He hadn’t known.
I hadn’t really expected him to know, but that didn’t make the flood of guilt any easier to swallow. Like I’d thought, this was family dirt that he didn’t know, and I’d bet money it was why his mother didn’t want him leaving.
If he left, his eyes might be opened to the fact that his sweet, precious mother wasn’t as perfect as she’d liked him to believe.
I squeezed his arm and met his gaze straight on. He had to believe me—he had to believe me over his own mother. “I wish I could tell you that this wasn’t a common thing,” I said. “But unfortunately, my dad has a reputation, and it’s deserved.”
He stiffened under my touch, but he didn’t pull away. He was listening. This sweet, manly giant was paying attention to every word.
“I can only imagine how this affected your parents,” I said. “What it did to your dad.”
I let the silence linger because we both knew what it did to his dad. His father’s ending was well known. He’d gone home with his family for Christmas and overdosed. But how had he gotten hooked on pills? What had led him to drink?
Most everyone believed that the simple, kindhearted hero from the country couldn’t take life in the backstabbing world of Hollywood, and maybe that was part of it.
But his wife sleeping with his cruel, heartless boss?
My guess was that had way more to do with it.
Brandon seemed to come to the same conclusion. I saw the pain ripple across his features even as he steeled his eyes and drew up to his full height so he towered over me. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I kept silent. Of course he’d be pissed. I’d be pissed, too… you know, if I had parents I actually trusted and respected.
“Who told you that?” he demanded.
I didn’t answer right away, and he hurried on. “Whoever they are, they don’t know what they’re talking about.”
I kept my mouth shut. I wasn’t about to argue with him. Nothing I said would convince him. The seed of doubt had been planted. If he didn’t want to believe it, he wouldn’t. But if he already had an inkling of doubt that his mother wasn’t the perfect, morally superior, church going paragon of virtue she’d been made out to be, then that seed of doubt would grow.
He’d do his own digging. He’d figure out the truth.
Even if he didn’t, he might doubt whatever arguments she was using to keep him locked away here in the middle of nowhere.
“Is everything okay out here?” Brandon’s buddy Ryan had come out of the cafeteria behind us and hovered nearby.
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. What was it about Brandon—big, tall, manly Brandon—that everyone felt the urge to protect him?
Even me.
I couldn’t deny that tearing off that particular Band-Aid hadn’t been easy. Everything in me wanted to wrap my arms around the big guy and tell him it wasn’t true. His mother was the saint everyone believed her to be and his father had just suffered from a terrible accident.
I resisted the urge. When Brandon’s gaze met mine, I didn’t look away.
“Everything’s fine,” I said to Ryan because I knew Brandon wasn’t going to respond.
I made the first move, heading past Brandon and giving his suspicious friend a flirty little wink. The moment I walked away from those sexy, accusatory eyes, the guilt started to wane.
I’d been honest, after all. There was no shame in that. Besides, for the first time in two weeks, I’d actually made some progress. There was now a chance that things here would shift, that maybe, just maybe, Tess and I could get the hell out of here and go back home where we belonged.
Despite the remaining nagging guilt, things were looking up.
My job here was done.
Almost.
Thirteen
Jack
Amber was the one who told me that something was wrong. I looked for Brandon, but he’d disappeared from school. Disappearing when he was pissed wasn’t a shocker—the guy wasn’t one for confrontations or for big blowouts.
He also didn’t respond to my texts or my calls, but that was totally like him. He always said that he had crappy reception out on the range, but I had a hunch that was an excuse. The guy needed alone time. I could respect that. But sometimes it seemed like he had a whole other life.
I didn’t bother trying to chase him down. If he wanted to be alone, he’d find a way to be alone.
“I just,” Amber had gnawed on her lower lip when she’d cornered me in the hall after lunch. “I just want to make sure he’s okay. Things looked intense between him and Lila.”
Lila. Of course this was her doing. I tried to find her at school, but I never caught her. That was fine—it wasn’t like I didn’t know where she lived.
I had to work after school, but after that, I showed up at their door. Tess answered, and she didn’t seem surprised to see me. She also didn’t hold the door open or invite me in. “What are you doing here, Jack?”
“Is Lila here?”
Her gaze turned wary, and she closed the door further so only her head was visible. “Jack, now’s not a good time.”
I heard a voice in the background. A male voice. An angry male voice. I only caught snippets. “…not good enough. What kind of idiot can’t manage such a simple task?”
Tess winced, and her gaze turned apologetic. “Really, Jack. You should go.”
“Who’s in there?”
She opened her mouth and shut it. Then we both heard the voice say, “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Then, silence.
Tess’s shoulders slumped, and her death grip on the door eased. Her voice lowered. “You should go.”
I tried to look past her, but she blocked my view. The anger I’d been stewing in all day was momentarily tempered by concern. That voice, the weird tension in Tess, who always seemed so laidback when I saw her around town—this whole scene was wrong. Something was off. “I’m not leaving without talking to Lila.”
She winced again. “Please,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. She bit her lip, and for a second, I thought she might not say anything more. But then, she added, “I know Lila seems tough, but—”
Whatever she’d been about to say was cut short by Lila’s familiar, breathy, sexy-as-sin voice. “Is someone at the door?”
Tess closed her eyes for a second, and when she opened them, she fixed me with a weirdly intense look. “Don’t hurt her.”
I jerked back at the unexpected warning, as well as the force that was in her voice. But she wasn’t done. “Don’t hurt her, and don’t get close.” She took a deep breath. “Anyone who gets too close to this family tends to get hurt. I don’t want that to happen to you.”
I stared at her in silent shock until Lila interrupted again, this time appearing at Tess’s shoulder. “Tess? Who’s—oh.”
I didn’t know who was more surprised—her or me. Clearly, she hadn’t been expecting to see me, and I hadn’t been expecting to see her like this. She looked… small. Maybe it was partly due to the lack of heels, but it was more than that. She seemed hunched in on herself, her normally slim shoulders gaunt in her tank top and her eyes…
Oh hell, my heart twisted in my chest at the sight of her red-rimmed eyes, so open, honest… and so miserable. She wore no makeup, and her hair was tossed up in a messy ponytail. Everything about her was natural. Untouched.
Innocent.
This was a side of Lila I’d never seen, and the sight of it shocked me to the core.
Tess moved away, giving me one last indecipherable look—a mix of resignation and warning. But then, she was gone, and it was Lila who held on to the door, her eyes filling with wariness with every passing second. “If you’re here to yell at me—”
“I’m not.” I had come here to grill her on what she’d said or done that would make Brandon skip out on school early. But shouting at her now seemed like kicking a puppy. “I want to talk.” I realized that was another half-truth. I did want to
talk, yes. I wanted to figure out what was going on in that brain of hers and understand why she did the things she did. But I also wanted more than that.
So much more.
Right now, I wanted to pull her into my arms and tell her everything was going to be okay. Hell, I wanted to pull out a sword and slay every dragon in her path.
My chest felt tight at the unexpected rush of protectiveness.
Possessiveness.
She blinked up at me, and that was when I knew. This girl was mine. She would always be mine. Just like she owned me—body, heart, and soul.
The thought was unnerving, but even more so was the certainty that came with it. The absolute certainty that whether I wanted it or not, my life would forever be intertwined with hers. She’d gotten under my skin in a way no one ever had… and I had to believe that it was mutual.
It had to be, didn’t it?
Her eyes flickered over my face, and she licked her lips in a rare show of nerves. “What do you want to talk about?”
I nodded toward the apartment behind her. “Can I come in?”
She hesitated but then pulled the door open and stepped back so I could enter. Two weeks had passed, but their apartment looked just as bare as when I’d first seen it. This wasn’t even close to a home. It was a base, a temporary place to sleep. “If you guys need some more furniture—”
“We won’t be here that long,” she said.
Her voice had me turning around to face her. Some of that vulnerability was slowly but surely being covered over with a cool confidence I knew well.
Only, these days, it was getting easier and easier to see through the smoke and mirrors.
These days, it was entirely too tempting to fall for the girl underneath.
“What happened with you and Brandon today?” I asked, cutting to the chase.
She looked over at Tess, who was tapping away at a computer at the kitchen table, her hair falling into her face. Lila looked back at me and then gestured for me to follow her into her bedroom.
I hovered in the doorway. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, but it wasn’t this. I guessed maybe I’d thought there’d be clothes strewn everywhere, maybe makeup and brushes on every surface. But the room was spotless, everything packed away like she was one foot out the door, ready to leave at a moment’s notice.
The thought shouldn’t have filled me with regret. I should be happy to see her go. But after weeks of pretending that I didn’t seek out reasons to talk to her every single day, I’d be blatantly lying to myself if I didn’t admit that I liked the girl. A lot. Flaws and all, I was drawn to her. She was complicated, and she was confusing, and more often than not, she drove me crazy, but that didn’t change the fact that I liked her.
Of course, that also didn’t mean I’d sit back and let her hurt my best friend. Crossing my arms over my chest, I fought the urge to touch her. “Are you going to tell me what happened with you and Brandon today?”
One side of her mouth hitched up. “Let me guess. Amber came running to you.”
I didn’t answer, and she rolled her eyes. “Why do you all think Brandon is so helpless?”
“Not helpless,” I said automatically. “Just…”
She arched her brows in challenge.
Ah hell. I wasn’t about to throw my best friend under the bus and tell her that he had something about him that made people want to look out for him. Maybe it was his father’s very public death, or the not-so-secret secret that his mother’s mental health was questionable at best. The guy had been dealt a crap hand in life. I might have lost my mother, but I’d always had a solid home life, thanks to my dad. And I hadn’t had my worst memories splashed across every national tabloid known to man.
Ever since he moved back here for good, we’d all looked out for him. This town always took care of its own, but with Brandon—well, it was like we’d all adopted him after his dad’s death. But there was no explaining that to Lila because that would mean she’d have to understand community and belonging. She’d have to understand Pinedale and what it meant to live in small town, for better or for worse.
When I didn’t finish that sentence, Lila let me off the hook. Maybe she did get it, after all, because her expression softened a bit, and I caught a hint of regret. “I didn’t mean to hurt him.”
She glanced up at the ceiling and took a deep breath. I stepped closer and saw it in the glow from her bedside lamp. Her eyes were puffy and her nose pink. She looked cute—natural and sweet—but she’d clearly been crying.
She made eye contact once more, and her gaze was startlingly direct. “That’s a lie. I didn’t want to hurt him, but I did what I had to do.”
Her voice was shakier than I’d ever heard, and I shook my head. “What do you mean what you had to do?”
She dropped her gaze, looking down at her hands as she teased the frayed hem of her thin tank top. “I only told him the truth.” She shrugged. “I get why you want to protect him. Brandon is sweet. He’s gentle and innocent and naïve…” She looked back up at me. “He’s sheltered.”
My throat went dry, and I didn’t even know why. It was like she could see straight through me to all the secrets I’d been keeping. To the secret. I pushed that thought to the side. “He’s not that sheltered.”
She nodded. “If you mean because he’s been keeping that ranch running despite his mother’s gambling problem or the way he looks after her—”
“What do you know about his mother?” I interrupted, my voice harsher than I’d intended. My mind was racing to figure out how she knew more about my best friend and his family than I did. Gambling? Was that why money was so tight for him?
She studied me as she nibbled on her lip. “You know what, maybe we shouldn’t be talking about this. About him.”
I took a step closer, and that was a mistake. I could smell the sweet vanilla scent of her shampoo or her body lotion, or whatever it was. I could feel the warmth from her body. She was so close I could reach out and touch that impossibly soft, creamy skin.
Focus.
“What did you say to him?” I asked.
Her eyes met mine, and after a moment, she shrugged. “I just told him the truth.”
My heart hitched. What truth? How much did she know? I told myself to calm down. There was no way she could know about the secrets I was keeping. No one knew—no one but me and his mother.
“Brandon deserves to know the truth about his parents, about his life. I mean… he can’t live in ignorance forever.” Her voice had grown stronger, like she was trying to convince me.
Like she was trying to convince herself.
“What did you tell him, Lila?” I asked softly, fear replacing my anger as my brain tried to make connections and reach conclusions.
Some of her bravado faltered. “I told him that his mother had an affair with my father.”
I stared at her. “She… she what?”
“Apparently, Brandon’s dad found out, or he walked in on them or something and…” She trailed off with a shrug.
I froze. I knew how the story ended. His drinking grew worse, as did his pill habit. But that wasn’t what killed him.
That had been his wife.
I shook off the memory, pushing it back where it belonged. In the dark. I was the only one who knew. I was the only one who’d seen.
And I would never forget.
Walking into that hospital room with yellow flowers in my hand. Flowers my mom had picked out and handed me to give to Brandon’s mom. I’d dropped them when my hands went numb. Even at that young age, I’d known instantly what I was seeing.
Mrs. MacMillan with a pillow in her hand.
Mrs. MacMillan holding a pillow over Mr. MacMillan’s face.
Fear and shock and horror and something like insanity distorting her features so she looked like a stranger as she turned to face me.
The beeping of the machines, the stench of death in the air…
“Don’t look at me like that,” Lila sai
d, crossing her arms over her chest.
I didn’t know how I’d been looking at her, but I could guess. That old revulsion had come up and threatened to swallow me. Disgust and fear and hatred and guilt and a million other emotions. But I’d made my decision that day, and I’d never looked back.
And ever since then, Brandon had become my responsibility. That was why I was here. “Lila, why would you tell him that?”
“He deserved to know,” she said again.
I could hear the guilt in her voice. She didn’t need me to tell her that answer was bullshit. Her tone turned even more defensive as her arms tightened around her waist like she was holding herself together. “I know it must be nice for him to live in some dream world where he has these perfect parents—”
“Perfect?” I shot back. “His dad is dead.”
She shook her head. “Yeah, but everyone knows he was nice. He was kind.” Her voice grew thick with emotion. “Everyone knows he loved his son.”
It was the bitterness in her voice that had me blinking suddenly, at a loss for what to say. The hurt and pain radiating from her body and her voice was hard to witness. It hurt even from a distance. She was a fierce lioness when she was hiding behind her clothes and her attitude and her snarky comebacks, but now, in this moment? She looked like a child. Fragile and vulnerable and wanting to be loved.
That voice I’d heard before, it came back to me in a heartbeat. “Who was on the phone before?” I said. “When I showed up at the door.”
She looked away.
“Was that your dad?”
Her smile was forced, and her eyes bleak as she swung her gaze back to meet mine. “Father of the Year,” she said in a sing-song voice that dripped with sarcasm.
I swallowed and shoved my hands in my pockets to keep from reaching out to her. It was a struggle to hide my pity, but she wouldn’t want to see that. No one would.
“So, your father,” I said. “He’s the reason you’re here? He’s why you haven’t given up on Brandon?”
She met my gaze evenly. “My father wants Brandon. I can’t go home without him.”
I shook my head. “That’s nuts.”
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