Page 50 of Forbidden Desires

The pain in my chest was just as fresh now as the day that I’d lost them, and I didn’t know how to process my new realityof knowingexactlywhat had happened that day. The fact that James had accomplished what police and investigations hadn’t been able to—I should have been grateful but it wasJames. And despite his claims of wanting a truce, I knew his motivations weren’t altruistic. I knew that he would want something from me, or that this information would come with some kind of price. Men like James didn’t do benevolent acts out of the goodness of their hearts. Not when they had no heart to speak of.

He’d discovered the person accountable for the hit and run on my parents. Found out how it was covered up, all neat and tidy. It was true. Anything hideous and ugly and terrible could be swept under the rug as though it never happened with the right amount of money. The realization had a deeply negative feeling swirling in my stomach.

I’d yet to answer the last text Eric had sent—not yet. I was still trying to wrap my head around how to tell him that James had brought all this information to me, let alone process the information itself.

Then, there was the other issue to consider. What did I do with this information? I needed guidance, and unfortunately, I had no idea where to start.

My entire body jolted when someone knocked on the door, jarring me out of my trance. The sound was hard. Firm. Almost angry. Still feeling numb inside, I stood up and walked to the door, surprised to see Eric standing on the other side of the peephole.

I hadn’t planned on seeing him so soon, but a sense of relief washed over me. He’d be able to help me figure out what to do, how to handle the information that I was now faced with.

I opened the door. “Eric—”

The glacial look on his face stopped me cold. His eyes frigid and narrowed in a way that was chilling because I’d never been on the receiving end of such animosity from him. He steppedinto my apartment wordlessly. He glanced around thoroughly, as if trying to see if someone was here.

“Eric?” I asked tentatively.

He turned around, his mouth set in a grim line. “Your friend James isn’t here this time?”

Ice dropped into my veins. “Why would you think James was here?” Okay,thatcame out wrong and sounded guilty as hell, which I hadn’t meant at all.

He all but sneered. “Are you telling me he hasn’t been here at all, Miss Greene?”

His voice was steady, but that hard edge told me that he already knew the answer to his own question, and I wasn’t going to lie. “Yes, he did stop by, but—”

“That’s interesting,” he said, cutting me off before I could say anything more aboutwhyJames had been there. “Because I believe you and he had a very long, very interesting conversation.”

What was he talking about? If he knew James had come here, and he knew we had talked, why did he seem so angry about it? Would James have gone to him and bragged?

No. James would have lied. Twisted the truth. Was this the price I was going to pay for the information James had given me? Losing Eric because James had somehow set me up as a patsy?

I shook my head, feeling a bit frantic. “I don’t know what he said to you—”

“Oh, James saidnothingto me,” he said, then gave a harsh laugh. “But clearlyyousaid a hell of a lot tohim.”

I was overwhelmed by confusion, even as I tried to search my memory for something incriminating I might have said to James, but came up with nothing. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He pointed an angry finger at me, his eyes narrowed into slits. “Donotplay dumb with me.” Then, from inside his jacket, he yanked out a folded piece of paper.

He handed it to me, and as I read what had been written, my eyes widened in shock. It was an entire article detailing very specific information from some ‘anonymous source’ about Eric’s parents, along with some very disturbing untruths about their care. There had been nothing abusive, problematic, or underfunded about the Wellington Later Life Care Facility as stated here, and I could only imagine how gut-wrenching it was for Eric, knowing these lies were now up for public consumption.

I glanced back at Eric, dumbfounded. “I have no idea where this came from, how they got this information—"

“Stopwith the fucking lies,” he said, his anger now so palpable that I took a step back. “That article details down to the letter how I’ve been taking women to the facility to see my ailing parents, how they put on a ring and pretend to be my wife todupemy parents and paints the situation in the worst possible way.Youknew all those things, and you want me to believe that James comes to your apartment and coincidentally, hours later, this filth prints?”

The underlying anguish I heard in his voice cut me to the core. I was at a loss for words, unable to argue when I had no other evidence to offer, or an explanation of how a gossip site had learned the truth.

“I trusted you, Jasmine. Implicitly.”

His voice wavered, and he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, as if the turmoil inside of him was too much for him to bear, and maybe it was. Because I was beginning to feel that same crushing feeling in my chest, making it difficult to breathe.

“I cared about you, Jasmine,” he said, the raw emotion in his eyes giving me every indication that he’d fallen for me as hard asI had for him and now that was about to be ripped right out from under me. “Was it worth whatever James paid you?”

I flinched at his accusation. On one hand, I understood his pain. On the other, I was devastated that he believed I would have anything to do with this article. But he was right. All signs pointed to me and I couldn’t explain it away. Couldn’t ease his grief or make him understand that I would never, ever hurt him this way. There was no convincing him otherwise.

My throat was so tight that I couldn’t say anything at all.

Very quietly, very succinctly, he said, “We’re done.”

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