Talking After Midnight

by Dakota Cassidy

  The quiet of her apartment sat in her bones, gave her too much time to remember Tag’s arms around her while they watched Disney movies, late lunches with bologna sanwiches, his amazing smile.

  A knock at the door had her jumping off the couch, her legs shaking. One of the security guards stuck his head inside, his stern gaze looking her over. “Miss Lyman, a Tag Hawthorne here to see you.”

  Her heart began a brisk thump, her throat drying up. The moment he entered the door, so perfect, so solid and secure, she wanted to run to him. Bury her face in his neck, beg him to forgive her.

  But Tag’s shoulders were stiff when he crossed the room. His face masked in anger. “So this is the real Marybell Lyman?” Tag said, dripping sarcasm. “Did you forget where you put your hair gel?”

  Her hand went self-consciously to her freshly washed hair. He was here to get his licks in, and it was the least she could offer him for all the lying she’d been doing.

  Pulse pounding in her ears, her head throbbing, she knew it was truth time. Time to face the one person she should have told before anyone else. Time to face the music.

  He wasn’t here to listen. That fact was in his posture. In his harsh tone. He wanted to vent. To rage.

  She turned her back to him and walked farther into the living room, all the anxiety, all the secrets, all the hiding was coming to the surface again. Spinning around, her arms open wide, she offered an invitation to gut her. “Have at it, Tag. Give it to me good.”

  Tag was in front of her in seconds. “So it’s really true.”

  Her stomach roiled, her bravado waffled. “Yes,” she whispered.

  His face, always so easygoing and open, was a closed mask of tension and fury. “Why? Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

  Look at him, Marybell. Look at him and tell the truth. Tell him you didn’t expect to fall in love with him. You didn’t expect him to wear you down until you gave in. She lifted her chin. “I was trying to find proof so that when I finally told you, I’d have some kind of evidence I had nothin’ to do with what Leon did.”

  “So while you were searching for this evidence, you lied. You. Lied. Over and over. All that bullshit secrecy over your family and where you grew up was because you’re a goddamn liar. You helped that prick Leon steal my money—you helped him steal money from people who’d never have another chance to earn more. You did that,” he said, his fists clenched, his jaw hard.

  No. No more. No more accusations. He could call her a liar, but she wasn’t a thief. “And where is all that money, Tag? With all that money I chose to become a phone sex operator in a town where everyone thinks I worship the devil. Can I get just a little credit here, please? If I’m some kind of brilliant mastermind when I’m stealin’ other people’s money, the least you could do is consider I’d be in some country without extradition laws by now. Not right here in Plum Orchard, right under your nose.”

  His eyes flashed, hot and dark. “Maybe Leon promised you things the same way he did everyone else, and then he stiffed you, too?”

  “Okay, good theory. Let’s explore that. So I’ve been stiffed now by Leon, too. Why would I get involved with you of all people? One of the people he stiffed? Was I going to hide behind my makeup and my hair until either we broke up or you asked me to marry you? Where does Taggart Hawthorne fit into this? What do I gain being involved with you?”

  He paused for a beat, one she almost allowed herself to feel hope in. Until he dashed that. “I don’t know, and I mostly don’t care. The point is, you lied. You were never who I thought you were. The rest almost doesn’t matter.”

  She bit the inside of her cheek to keep her lip from trembling, her flash of anger replaced with so much regret, it was a physical pain. Calm, just find some calm and tell him the truth. “I wanted to tell you. I can’t tell you how many times I almost did, Tag. I hired a private investigator just this morning because I wanted to somehow find proof that I’m innocent. So I could show you. Prove it to you. But as I stand here, I did not have a hand in stealin’ your money.”

  “So, why did you hide like this, Marybell Lyman? Why did you run off where no one could ever find you? Why did you wear all that crap on your face—because you were innocent?”

  She fought a hoarse sob. The pressure of keeping this secret, of being hounded daily for almost a year of her life before she’d gone into hiding, broke. It broke off in big chunks of frustration. “Because no one would believe me!” she shrieked, more humiliating tears falling from her eyes.

  His body language said he didn’t believe her. Not a word. It said, don’t touch me. Don’t get any closer. Yet somehow she needed to believe their connection, everything they’d shared so far, would cut through his anger.

  Marybell gulped in another breath, her legs shaking. “I did not ever sleep with Leon Kazinski. He was a vile man I interned for. I didn’t know he was pilfering money from people. I didn’t know anythin’ about what he was doing. You can hurl accusations at me until you’re blue in the face. You can badger me, but I’ll die before I admit to something I didn’t do.”

  “So, if you didn’t sleep with Kazinski, how about explaining that picture of you?”

  The crass image Tag portrayed almost made her gag. “That picture doomed me from Jump Street.”

  “Yeah, that picture. You mean the one of you lying on top of Leon Kazinski?”

  “If you’ll just let me explain it. If you’ll just listen to my side of the story.” Just one more time.

  He shook his head, his face so hard, so far removed from the fun, lighthearted man she’d fallen in love with. “So you can lie some more? The. Hell. You had me hook, line and sinker. All this time I’ve been chasing you around and you’ve been stringing me along. ‘No, Tag. I can’t go out with you. I have issues. No, Tag. I don’t want to date anyone,’” he mocked. “But that damn well didn’t keep you from being with me, did it?”

  If he’d taken a hot poker and seared her straight through her heart, his words couldn’t have hurt more. How could she explain how torn she’d been? How afraid to confide in him? How could she explain the lies?

  How could she explain how devastated she was to find out she’d been right about him? That she’d known all along he’d never simply take her word for it?

  Marybell fought more tears until her eyes were on fire and her face felt as if it would crack. “So, are you done? Do you want more? Do you want to humiliate me, call me names—whaddya got left in you, Tag? What do you have that the rest of the world hasn’t flung my way?”

  He held up his hands, his eyes vacant. “Nothing. I have nothing left.” Letting his palms fall to his sides, he walked out the door.

  Everything inside her, all the pieces of herself she’d kept gluing back together, toppled like a house of cards.

  Numb, she found her couch and watched as they fell.

  * * *

  He sat in the dark, trying to think. Trying to understand.

  “Uncle Tag?” Maizy pushed her way onto the couch and snuggled against his side, letting her head rest on his chest.

  He twisted a strand of her fiery red hair around his finger and nuzzled the top of her head, closing his eyes and breathing. “Yes, ma’am?”

  “You don’t feel good.”

  “No. I feel okay, Maizy-moo.” No. He felt like shit. Like total shit.

  “I don’t mean on the outside. I mean on the inside. You’re sad. That makes me sad.”

  Kids, Maizy especially, were so sensitive to emotions it freaked him out. He didn’t want her to worry about him. “Why do you think I’m sad, sweetie?” he asked into the darkness.

  “Because of all the mean things they’re sayin’ about Miss Marybell. I heard Ralphie’s mom talking about it today at school.”

  Damn these people. Damn the press. Damn all of it. Tag forced himself to keep his voice calm. “Don’t listen to the mean things they say. That’s called gossip, and it’s wrong.” Even if they were true.

  “I told Ralphie he was a je
rk because he said mean things about Miss Marybell, too, and then I put my fingers in my ears so I didn’t have to listen. I like Miss Marybell. She’s funny.”

  He closed his eyes tight. Funny, and beautiful, and a liar. “You’re a good egg, kiddo.”

  “Do you think a story will make you feel better? Em always reads me one when I’m sad.”

  “I’d love a story.”

  “Maybe it will make you feel gooder on the inside?”

  “I bet it will.”

  She hopped off the couch, but not before dropping a kiss on his cheek. “I love you a lot, Uncle Tag. Please feel better, and don’t believe the bad goss...goss...”

  “Gossip,” he helped.

  She nodded with a smile. “Uh-huh. Do what I do and put your fingers in your ears. Then you just can’t hear it,” she advised before she skipped off to find a book to read him.

  Maybe, if he just stuck his fingers in his ears, he could shut it all out. The lies, the questions, the sick feeling in his stomach.

  And the love.

  He wanted to turn off the fact that in all this, he’d fallen in love with Marybell Lyman.

  Nineteen

  Tag took another swig of his coffee, wishing it were laced with whiskey.

  No, pal. No booze to solve your problems. You’ve done that before. This time, you do it straight up.

  He’d slept little last night. Marybell’s face, the way she’d hoarsely screamed no one believed her story, was still driving a hole straight through his heart.

  This was what she’d meant when she said she had something to straighten out, something she wanted to tell him. It damn well could have been anything but this.

  He’d wanted to believe her. But he’d believed before, and this time, he was gun-shy. Infuriated. He’d been infuriated when that reporter had stuck a microphone in her face and asked her if she was Carson Chapman.

  Infuriated and humiliated all over again, followed by stunned. Stunned he’d been so easily fooled. Everything he’d said to her last night had been based on gut reaction. He hadn’t given it much thought before he’d gone over there. He’d stewed, simmered until he was ready to explode and then struck out as hard as his words could hurt.

  And there was her face in his head again, so beautiful he almost couldn’t speak, so astonishingly different from the Marybell he’d fallen in love with that it only made him angrier last night.

  But today, in the cold light of day, he was sore all over. He ached inside and out. He’d told her his deepest, ugliest shame, and she’d still chosen not to reveal hers. He’d trusted her.

  Would it have been any better if she’d done it then? When would have been the optimal time for her to tell you who she was?

  From the very start.

  He ran a hand over his jaw, not even able to touch the idea that she’d been Leon Kazinski’s lover. It made his stomach pitch and roll.

  Do you really believe that, Tag? Do you really believe she slept with Kazinski?

  The picture of her says she did.

  The picture of her says nothing of the sort, jackass. It says plenty of things, but they all have no definitive conclusions.

  A slap on his shoulder made him jump from his deep thoughts. “You okay today, buddy?” Jax asked.

  Tag slammed his lips shut.

  Jax nudged him. “Don’t do that, man. Don’t clam up. I get you’re pissed, but talk to me. Let’s talk this out.”

  Every time he tried to formulate some words, he could only manage one thought. “She lied.” Fuck that hurt. He’d worked hard to gain her trust, and he didn’t even know why he was working so damn hard. Now he knew, and it damn well hurt.

  Jax stared down at his coffee cup, swishing the liquid around with a slow turn of his wrist. “Yeah. She did.”

  “She was allegedly Kazinski’s lover,” he said between clenched teeth. Those words, the ones that likely hurt the most, made him want to smash Kazinski’s face on something hard and sharp.

  Jax paused for a moment, then shook his head. “You don’t know that, Tag. Em says differently.”

  “Em?” he groused. “What does Em know? Marybell lied to her, too.”

  Em was there, out of the blue, pushing her way around Jax, and headed straight for Tag, shoving her finger under his nose. “I’ll tell you what Em knows. She knows you’re a damn fool, Taggart Hawthorne, to believe such filth of the woman you were falling in love with. Did you see those pictures of her on the news today? Did you? Did you see the one where she was sleeping up against a Dumpster? Before she put all that makeup on her face and hid away like some pariah? Before she was someone else besides Carson Chapman? How dare you see those images and still have the audacity to decide, without definitive proof, she’s a lying thief!”

  He’d been taken for a ride once before. Never again. “I’ve fallen in love with the wrong woman before. What I want to know is, how can you defend her? She lied to you all, too.” Was it just him? Was he just being a complete asshole? Or was he so hurt he couldn’t see past it to find his way to the truth?

  Em’s eyes went wide and wild, but her words were dipped in ice. “I will not allow you to speak that way about my friend—ever. Understand me? Marybell lied to protect not just herself but all of us. Do you see what’s going on out there, Tag? Did you happen to crawl out of your selfish pity party long enough to watch the news shred my friend? See the news vans and vultures all over Plum Orchard, lookin’ to cut her to ribbons all over again? Everyone knows she’s here now. That means they know about you, too, you utter fool!”

  He ground his teeth together to keep from slugging something. All the little things he’d come up with to keep himself protected, all the justifications he’d made in his head to make Marybell the bad guy, the ones that had kept him up all last night, needed vetting. “She didn’t start out lying to protect us.”

  Em threw a towel on the counter, her hard eyes unlike anything he’d ever seen from her before. “You hear me, and you hear me well, Taggart Hawthorne. She did what she had to in order to survive. She lived on the streets. She ate from garbage cans! Would you risk a warm bed and food on your plate just to live in this truth you’re always preachin’ when you didn’t do anything wrong, but not a soul on earth would believe you? Would you lie in order to exist? Would you? Survivin’ meant losing every single thing in her life. Everything. Do you have any idea what losing everything is like and having no one to turn to?”

  “Yeah. I sort of do, Em.” He fisted his hands, jamming them into his pockets, a measure of reason beginning to force its way to the surface of his layer upon layer of anger.

  And that was what really set her off. She went toe-to-toe with him, seething and hungry for his throat. “I don’t give a hound dog about your issues or your pain or your whining about all your pain. Hear me? Marybell lived without anyone for years. All her life, in fact. And then, when she finally had something, a chance at an education, a stable living environment at school, she lost it all. You, Taggart, had the luxury of a family that loved you. You chose to spit on that. You drank and gambled yourself into stupid. You didn’t even try to pick yourself back up again. But you darn well didn’t do it alone. That’s your problem. Marybell didn’t keep you from the truth with malice in her heart. You’d do well to remember she has nothing to gain by lyin’ to you. It’s not like you have millions lyin’ around she was just waitin’ on stealing. You don’t know what it’s like to lose everything, Tag. It was only you—you kept you from everything!”

  Jax put a hand on Em’s shoulder and squeezed. “Honey, please.”

  But Em threw it off with a disgusted grunt, her limbs shaking. “Don’t you please me, Jax. I will not stand by and allow him to slander my friend with ugly words like liar. She lied. She is not, nor will she ever be, a liar. If you say it again, Taggart, I’ll stuff the first bar of soap I find handy down your throat!”

  “Em,” Jax soothed. “Let’s try and rationally talk about this—calmly.”

  “I will not
speak to someone who’s so willing to persecute and judge when he has no right to judge anyone—ever! If you sat down and really paid attention to what happened instead of allowing your judgment to be clouded by your ridiculous need to hang on to this baggage, you’d see you’ve made the biggest mistake of your life, Tag. Now, I have a friend who needs my help. First, don’t you dare try and come with me to protect me from those vultures out there because rest assured, I have a handle on that. And second, don’t you dare tell me I’m wrong or that I shouldn’t stand by Marybell, Jax, because I will ever so promptly tell you to eff off, too!” With that, she whirled out of the kitchen, her heels clacking on the hardwood until they both heard the door slam and Em scream a warning to the press to back off or she’d run them over then put it in Reverse.

  Jax leaned back against the counter and sighed, his face lined from the same sleepless night they’d all enjoyed thanks to the media frenzy.

  Tag did the same, bumping shoulders with his brother. To see Em so enraged had eaten up all of his anger. “I’m sorry.”

  “You know what, bro? I thought you were really getting past all the ‘poor me, Alison lied and cheated on me,’ with Marybell as a weird kind of guide. I really thought she was the light at the end of your damn tunnel. But you’re not past pitying yourself. You’re not past the hurt of being betrayed and it’s messing with what’s right in front of your eyes, you moron.”

  He’d really thought he was over it. But finding out Marybell was Carson Chapman brought it all to a head. All while he’d told her about losing his company, she’d known who he was. “My employees lost their jobs, their retirement funds because of what that asshole Leon did, Jax. Marybell was a part of that.”

  Jax’s face went hard. “Was she? Do you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, MB slept with him, knew he was stealing money? Where’s your logic in this, asshole? Because I want you to take a good hard look at the facts minus your crap. Who the hell disappears like she did, and becomes homeless because they don’t want to give up where some money is hidden? At least in jail, you get three squares and a bed, jackass. C’mon, Tag!”