“He’s at the door,” I whisper into the phone.
“Stall,” Denver tells me.
“Just a minute!”
“You’re in a bathroom, right? Look through the medicine cabinets, see if there’s anything you could use as a weapon, just in case. Scissors. A sharp nail file. A razor, even.”
I look through some drawers and find a pair of shears. “I have something.”
“Good, put it in your pocket. Then put the phone in the other, but don’t hang up.”
“Okay.”
“Sara … be careful.”
I put the phone away and hesitantly open the bathroom door.
Chapter Twenty-nine
I push past Oliver and storm up the stairs to his room.
“What is it?” he asks, shutting the door behind him. “You’ve been crying. It’s okay if you’re not ready, luv.”
I take my engagement ring off and throw it at him. “You’re a liar.” I pace around next to the bed. “You’re a liar and a cheat and a thief.”
His face goes ashen. He rubs the back of his neck as he falls into a chair in the corner of the room. He shakes his head sadly and then looks up at me. He doesn’t look mad as I expected. He looks … scared.
“You got your memory back?” he asks.
I shake my head. “No. They found my phone at the accident scene. The phone that still had the last text conversation between you and me.”
He runs his hands through his hair. “Fuck.”
“Is that all you have to say?” I ask, fuming.
“Let me explain.”
“Let you explain what? How we aren’t really engaged? How we don’t even live together? How you were fucking Anna and didn’t even shed a tear when she died? How you’re even in my life after I broke up with you? How you were never out of town but only bothered to show up at the hospital when you knew I’d lost my memory? Is this all some grand scheme to get revenge because I told Benny about the paintings?”
He scrubs a hand across his jaw. I can tell he’s scrambling for something to say. Something that won’t make him out to be the scum that he is.
“I just got off the phone with Benny,” I say. “He told me about your little deal.”
“I had no choice,” he says. “He was going to tell the police.”
I motion a finger between us. “And what about us? You had a choice there. Why have you been lying to me?” I laugh a disheartened laugh. “Do I evenlikecooking, Oliver? Or was that just another way to manipulate me? And why did I never meet your parents or your sister even though we came here often? Was it because we were just fuck buddies and not a real couple?”
“Damn it, Sara,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Why did they have to find the bloody phone? Everything was perfect.”
“Perfect for who?”
“For us,” he says.
“You mean perfect for you,” I bite. “You were after my money, right?”
He still doesn’t look angry. He looks sad.
“The jig is up,” I say. “You might as well tell me everything, Oliver.”