Reveal

by Bromberg, K.

Leaving the house, the Hamptons, Ryker behind. The world outside the window of my Uber a blurred mess from the tears that filled my eyes and fell like rain the entire way.

  The incessant ringing of my cells. First my personal phone, then my Wicked Ways one.

  He used me.

  The texts that came nonstop until I blocked Ryker’s number.

  He used me for his own benefit.

  The banging on the door.

  It’s much easier to nurse a heartbreak when you can’t hear the person trying to call you, because I don’t care what excuse he might have had—there isn’t one good enough to justify what he said and did.

  If I thought sex could be messy, love is a goddamn disaster. One I was certain I never wanted to be a part of and now know for sure I don’t.

  I blow out a loud breath, and Lucy shifts to look at me. “Don’t be sad that I have to go. We’ll see each other in a few days.”

  Looking into her eyes and hearing her compassion for my misconstrued sadness has more tears threatening. I frame her face between my hands and kiss the tip of her nose. “You’re right, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still want to be with you or that I don’t miss you.”

  “You miss my mama, don’t you?”

  “I always do.”

  “It’s okay,” she says, taking my hand and directing it to lie over my heart with hers atop it. “She’s still in here.”

  “Always.” I fight another swell of emotion, realizing how much these past few months have changed the two of us—she has grown so much stronger, and I feel somehow weaker. She hugs me again, and I let her hold on for her as much as for myself. After pressing a kiss to the top of her head, I murmur, “I need to get your stuff. Joey will be here in a minute.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “I know, Lu . . . soon.” My promise feels emptier now more than ever, but I give it to her anyway as I rise from the couch to grab her stuff . . . and to give me a moment to put my happy face back on, because as much as I need her here, it’s also brutally hard to remain cheerful when all I want to do is succumb to the tears.

  I’m in her room when Lucy yells, “Joey’s here!”

  It’s not two seconds before I’m walking out of the room to tell her not to answer the door until I make sure when I hear the squeal of excitement.

  My heart drops, because before I even see the person standing in the doorway, I know who Lucy has just let in the house. I know because the sound she made—one of joy and excitement, with a little bit of a crush mixed in—is exactly how I used to feel at the prospect of seeing Ryker.

  And then I hear the deep rumble of his voice, and every part of me wants to slide to the floor and cry at the hurt and the shame and the anger I feel over letting myself be duped by this man—at letting myself love this man—but I don’t. Instead, I steel myself to see him.

  I knew he’d be back.

  Ryker’s not a man who can be ignored or made to wait, so I knew he’d return.

  “Auntie, Auntie.” Lucy tugs on his hand and pulls him into the house. “Look who came to see us!”

  Every muscle in my face has to be told to move to force the smile that attempts to turn up my lips when I look at her. I’m sure the rest of my body language fails at selling the lie.

  “Vaughn.” Ryker’s voice saying my name hurts more than I could have ever imagined.

  “Come on, Lucy. You need to get your shoes on because Joey’s going to be here any minute,” I say and busy myself, moving to the family room where her sneakers were discarded, not daring to look at him myself.

  “But, Auntie . . .”

  “Vaughn.” My name is a plea and one I don’t want to heed as I move back across the space that feels so much smaller with him in it.

  “C’mon, Lucy Loo. Let’s get your shoes on.” I drop to my knees before her—his subtle scent of soap and cologne clouding my thoughts, hurting my heart—as her expression falls from excitement to confusion over my actions. “Don’t.” It’s a low growl of warning when his hand closes over my biceps.

  “You need to let me explain,” Ryker says. Our eyes meet for the briefest of moments, and everything I feel is reflected in his.

  And I don’t understand. How can he be hurt when he’s the one who caused this?

  “The lady said not to touch her.” It’s Joey’s voice that speaks through the open doorway, and while I snap my head his way, Ryker is unfazed and remains looking at me.

  “Not your business, man,” Ryker says, but his hand moves off my arm as he turns to stare Joey down.

  “Vaughn? You okay?” Joey asks as his eyes move from Ryker to me to Lucy and back to Ryker.

  “I’m—”

  “She’s fine,” Ryker says, cutting me off as Joey takes a step forward. “I suggest you back off.”

  “You son of a—”

  “Hey,” I say, stopping Joey and stepping forward to halt the testosterone-laced confrontation that’s obviously brewing here, more than a little startled by Joey’s temper and protectiveness. And as much as I’d love for him to throw a punch at Ryker for me, it’ll do nothing to fix the burning ache in my chest that seeing him has caused.

  “Something’s obviously wrong, Vaughn. Are you sure—”

  “Outside,” I say as I push him off the threshold to the front porch, welcoming the fresh air that’s not clouded with everything that is Ryker.

  Once the door shuts at my back, Joey looks at me with a mix of confusion and concern. “What’s going on? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” I take a deep breath.

  “Stop saying you’re fine when you’re obviously not.”

  “It was just a fight,” I lie, needing him out of here, Ryker out of here. “Just . . . just please don’t start anything.”

  He runs a hand through his sandy-blond hair and blows out a sigh as if he doesn’t quite believe me. “I don’t like him.”

  A self-deprecating laugh falls from my mouth. “Right now, I don’t like him much either.” Tears threaten. “Lucy’s ready to go. She just needs to get her shoes on.”

  “Vaughn.” His hand grabs mine as I turn to go back into the house, and the mask I’m trying to hide my emotions behind threatens to crumble. He waits until I face him to speak again. “I . . . you know I’m here for you, right? Not just with Lucy, but . . . we’ve become friends through all of this, and if you need help, all you have to do is ask.”

  “I know. Thank you. It’ll be—”

  “Fine. I know,” he says.

  I give his hand a squeeze and push back open the front door to find Ryker kneeling down and finishing tying Lucy’s shoes. “You ready, Lucy?” I ask, ignoring Ryker as he turns my way. “Come and give me a hug. Joey has to get you back. You’re having a special movie night tonight.” I infuse enthusiasm in my voice to match the smile plastered to my face.

  Lucy’s arms slide around my waist, and those bright-blue eyes look up to meet mine. “Can Mr. Ryker come to the movie night?”

  For some reason, that simple question throws me off and has me stumbling for a response. “Um . . . not tonight, Luce. Mr. Ryker has plans.”

  Her cheeks turn pink, and she makes kissy-kissy sounds that cause a lump to form in my throat. “Can you make sure he’s on my list of people who can come see me?”

  “Lucy—”

  “Please, Auntie?”

  “Yes. Sure.” Anything to get you to leave before I break down.

  “Tell Joey that it’s okay for Mr. Ryker to see me,” she pleads and squeezes me tighter.

  “Lu—”

  “I don’t have a lot of friends, and he’s my friend and makes me happy and—”

  “Fine. Yes.” I nod and then look up to Joey. “Please add Ryker to her visitors’ list.”

  “Vaughn?” Joey asks, and I can see Ryker physically bristle at him for questioning me.

  “I’m serious. Ryker can visit her.”

  “Sure. Yep.” Irritation laces Joey’s every syllable. “You ready, Luce? We need to hea
d out.”

  We say our goodbyes—the awkwardness less so as we all try to shelter her from the obvious fight between Ryker and me.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Vaughn

  The door closes behind them, leaving us bathed in a tense silence. But the minute I hear Joey’s car start, I speak.

  “It’s best if you leave, Ryker.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until I explain.” He reaches out to grab my hand.

  “Don’t you dare touch me!” I shout at him as I yank my hand away and move to put distance between us. My glare holds his as he opens his mouth and shuts it, most likely trying to decide the best plan of attack. “You don’t get to say what you said and then come here and pretend like it never happened.”

  It’s only been a day—the hurt so raw, so real—and when I look at him, I feel like it’s my heart beneath his foot where he stands.

  “There’s an explanation.”

  “No. There’s not.” Those three words sound like every emotion I have has been scraped up and used to utter them. “There will never be an explanation good enough to excuse what you said about me. To me. To him.” The first tear slips over and slides down my cheek, and I hate my body for betraying me. For showing him that he has in fact hurt me. “Please leave.”

  “I’m not going anywhere, Vaughn. You’re going to listen to me, and you’re going to listen to me now.”

  “There you go again, thinking I care about anything you say when you were offering me up to Carter. You don’t own me. You don’t have the right to say a goddamn thing to me, and I don’t owe you shit that I have to listen.”

  “You were never supposed to hear any of it.” His voice is low, his own emotion raw in the sound of it.

  “Am I supposed to apologize for that? The door was open. I simply walked in. It wasn’t some planned eavesdropping. Am I supposed to say I’m sorry that I did?” He shakes his head, but I continue before he cuts me off. “I can only imagine what else you would have said if I hadn’t interrupted you.”

  “I was setting him up, Vaughn. I was recording the whole thing on my phone, and—”

  “You were what?” I screech, my mind spinning over the fact that somewhere in some digital cloud my name is being linked together as Vee and Vaughn, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

  “I was doing it to use against him,” he says. “To—”

  “What about it being used against me?”

  “That’s not—I wouldn’t—c’mon, Vaughn,” he struggles to explain. “I already deleted it.”

  My laugh is low, unforgiving, and automatic, and as feasible as his explanation could be, I reject it immediately. “And that’s supposed to make me feel better?” I shake my head in disbelief. “You broke my trust. You outed me. You acted like what we had was all a lie to a person who I despise. You—”

  “Fucked up.”

  “You’re goddamn right you did!” I scream at the top of my lungs, and I hate when my voice betrays me by breaking.

  “I was . . . there are things I can’t explain, Vaughn. Things that would betray my client’s confidentiality, but in that moment, I decided to use his obsession with you to my advantage and—”

  “His wife is your client?” I ask, knowing it doesn’t help one bit if she is or isn’t.

  Ryker just stares at me. I don’t know how I rationalized that the twenty-four hours would make seeing him easier—that my heart would be more hardened, my emotional reaction dulled—but it’s just the opposite. I want to hug him and hit him and hold on to him and demand answers, all the while hating myself for wanting any and all of it.

  He purses his lips and darts his gaze away before coming back to mine. “It was more than that. It was—”

  “Answer the question. Is his wife your client?”

  “I can’t say any more. Just like you, I have a career to protect. Just like I was trying to protect you.”

  I emit a laugh laced with the waver of tears, the emotions overwhelming me and drowning out what he’s really said.

  The woman Ryker took on as a client—the surprise client he said being with me encouraged him to take—is Carter’s wife? There’s so much irony in the fact that she’s the reason he supposedly threw me to the wolf.

  “So you can use me, but you can’t tell me. Makes perfect sense,” I say, sarcasm dripping from my every word.

  “Christ. Just listen. Please. He was threatening me. Then you. I was trying to play his game with him to see what it is he wanted. I was—”

  “Me! He wanted me!” I scream, my voice breaking right along with my heart. “And if he didn’t, now he sure as hell does.”

  “No, Vaughn. No. You don’t—”

  “Just stop! Please. Stop.” Each word takes more effort than the last.

  He takes a step forward, and I take one back as I stare at him and see so many things I love but at the same time feel so many things that I hate.

  “This is never going to work,” I whisper as if I’m afraid to say it.

  “What do you mean? Why can’t it? I know I—”

  “It won’t. Neither of us will ever give up the part of ourselves we need to in order to make this work. We don’t trust. We love with conditions even when we think we aren’t. We—”

  “That’s bullshit.” He walks a few more feet into the living room, shoves a hand through his disheveled hair, and then exhales a long and frustrated sigh before turning back to look at me.

  “No, it’s the truth.” For the first time since he walked through my door, I acknowledge the tears coursing down my cheeks, but I won’t let him see them. I turn my back to him and shove them away.

  “He said he had dirt on you, Vaughn.”

  Everything in me stutters to a halt: my heart, my breath, my thoughts. When I turn to face him, my armor is firmly in place. “Of course he does. With your confirmation, he now knows who I am. You outed me.”

  I watch my words hit him like a one-two punch. First the denial and then the recognition of what he did when he should have already realized how devastating that part of the conversation alone is for me.

  “Vaughn . . .”

  “With your offer, he now thinks I’m available to the highest bidder. He can now blackmail me seven ways from Sunday, Ryker, because not once did you deny who I was or defend me or even find a way to stop the conversation. Nope. Not you. Ruse or not, you played right into his hand and used me as a pawn in your high-stakes game.” I stiffen my spine. “Just like your mother used you with her husbands.”

  The muscle in his jaw pulses as he grits his teeth. “It’s not—you don’t understand. He made the connection on his own. If I’d have argued, it would have made it worse. He’d have gotten off on the fact I was trying to protect you. My lack of reaction was for the best—Christ.” He hangs his head, and I hate that the part of me that loves him actually feels bad for him.

  And then I get a grip and find my justified anger again. “For the best?” My voice escalates with each word. “For the best for you? Or for the best for me? Because I saw a whole lot of you in there and not the other way around.”

  “How could you think I’d mean all that shit? How could you think I’d purposely hurt you? After everything we’ve talked about? After everything we’ve gone through? How could—”

  “Because you said the words to my face without flinching, that’s why!” I shout. “For the briefest of moments, I thought maybe there was something going on—that you were playing some kind of game—and all I could do was stare at your side and beg you to make the ‘hang loose’ sign.” I shove my hand out in the sign with my thumb and pinkie sticking out and middle fingers against my palm.

  “Vaughn,” he groans my name.

  “But you didn’t. Not a sign, not an anything.”

  “I’m supposed to remember some silly thing you and Lucy do in the midst of everything that was going on?” He throws his hands out to his sides in frustration. “And I did give you a sign. I was trying to tell you without him knowing
. I worked in there about you saying no. I brought up our word—defining—to try to remind you of what I had said the last time I saw you . . . to let you know—”

  “You mean to throw your sarcasm and words that I thought meant something in my face?”

  “I tried. Fuck, I tried.” He rolls his shoulders as if he has to refocus, and when he looks back at me, I try to ignore the emotion swimming in his eyes. “He’s determined to get whatever blackmail material you have on him. He’s willing to do whatever it takes to make you return it. What do you have?”

  The pictures come to mind. The call logs come second. They’re currently in safekeeping, my PI and I still unable to decipher their meaning. We don’t totally know why the mix of phone numbers and dates are a threat to the senator—we just know they are.

  None of it makes sense, and yet all of it makes sense at the same time.

  “So you sold me out to save me?” I laugh, but it doesn’t hold an ounce of amusement.

  “I tried to act like I was in the same boat as him. Wanting you for sex. Worried about the dirt you had on me. Wanting him to give me what he had on you so we could use it against you if need be.”

  “And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”

  “No. Yes. Fuck, Vaughn, at the time I was doing what I thought was best and—”

  “And all the while making sure to document that your client’s soon to be ex-husband was willing to sleep with an escort to help your case,” I impart.

  “Fucking hell.” He scrubs his hand over his face.

  Tears slide down my cheeks as hurt all but radiates in my chest. “Stop trying to turn this on me, Ryker. Stop trying to tell me that you said and did all this for my benefit when you already laid it out that it would benefit your divorce filing.”

  “You’re so fucking stubborn—you’re not listening to me!” he shouts.

  “You’re right! I don’t want to listen. I’ve already heard enough. About how you’d pay my fee for him. How you’d never change for me.” And I hate that saying these things out loud with him in front of me makes them a little less believable.

  But I know it’s so much more than just the words he said—it’s the trust I gave him that he betrayed. It’s the fact that I told him more about myself than I’ve ever told anyone. I opened up to him about my fears, my past, my will to never allow anyone to have power over me again . . . and he disregarded every single one of those things in his conversation with Carter.