by Mia Caldwell
Sabela reached for the piece of paper in his hand, but he held it back, out of her reach.
“You have to listen to me first, remember?” he said.
“Fine.” Sabela held her chin up “But I want to see what you’ve written.”
He held the paper up and she squinted. It was a simple release of debt, and probably wasn’t worth the paper he’d written it on. But it was something, and he’d done it because she’d demanded he do it.
It was enough.
His face softened, and he tucked the paper into the breast pocket of his jacket. He moved toward her, and she didn’t back away. When Colin lifted his hand, though, she winced. All he did was caress her cheek, and Sabela’s shoulders relaxed.
Even now, his touch was electric.
“You have to believe me when I say that I don’t want to hurt you. There may have been ulterior reasons for me bringing you here, but things have changed. Don’t you think things have changed between us, especially after everything that happened last night?”
She wanted to believe him. She wanted with every fiber in her being to believe him. But life had burned her one too many times to trust him entirely.
Sabela needed to fully understand the depth of his deceit, and she wanted him to confess it.
And should his motives have changed, she wanted to hear a convincing explanation as to why.
“I don’t think that’s fair play in a negotiation,” she said. “You can’t fall prey to your emotions. You of all people should know that?”
Colin chuckled, but it was dark humor. “There is nothing but emotions in this if you want to hear the whole sordid story. If you really want to hear it, I’ll tell you. Then we can decide where we go from there.”
Sabela started to soften toward him. She desperately wanted there to be a reason for her to stay. Going back to her dismally barren life with Trevor after experiencing luxurious desire with Colin … it was a soul-sucking thought, and she felt guilty for thinking it.
Even if it had only been a short while that she had found herself in Haberlin Chalet, she had found what she might have someday — everything she could ever want.
Colin had helped her get back in touch with the young woman she was inside, and she wasn’t ready to let go of that part of herself so soon.
“Let’s hear the story,” she said.
Colin dropped his hand to motion toward the lounge.
“You’ll want to get comfortable,” he said. “And if you don’t, I do. As hard as this is for you, it’s harder for me.”
The soles of his leather shoes clacked against the floor as he led her to the lounge.
“But I won’t hold anything back. If you want the truth, you’ll get it,” he said.
She only hoped it really would be the truth.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“Come away with me, Blanca,” Colin said.
The two of them sat at a booth in Pinkie’s Diner, Colin’s arms folded upon the slightly sticky table. She looked radiant in her white summer dress, her dark caramel skin beautiful in contrast. Her long, shiny black hair glistened as if it had an inner light. Since they’d been children, Colin had always found her beautiful.
“Papa won’t agree,” Blanca murmured, gaze sinking. “You know he won’t.”
“I don’t give a damn about what your father thinks. I love you, and I’ve proven to the world that I can care for you no matter what.”
Her gaze darted up from the table to take him in, and he saw the innocent beginnings of a smile curl her ruby lips. “You’ll care for me?”
“Forever.”
Pleased, Blanca lifted her chin a little more and smiled widely. Colin’s heart melted, and he reached across the table to take her hand.
“Marry me, Blanca. We’ll elope. It doesn’t matter what your father thinks, because we’ll go somewhere else, we’ll go start our lives over as Mr. and Mrs. Morgan.”
“Blanca Morgan,” she whispered, expression alive with delight.
“The one and only Mrs. Colin Morgan,” Colin whispered back. He squeezed her hand. “Say yes, Blanca.”
“Is there anything else I could say?” she asked, adorably flirtatious.
The laugh that spilled from his lips was one of the last Colin would ever have by her side. A week later, the white summer dress was replaced by a white body bag.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
SABELA FOLLOWED COLIN INTO THE lounge. The beginnings of their relationship had taken place in that room, and now that same space would shape her opinion of him in the future.
The future was uncertain, but whatever it was, she was confident that she could navigate through it and come out on top.
Even when faced with the worst circumstances, she’d always persevered.
Sabela tried to steel herself against what Colin would say. No matter what, she knew that she had to be critical and try to separate her emotions from the facts.
Knowing what was the truth and what wasn’t would be difficult. As the conversation progressed, she’d weigh the conviction of his speech against other parts of it to try to see how truthful he was being.
Maybe he’d be entirely truthful, and she wouldn’t need to be suspicious of him anymore.
As much as she tried not to, she hoped that would be the case.
Colin moved ahead of her to the bottle of scotch sitting on the side table next to the fireplace. He offered a glass to her, but she shook her head. Keeping a level head was necessary for critical judgment.
It was a good sign if Colin felt he could loosen up, though. A looser tongue usually meant honesty.
Sabela sat on the same couch where he’d kissed her for the first time. The top of the bottle pulled free, Colin poured himself a glass and turned to face her. There was silence, and Colin dropped his head to stare into the amber liquid.
“So? What’s the story?” Sabela prompted after a prolonged paused.
Colin avoided her gaze, which was unusual. He seemed almost uncertain, not something she would have thought he could be.
“It has to do with a girl,” he began.
“It always has to do with a girl, I hear.”
She heard him chuckle, but there was no humor in it. She knew that the girl he was referencing had to be Blanca.
All Sabela knew about her was what Trevor told her after the accident. Before he’d clammed up and shut her out, Trevor told her that Blanca was the love of his life. It was why he took the accident so hard.
She’d died while in his car, while he was driving.
“Her name was Blanca,” Colin confirmed. “We met in grade school, and I knew from the moment I met her that she was the one for me,” Colin said.
There was a fondness in the way he spoke that stirred Sabela’s jealousy. It surprised her as much as it disgusted her. She was supposed to be separating herself from Colin, not being jealous of a ghost.
“So you loved her, too,” she said, trying to prompt Colin to continue.
Colin looked over his shoulder at her then.
“Too? No. Trevor loved her, too,” he said. “Blanca loved me first. At least, she loved me for most of her teenage years and through college. We were supposed to get married. When she died, we were engaged.”
Sabela sank into the couch, absorbing the news. Colin had been engaged to Blanca. Trevor had been in love with Blanca.
So it was a love triangle, then.
Maybe Colin wasn’t the stalker Trevor claimed.
“Blanca’s father never approved of me,” Colin continued. “After my mother died my senior year of high school, I left Brent Grove. I needed to find a way to support Blanca, because I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. I ended up at my uncle’s bar while Blanca went away to college. By the time she graduated, I was making a good living and finally convinced her to elope with me. That was when everything went to hell.”
“You mean, the accident happened,” Sabela said.
Trevor had told her that Blanca was his girlfr
iend, but it sounded like she had been dating Colin for a very long time. Which was true? They couldn’t both be.
“Yes, the accident happened,” he said, his voice strained. “That should have been the worst part of it, don’t you think?”
Colin set his glass down on the desk and turned around to fully face her. She could see the grief on his face even now.
Even if he was lying about everything else, it was clear that he loved Blanca dearly.
“What could have possibly been worse?” Sabela asked.
Colin rubbed his jaw. “We had agreed on a time and a day. She was supposed to meet me at Pinkie’s Diner and then we’d leave together. We talked about it for weeks, and everything was in place. We’d meet at 3 o’clock. And I was there, waiting for her, just as I had said I would be.”
“It was just a few minutes before three,” he said, “when I looked out the window and saw your brother’s car driving by, lurking like he wanted me to see them. Blanca was in the front seat, but she wasn’t looking at me. Trevor was. He flipped me off.”
Sabela swallowed, uncomfortable. It sounded like something Trevor would do.
Colin continued. “Trevor was acting like the ass he was. He gunned the car and sped into the intersection without looking to see if the traffic light was still green. His car was T-boned by another car, on Blanca’s side. I’ll never forget the sound of the crash.”
Sabela had been told, by Trevor, that he’d been driving Blanca to Pinkie’s when the accident happened. He’d meant to hit the brake but had accidentally hit the accelerator. He’d overshot the restaurant and been hit in the intersection.
“Were you the one who filed the witness report against him?” Sabela asked slowly.
Trevor had ranted and raved about a man who had come forward and said that Trevor was responsible for the accident. She never knew the witness’ name, and it had never occurred to her to find out. The police had never filed any charges against him, and she’d had other things to worry about.
Taking care of Trevor and getting him well enough to be discharged from the hospital was a full-time job on top of trying to find a way to pay the mortgage. It was the blackest time of her life.
“Yes, I saw the whole thing,” Colin said. “I know what happened that day, and so does Trevor.”
So why was Trevor’s story so different? Colin’s side of the story made sense, and Trevor had always been so tight-lipped about the accident that all she knew were vague details.
It was suspicious that he’d never mentioned Blanca was his girlfriend until after the accident.
Could she trust Colin?
“But the worst part of that day wasn’t the betrayal or the accident,” Colin said. “When I arrived at the crash, I got there just in time to see Blanca draw her last breath. She passed away before my eyes, before we could talk about anything.”
Sabela’s heart began to ache. If she lost the love of her life that way, she’d be just as torn up about it.
“And then when I got home,” he said, “shaken and out of my head with agony, there was a letter waiting in my mailbox. It was your standard ‘Dear John’ letter. After everything we had meant to each other, after so many years together, all I had done to secure a future for us, she didn’t have the guts to break up with me in person.”
He took a drink of scotch before continuing. “She wrote that she wanted to be with Trevor, and that she had never planned to meet me at Pinkie’s that day. She told me they were running away together, and to never try to contact her again.”
The words hung in the air between them. To have loved someone for so long and then have her reject him on the cusp of their new life together was so cruel.
No matter how angry or scared she was in that moment, Sabela couldn’t help but feel pity for him. And outrage at how cruel Blanca had been to him.
“I had no idea,” she murmured.
“I figured,” he replied.
Colin drained his glass in one go, then wiped the back of his hand across his lips and sighed.
“I didn’t even know that Trevor had anything to do with Blanca until after the accident. He had never said anything to me about being with her,” Sabela said.
She was starting to put together unspoken pieces of the puzzle now, and she spoke her mind once they clicked. “So you brought me here as a way of getting back at my brother for stealing your girlfriend.”
Colin stared at her intensely, then set the empty glass down. Sabela’s heart raced as he moved across the room to stand directly in front of her.
The scent of alcohol carried on his words, the subtle note of it bearing pain and sincerity. “And I’m a bastard for it. Ever since the accident happened, I’ve used it as an excuse to be a bastard. But then I met you.”
She met and held his grieved gaze. If this was an act, it was a damned convincing one.
He knelt down in front of her. “I wanted Trevor to pay for what he did by taking away the one thing that mattered to him, just like he took away the one thing that mattered to me. I would seduce you, then break your heart and send you back to Trevor unable to be his support anymore. I wanted him to be as alone as I was, as alone as I’ve been all these years without Blanca.”
“You did seduce me,” she said, her mouth suddenly gone dry. “Having sex with me was just part of the plan.”
“No. Yes. I mean it was the plan originally, but everything changed when you got here. Last night wasn’t part of the plan. Blanca isn’t the only thing I care about anymore. I care about you, Sabela. I didn’t want to, and I tried to fight it, but I really do.”
“You wanted to hurt me just to get at Trevor. I’d never done anything to you,” Sabela said, her heart pounding fiercely.
“I know. I was blinded by the past. I’m not proud of it. When I saw you that day at Pinkie’s, the day you lost the lottery, and I learned how important you were to the man who ruined my life, the whole revenge plan revealed itself to me. It was rash and unfeeling, and I’ve been blinded by pain for too long. You changed that, Sabela. You brought me the light that’s been missing in my life.”
What a monstrous plan, though, Sabela thought. To break her heart just to hurt her brother. It was damning information, and she wasn’t sure if she could get past it.
He must have seen the doubt in her expression. He rose quickly. “I have to show you something.”
He went to his desk, opened a locked drawer, and pulled out a small, white envelope.
He held it up. “Imagine you thought that you were going to spend the rest of your life with your one true love, only to watch her die. And then you find this letter waiting for you after you’ve cried until you thought there were no more tears left to shed. But there were.”
He brought the envelope to her.
The weight of his pain was hers to read as she took the envelope out of his hand and opened the top flap.
The end of Colin’s fairy tale was at her fingertips, and she wasn’t sure that she had the heart to read all about it.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
THE LETTER WAS WORN, BUT despite its age, it was nowhere as near faded as the matchbox. As much as Colin hated it, he cared for it because it was the last thing he’d received from Blanca. Although it wasn’t one of love, he couldn’t bear to part with it.
Until now. The letter was a physical tie with his past, a tie that felt more like a ball and chain.
If Sabela thought he was insane because of it, so be it. What he told her was true, and the letter she held in her hands was proof of that.
Colin took a step back and watched as she peeled back the flap and extracted the stationary from inside.
To see a woman he cared for unfold Blanca’s final letter was strange, and Colin wouldn’t pretend that he understood the full spectrum of his feelings. There was grief, of that he was sure, but there was also hope.
Sabela was the one who’d lifted him from the miasma and made him feel happy again, and he wanted to prove to her that he was serious
. If that meant emptying out his closet, so be it.
Closure was all he wanted, and Sabela would decide whether he deserved it or not.
Colin wouldn’t hold it against her if she threw the letter back at him and stormed out.
He’d intended to bring Sabela here to break her heart, then send her back to Trevor in such a state of emotional disrepair that she would never be the same woman again, could not be Trevor’s crutch anymore because she’d be too broken to stand for him.
Maybe he’d already inadvertently done that.
God help him. How had he ever thought revenge on Trevor could justify breaking an innocent woman? He wondered when his conscience had deserted him. What a foul thing to try to do. He didn’t understand how he couldn’t have seen this before.
He watched Sabela’s face as she read the letter. The passage of her line of sight was near hypnotic, and as he watched it trace back and forth, he followed along in memory with what she was reading.
Careful not to crease or otherwise damage the paper, Sabela folded it back up and slipped it into the envelope. Nothing was said between them as she handed it back to him.
Her expression was unreadable.
Colin had never felt so vulnerable before, not since immediately following Blanca’s death, and he loathed it. Whatever Sabela said next would set the tone for the rest of their conversation, and that he couldn’t guess what it might be unnerved him.
“I’m so sorry that happened to you,” she said at last.
The way his heart skipped a beat was near crippling. She hadn’t said goodbye, and Colin hoped that it meant she wasn’t going to leave after all. If she could forgive him, maybe he could begin to forgive himself.
“This is the part where I say it was a long time ago, and I don’t want to be judged by it. But I guess I’ve proven that I haven’t moved on,” he said.
The sad way Sabela smiled added to his heartache. “Not the best job, but maybe you’re making some progress by telling me all this.”
There was something else she wanted to say, he saw it in the way she puckered her mouth. At last, she said it.