. “Before I moved,” is how he chose to finish instead. “I didn’t know all along. At least, not until Steve came clean with me. He was torn up, Christina. He loved you. Never doubt that for a minute. Hell, I’m sure you have doubted. I should have come had this talk with you sooner, but Lindsay told me it wasn’t a good idea, and I listened to her.” That hurt to hear. Why wouldn’t Lindsay have wanted me to learn the truth about Steven?
“Who was she?” I wasn’t sure I was prepared for that answer.
“That part, I do not know. Steve, he said that was the one thing he couldn’t divulge, in order to protect her.”
“In order to protect her?” I hissed out. “What the hell? Did he think I would go take out my anger on the other woman? Did she even know about me? The person I was angry with was Steven himself. How could he do that to me? How could he cheat? How could he love someone else while staying with me? How could he kill himself, knowing my history and think it would be okay?”
“Maybe Lindsay was right,” Cody mentioned as I continued my hysterical barrage of questions that would never be answered. I calmed myself, because I needed what little Steven had confided in Cody about. “He wouldn’t even have told me, except there was that time that you called and asked to speak to him. You said his phone must be dead or something, and you were shocked that he wasn’t with me, because he said we had to work.”
“I remember. That was just a couple months before,” I told him. He tipped his head, agreeing with me.
“I got in my truck and drove around looking for him after your call. It had me worried, because I thought maybe I had forgotten that I had somewhere to be, or that he had gotten in an accident or something before he got in touch with me.”
“You found him, didn’t you?”
“It was pure happenstance. They were coming out of a hotel as I was passing by. At first, I didn’t even recognize him. He was dressed differently, wearing a damn suit of all things.”
“And her?” I asked, ready to torture myself.
“Blond hair,” he mentioned as Cody shrugged his shoulders. “I couldn’t see much else of her as she was shadowed in the doorway. They kissed, but again, his body was in front of hers. I pulled into the hotel and parked next to his car. I waited there until he got close, watching his approach. Finally, he looked over and noticed me sitting there, and the color drained from his face. He knew he’d been caught. He changed course immediately and came to sit in the passenger side of my car.” He sipped some of the hot tea he had in his hand. “Hell, we might should have started with stronger drinks.” I smiled weakly at him.
“What did he have to say to you?”
“Are you sure you want to hear this?”
“I think I need to. All I’ve had for years was basic speculation and the threat that a strange woman may come to my door one day demanding part of his insurance money for her baby,” I told him.
“She was pregnant?” He asked, completed gobsmacked by that.
“It was in his letter. That was part of the reason he took his life. He knew he’d have to come clean with a baby on the way.”
“What a fucking coward!” Cody took in my watery eyes and quickly backpedaled. “Sorry, I didn’t…”
“No!” I stopped him. “You’re not wrong. He was a coward. He didn’t just ruin his own life, he then took himself out of the equation for the wife he was cheating on, the woman he was cheating with, and the baby he had on the way. It was beyond selfish and cowardice.”
Cody pulled me into a quick side-hug and then continued on where he’d left off. “When he sat down and closed the door behind himself, the first thing he did was ask what I was doing there. I told him; I’d gone looking for him because you had been trying to reach him.” He shook his head. “The bastard didn’t even try to pretend he’d been busted, though why would he?”
I stayed quiet and simply waited for Cody to finish what he had to say. “Why would you do this to her?” He finally said. “That’s what I asked him.”
“And what was his answer?”
“He cried. He broke down and fucking sobbed in my car. We sat there for another fifteen minutes while he got it all out of his system and then he turned and looked at me. Christina, I swear, the man was in some kind of turmoil over this when he spoke. He told me, ‘I never meant for this to happen, but when we first got married and she went to college, I met her.’” Cody stopped again and waited for my breathing to slow again. “He told me he had met the other woman and that they became instant friends, and that the other woman had kept pushing for more. She was relentless in her pursuit. His words, not mine. He said, finally one day, she wore him down and they kissed. Sparks flew, and while he felt immensely guilty for what was happening, he had never felt anything like it with you. It became addictive. He wanted to leave you,” Cody admitted, and he stopped his story there.
“Then why the hell didn’t he just do that from the beginning? That first kiss, or whenever he allowed this
woman to relentlessly pursue him across that line, why didn’t he just come tell me it was over?”
Cody shook his head. “I can’t tell you that, honey, because he never told me. He just said there were circumstances that prevented them from ever being able to go public as a couple, so he thought he would just do his best to make you both happy.”
I threw my mug out into the front yard. I’d like to say I managed to hit a tree with it so I could have had the satisfaction of it shattering there, but that didn’t happen. The damn thing barely made it off the porch. Cody chuckled. “Painter’s arms are weak little noodles,” he teased.
“Yeah, whatever. I don’t think I’ll ever understand what was going on with him. I wish he’d just been honest though. Then maybe he’d still be alive and happy. Maybe I would have been able to move on before now and be happy too.”
“Maybe that’s why you had to hear this,” he suggested. “It’s time, Chris. You need to move on.” He leaned in once more to give me another hug. “Besides, now that Lindsay is gone too, you have to figure out your new life without either of them weighing you down.”
“Weighing me down?” I questioned.
“Yeah, the both of them have been a drain on you for years. I saw it, honey. I’m surprised you never felt it. Lindsay wasn’t that great of a friend, she just pretended to be one to your face. Steve wasn’t a great husband; he was just confused and a coward. Then there was you. You were always this rock-steady force of nature. How you never saw through either of their bullshit is beyond me.”
I shrugged my shoulders and sat there staring off into the not-so-distant tree line. “Maybe it’s just me,” I told him.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
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