Page 51 of Tempting Fate

When she frowns, her annoyance at being left out of the loop and placated by Dad’s go-to excuse is very apparent, I grin at her. While I understand how she feels, this is good news for me. I’m secretly thrilled that most of them are gone. I need some time and space to myself today to work out how I’m going to handle Zeke’s inevitable questions about Alex.

Seeing Charlie tilt her head to the side and scan my face, I pepper her with questions to divert her attention from me. She’s unusually perceptive and sees things that others miss.

Like my attempts to evade facing reality.

“Do you know if they have any leads on where Alex could be? Maybe Cub found something in the stuff Toker found?”

“I haven’t been able to glean much.” She gives me a half shrug. I screw up my face, mirroring the irritation in her expression. “I got the impression it was about Alex, but I don’t think they’ve found him... your father has been in a mood since he crawled out of bed, which I figure would’ve dissipated if they’d had good news.”

In the wake of Charlie’s admission, my anxiety spikes.

I’ve fucked up.

Epically.

My rush to keep Zeke from learning what I did to escape Alex has caused me to make a huge misjudgement. I should’ve seen it coming. Of course, the Shamrocks are going to search for him, and they won’t stop until they find him.

And when they find him…

They say pride comes before the fall.

Whoever they are, the bastards are right.

I’ve handed Alex the perfect weapon to brandish at Zeke. If they come face-to-face before I tell my fiancé the true extent of my latest run-in with my stalker, Alex will be able to burrow underneath Zeke’s skin by embellishing what I did.

My hand has been forced.

I have no choice but to come clean.

The truth is the lesser of two evils right now, and although I’m still worried about Zeke’s reaction and the effect it will have on our relationship, I need to do everything in my power to stop him from falling into the same trap with Alex as I did.

It’s unavoidable.

I couldn’t live with myself, knowing that the man I love is being forced to exist with Alex’s poison in his head because I did nothing to stop it.

“Penny for your thoughts, young lady?” Charlie interrupts my musing, and she takes a seat next to me on the bed.

“Do you think I’m to blame for all this?” I ask quietly.

This is a question that I’ve voiced many times during therapy, however, the stock standard answers provided by my doctors have never sat well with me.

We can’t control how others behave.

Well, duh…

Not sure how that’s supposed to help me come to terms with ending up as the target of someone’s obsession.

The fact is, there must be something about me that turned Alex crazy.

The corners of Charlie’s lips droop and the light in her eyes dies. “Definitely not… the blame rests with Alexander. He’s sick?—”

“I get that, but what I don’t understand is why me?”

“Why not you? There is no?—”

The anger that flickers across her delicate features as she tries to restate her objections forces me to raise a hand to stop her. “What did I do that made him want to hurt me? And don’t say nothing because he never had any trouble sleeping with women before me then moving on from them without a second thought… he was an absolute man whore, so there must be something about me that made him so crazy. Was it because I said no?—”

“Sometimes when some men discover something precious, something that meets all their desires, they decide that breaking it is the only way to keep it.” She takes hold of my hand and pats my knuckles. “Looking back… there were signs that Alex had a lot of his father in him. He had the same need to control, to push boundaries, to force his will on you. At the time, I ignored my intuition because I didn’t want my history with Joseph to colour my feelings toward his son.”

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