Page 135 of All Our Secrets

“Baby.” I snatched her wrist.

“No, Silas. I need to do this,” she whispered. “It’s something I never thought I’d get the chance to do.” Before I could ask what she meant, she pulled away and rushed to get the car seat.

My mind raced in a hundred different directions. What could she mean? Should I follow? Stay? The sting in my eyes, the lurch in my stomach, had me chasing after Peyton as she opened the front door.

“Peyton.” I moved in front of her. “Talk to me. What are you thinking in that pretty head of yours?”

“Of all the things we should have said before.” Peyton rushed past me. “You’ve gotten to speak to him. I haven’t.”

But I couldn’t predict how ghost Theodore would react to anything she had to say.

I chased after her. “Wait. Let me go with you. You can’t see or hear him. And I need to know you’re safe.”

“This is something I need to do myself.”

As soon as T.J.’s car seat was secured, Peyton was gone.

As she sped away, I ran my fingers through my hair and bent over, trying to keep my heart from beating out of my chest.Fuck that.I couldn’t sit here and wait, not knowing how Theodore might react to what she had to tell him. I wouldn’t lose her to a ghost. To her past. I shouldn’t have let her go to my best friend to begin with. This was our moment. Our chance to confront it all. Theodore had good reason to be furious the day I wanted to come clean to Peyton about my identity. No matter how much I said otherwise, even to myself back then, being her friend would have never been enough. I would have always longed for more. Enough toacton those emotions. But he had chosen to marry the personIloved. He’d assumed I’d stop loving her in time. And I’d made the mistake of thinking I could too.

Turning around, I ran inside to grab my keys. I halted in the kitchen. A silhouette stood across from me. “Theo?”

Chapter Forty-Nine:

finally

Theodore

“How?” King’s forehead crinkled as he approached. Slowly, he grabbed the keys from the table.

“Where do you think you’re going?” I asked.

“How are you here?”

“I don’t know.” I had a guess. A sickening sensation. Peyton had tied me to that house. Until she had decided to let me go. The assumption was maddening. It led me here to King.

I couldn’t lose my wife.

King rubbed the spot between his brows.

Hatred raced through me. Without a heart to beat or skin to prickle, my emotions bled out like waves, beginning at my chest. The aggression kept rolling out the longer I looked at my childhood friend. “Where did Peyton go?”

“How long have you been here?” he asked.

“I saw her run out. What happened?”

“I told her, Theo.”

I gaped. “About me?”Really?In his shoes, I would have doneanythingto keep Peyton to myself. And I had. I had loved her, touched her, claimed her in front of him for years, and he still believed she was his? When would he fucking give up?

“After I told her you were at your house, she took off. Probably to talk to you.”

“Ourhouse,” I corrected him. “And you tried to stop her.”

“Peyton was never meant to be with you, Theo. I let you steal her. That was my mistake, but I’m not stepping aside this time.”

I closed my eyes as the storm grew inside me. I didn’t want tobut… “Stop. Talking.” I glared, hoping he could see the ruin he’d caused reflected in my stare. “You’re trying to take my wife—my family—from me.”

King stepped closer, gripping the keys in his hand. “You were right that day, even if I didn’t want you to be. I wasn’t looking for just friendship from Peyton. I wanted her, and I was tired of pretending I didn’t.”

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