Page 91 of Between Now and Always

“We made a business arrangement. We signed a contract, he got the money, and I get my files.”

“And you did this so people wouldn’t find out that we used to think we were brother and sister?” she asks, and I wince at the accusation in her voice.

“ Yes, I’m not ashamed, Beth. But I wouldn’t have made it public. It’s not just me who’d have consequences. It would have ruined us all. My bandmates, my family, everything.”

“I see,” she says and there’s a detachment in her voice that I’ve never heard before.

“Also, I didn’t want you to see those pictures of me with her…like that.”

Her shoulders sag and she swipes corners of her eyes.

“So, you gave him the money for your house in Corsica,” it’s not a question and it’s full of accusation.

“Yes.”

She nods.

“Because you didn’t want me to know that you’d slept with someone else?”

“Yes.”

She turns to face me then and the anger in her eyes steals my breath. Wordlessly, she slides off the bed and walks to the dressing room and slams the door.

I stand there, trying to breathe so I can think and figure out what to do next.

The door flies open. She strides out, wrapped in her winter jacket and boots and walks up to me.

Her chin, jutting forward her eyes full of mutiny.

“You didn’t have the right to make a decision like that without telling me. I understand your band and you wanting to protect them. But I bet you didn’t talk to them either.”

I didn’t. I didn’t even tell Dean until I needed him to draw up the contract. “I didn’t want to put them in that position.”

Her nostrils flare.

“If it had been one of them, coming to you, what would you do?”

“I would support them, whatever they decided.“

Her eyes soften and in a blink, her anger is gone. But the heartbreak that replaces it is even harder to see.

“Because you love them, and you want to protect them and you don’t want to disappoint them.”

She smiles sadly and her eyes fill with tears. “And you didn’t tell me because you thought if I saw you with someone else, I’d leave you?”

Her words wrap around my heart so tightly that my eyes sting. “That’s not true.” I deny.

“Then why did you lie to me, instead of just telling me what you knew? It’s not because you thought I’d be hurt. Or mad. You thought I’d walk away, that I’d tell you it was unforgivable.”

“Yes,” I admit.

“And you’re only telling me now because of what I said yesterday about all lies coming out.”

That shakes me out of my penitent posture.“What? No!”

She raises two disbelieving eyebrows at me. “I remember the look on your face when I said it. I thought I was imagining it,”

“That is not true.” I shake my head for emphasis.

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