I gripped the dresser behind me. “Then why were you there?”
She opened her mouth, like she wanted to tell me but said nothing.
“Did he threaten you?” I asked. There had to be a logical reason.
“No. Please believe me when I tell you it had nothing to do with you. I would never betray you like that. I’d never conspire with vampires against you.”
“Then trust me and tell me why you were there.”
“I can’t.”
So many gaps, so many secrets, so many lies.
I crossed my arms and took a few deep breaths. “Why did you lie about knowing the vampire outside my car when he knew your name? The guys from my pack, the ones that dragged you in, heard him.”
That guilty look was back, accompanied by a few tears streaming down her cheeks. “I can’t say.”
“That first night I sent you home, why didn’t you leave right away? The timing was off. Mallard never dragged you back in the house. You were already there, weren’t you?”
She nodded.
“Why?”
“I can’t say, but it’s not because I don’t want to. I just can’t.” Her lip trembled. “They’re not my secrets to share, but I swear I’d never do anything to hurt you.”
“But it’s enough of your secret to put you in that room? What about the messages? That they’d been reaching out to you. Is that also someone else’s secret? Why didn’t you tell me that?”
“Yes. But please, Donovan, I—”
“Tell me something that would explain why you got out of the car. Something to explain where you got that smartphone from. Something besides the secrets piled up in between us that I can’t ignore anymore.”
“I can tell you I love you.”
I wanted to believe her, but fuck. I’d told her about the meeting and my people had gotten jumped. Had she told someone who’d followed Kia?
“Did you tell someone that Kia was meeting with the other races? Vampires showed up out of nowhere tonight, like they’d known.”
“I told you, I love you. I’d never try to harm you, I swear.”
“You keep saying that you wouldn’t harm me. Conveniently using tonight to declare your love. No, this is it. You lay your cards out on the table or get out.” I’d had enough of the lies and secrets. I’d proved myself time and time again. If she couldn’t trust me, how could I possibly trust her?
“Donovan, you don’t understand.”
“I think I do, though. You need to leave. Now.” I’d been ready to change everything for her, and yet she still wouldn’t tell me the truth. What an absolute fool I’d been.
Her face contorted as if she were in physical pain. She got off the bed, coming to me, arms outstretched, tears rolling down her face.
I stepped out of her reach.
She collapsed to her knees on the floor in front of me, sobbing before me.
I walked around her and to the door. “Don’t be here when I get back.”
I had to leave now or I’d cave and let her stay. I’d already endangered my pack enough for a liar, but every step was agony.
Thirty-Four
Penelope
I didn’t know how long I lay on Donovan’s bedroom floor, sobbing. When the door opened, I jerked. I knew it wouldn’t be Donovan but hoped anyway. It was Bigs.
“I’m sorry,” he said, as if my disappointment was spelled across my face, magnified by the fat tears that wouldn’t stop running down my cheeks.
He walked over to me, bending down slightly and holding out his hand, just as he had that first time I’d met him. This time there was no hesitation when I took it.
“Are you all right?” he asked, helping me to stand.
I couldn’t form the words, couldn’t lie well enough to say yes, so I shook my head instead.
“He left,” Bigs said.
I nodded again. And then the reality of why Bigs had come in the room hit me. “He told you to get rid of me, didn’t he?”
Bigs didn’t answer right away. I almost felt bad for him.
He sighed. “He did. But that’s not why I’m here. If you want to stay and fight it out with him for another week, that’s up to you. I won’t force you to go. But if you do want to leave, I’ll drive you wherever you want.”
“If you knew what he thought, you wouldn’t be so nice right now.” Because what Donovan thought made me a despicable person, of the lowest rung. He knew I had secrets; I’d admitted as much. But still, I’d thought he knew there was no way I’d ever do something to bring him harm.
“I know what he thinks, but you’d never betray him, even if he doesn’t see that right now. So, it’s up to you. What do you want to do?”
“I want to leave.”
I walked down the hall to my room, grabbed the bag I’d packed, and turned. “Take me home, Bigs.”
I walked in the door to my house. I flipped on the kitchen lights and dropped my bag to the floor before making my way to the living room sofa and sinking in.
I’d held it together for the last half-hour while Bigs drove me home, hating the look of pity in his eyes. I didn’t have to anymore. The tears began again, and then they didn’t stop.
“Pen?”
“Sassy?” I looked up to see my sister standing in the doorway.
“Why are you here?”
I wiped an arm over my face, trying to pull it together before she saw me, but it was too late. I couldn’t stop the tears, and she’d already seen anyway.
“Donovan thought I did something really bad and threw me out,” I said before I spewed an avalanche worth of emotion on her. I left out half the details, anything to do with her, but everything else rambled out.
She sat there calling him a bastard, dick, asshole, and some words that must have been newly made up just for him. Sassy could always be counted on to add some needed color to a situation.
I must’ve cried for a good two hours before the tears finally slowed and I got around to some questions of my own.
“Why are you here? You weren’t supposed to be home.”
“Shit went a little sideways,” Sassy said. “I’m going to spare you the details because it’s in both of our interests. Plus, I’m not sure I can handle anymore emotions from you of any variety right now, even anger.”
I managed a small laugh through my sniffles. There was no denying that I was a lot right now. I couldn’t even handle me. “Are people going to come looking for you?”
“Nah. I don’t think I got made, but there were a bunch of others that weren’t so lucky.” There was a tremor in her voice as she spoke. She leaned her head on me, the way she used to during a scary movie, before her life had become the drama.
“Sassy, you feel warm. Do you have a fever?” Concern shifted from my heartbreak to my sister.
She didn’t say anything for a few minutes, and I didn’t press her, because I knew as soon as she did, my day would go from horrific to devastating.
“I’m okay,” she said as I felt a shiver go through her.
Then she coughed, and I couldn’t remain quiet anymore. “We should get you in bed.”
“Yeah, okay. That might be a good idea.”
My stomach twisted. I knew how bad she must really feel if she was finally admitting it.
Thirty-Five
Donovan
It was after eleven at night, not even a full day since I’d kicked Pen out. I hadn’t left this room since I’d gotten back. Hadn’t answered the phone even as my mother rang it off the hook. I’d had Bigs turn her away when she showed up. Hadn’t even talked to Huddy. I didn’t want to see anyone, have to explain where Pen was, what she’d done, or how I still cared even after all of that.
Bigs had been lingering in the hall instead of going home. His nearly silent steps were pounding in my head, a ticking time bomb, as he paced. Any second now, he would walk in here and tell me what a mistake I’d made. He’d been so blinded by Pen that he hadn’t seen it either. I’d thought she was innocent, but she’
d been the biggest schemer and fooled us all.
And there he went again, pacing.
“Bigs!” I yelled as I poured more bourbon, having already drunk enough that even I was feeling the effects.
He was in the room a second later.
“If you need to say something, spit it out and be done with it. The hovering in the hall is getting old. Go home to your wife.”
He stood right in front of me, looking more parent than employee at the moment. “We might’ve joked around about where my loyalties lie, but they’re with you. They’ll always be with you.”
“Buuuuuut,” I said. Bigs was way too transparent to let me down and not come to Pen’s aid. Any moment he’d start launching into her virtues.
“You’re wrong, and I can’t sit by silently and not say it.”
I stared at the man who’d worked for me so long that he’d stopped being an employee long ago. Bigs wasn’t just defending her—he was pissed. Damn, she’d had him snowed.
“Do you realize what she did? Please tell me you’re not going to play stupid.” He’d never had my hard edges, but I didn’t think he lacked in intellect. I lifted my glass, drinking more, hoping to get as inebriated as I’d seen some of the humans.
“I know what you think she did, but I don’t believe it. Not for one second. She didn’t set up our people.” He spoke in the firmest tone I’d ever heard from him.
“My mother found her in Larcas’ room. She admitted as much to me and yet wouldn’t say why she was there. Why else would she be sneaking around with vampires? She might never have hated Mallard in first place. Maybe the whole thing was a setup. Maybe they’re buddies.”
I stood up, needing to do a little pacing of my own.
Bigs turned, continuing to face me as I moved. “There might be another reason than betraying you.”
“If there is, why wouldn’t she say it?”
“Because it might put someone dear to her in jeopardy,” he said, becoming flustered.
I stopped moving. “Who?”
He didn’t speak for a moment, but then the words nearly shot from his mouth. “Her sister.”
Poor delusional Bigs. “She doesn’t even have one. And if she did, she’s so important that Pen never mentioned her once?”
“I believe she does have one and that she’s sick.”
“The sister no one has heard of is sick and that’s why she was found in Larcas’ room? Did she tell you this last night as she was begging to stay?” I moved back to the bourbon, topping off my glass.
“I—”
I held a hand up. “No. I’m done. I don’t need to hear any more of the lies she fed you. She had no reason to hide that from me.”
“Would you have betrayed a secret of Huddy’s?”
I glanced at him. “That’s not what’s going on.”
Bigs’ hands were in fists, and he looked as if he wanted to punch me. “You don’t know what’s going on, and I can see you won’t listen, so I’m done. I’m leaving.”
“You’re quitting?” I asked as he stormed toward the door.
“Certainly not. I, sir, am no quitter. I’m leaving for the night. Perhaps tomorrow we can have a discussion and you’ll see the error of your ways.”
Bigs nodded and walked from the room, and I went back to my seat in the dark.
God, how I’d underestimated her. I’d been so wrong. To think I was going to see if she wanted to leave here together, leave everything behind, my pack, to be with her. I threw the bottle against the wall and watched it crash and the contents splatter to the ground.
I sat in that seat, the rage building at the lies she’d told. As if the betrayal hadn’t been bad enough, now she was preying on Bigs’ soft-heartedness. No. I wasn’t going to allow it.
Penelope
There was a loud banging on the back door at three in the morning. It was either the police here to arrest me on some trumped-up charge or it was Donovan. Maybe he’d come to fix things? To tell me he wanted me back.
My heart jumped when I saw his figure silhouetted through the kitchen door’s window. I flipped on the kitchen light and saw the rage in his expression. He wasn’t here to say he wanted me back. He was here to inflict more pain. I still had my fill from last night.
“Go away,” I said, turning my back on him.
“Let me in or I’ll kick this fucking door down.”
He would do it, too. He wasn’t going to leave easily. I either let him in or had to figure out how to repair a door tomorrow. I resigned myself to dealing with him.
I opened the door a few inches. He shoved it open farther, bulldozing his way in. He turned on me, looking like some sort of crazed demon.
“What do you want?” I didn’t want to hear what he was going to say. I was afraid he’d take my heart, the one lying bleeding by his feet where I’d left it, and stomp out whatever life was left in it.
“You’re telling people you have some relative that’s sick? Did you think that would work? That lies about ill family members would make a difference? That you could come up with some ruse that would make sneaking around with vampires acceptable?”
There it was, all laid out neat and simple. Donovan really did think the worst of me. How could I have been so intimate with him when he clearly had so little respect for me as a person? I shook my head, turning away from him, nothing left to say.
But who knew about Sassy? Were the vampires talking? They’d known.
“I lived with you and yet you never once mentioned this fake sister that you offered up to Bigs on a silver platter.”
Bigs. Human, shifter, vampire—it didn’t matter what race he was. Bigs was one of the good guys. It wasn’t surprising that he’d tried to intervene. I would’ve been more surprised if he hadn’t.
But how did he know? He’d never been around my sister.
Ricky! He had snuck me in my house the night after Mallard’s attack. I’d woken in my bed with no idea how. He must’ve carried me in and heard Sassy coughing in the night.
If Bigs had talked to Ricky, that would make sense of the medical books in Donovan’s house. Ricky knew I’d been in med school before the takeover.
“What? No answer? Trying to figure out your next lie or denial?” he asked, standing a few feet from me as I leaned against the kitchen counter, my back to him.
I knew why Bigs had talked to Donovan, would be forever grateful to him, but he shouldn’t have bothered. Donovan believed what he wanted and no one would tell him differently. And the truth was that too much had gone on between us. If he could believe what he was saying, there was no place left for this relationship to go but to finally bury it. We’d been doomed from the start. Too different with no way forward.
“I guess my master plan didn’t work, so if you don’t mind, you should go now.” I pointed toward the door.
This would be the last time we talked, the last time I’d see him, and the anger burning in his eyes would scar me forever. It was like having my soul picked apart and labeled unworthy as I watched. It tainted every memory we had. If I’d only known then how lowly he believed I was, maybe I could’ve protected myself better.
“You’re not denying you said that to Bigs?” he asked.
“Why would I? It doesn’t matter. You know it all. Now, if you don’t mind—get. The. Fuck. Out.” I walked to the door, pushing it open even farther.
How far we’d climbed and how hard the fall. I’d only made it halfway down the chasm, from the looks of things. But I couldn’t crash to the ground, not yet. I’d hold it together long enough to get him out of here because the only thing I had left was my pride.
He pressed me against the open door. “Tell me why you did it. Why did you betray me?”
I’d told him too many times last night that I’d never do that to him. If he wouldn’t believe me, there was nothing left to say.
“I told you everything already. I don’t have anything left.” I swallowed back the tears that struggled to spill. I’d already given too
many to a man who thought so little of me.
He turned to leave and then froze after only one step. His head turned to the side, his brows low, as if he’d caught the scent of something. I spotted Sassy’s sweater on the hook by the door, the one she’d had on earlier tonight when she was coughing up a storm.
He lifted it to his face before I could stop him. The anger in his eyes faded, changing to questions as he turned, looking about the kitchen as if I had someone hidden under the table.
“Whose sweater is this?” he asked, holding it up to me.
I grabbed the sweater from his hands. “You’ve said your piece. Now get out.”
At that moment, I heard a rasping cough in the hall.
He looked shocked that my life story might not be what he thought, that I hadn’t laid it all out to him as the ax hovered over my sister’s neck.
“Get out,” I said. Those were the only words I had left for him.
There was more coughing, and it sounded closer. My shoulders slumped because I knew what was going to happen next. Sassy had been listening. And if I knew my sister, there was no way she’d let someone call me a liar and not come to my defense. I loved her and wanted to kill her right now.
“It belongs to her sick sister. Do I count as the relative she’d drag out to save her ass?” Sassy asked, standing in the doorway to the kitchen. Another coughing fit racked her body until she was doubled over.
He turned toward me. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why would you keep this from me?”
“Because I’m a liar, remember? You’ve said it enough. Now please go.” Because I only had so much strength in me left. Between him thinking I was the worst human being ever to walk this Earth and watching Sassy struggling to live, I was running out of stamina fast.
“How could you not trust me with this? Did you think I wouldn’t protect her for you?”
Was he kidding? It wasn’t as if I hadn’t given him a chance, in spite of the things I’d heard.
Gut Deep: Torn Worlds Book One Page 21