Page 90 of Crossroads of Love

“Aaron was taking bribes.”

“Fuuuuuuck,” she breathes out loudly and dramatically.

“My feelings exactly.”

“If that gets out, it could ruin you.”

“I’m aware. He’s trying to get as much information as possible without letting anyone else know about it. I mean, it’s over and done now that Aaron is gone, so people don’t have to know, right?”

“I can tell that the good girl brain of yours is arguing with yourself over that logic.”

“Absolutely, I am. My whole platform is authenticity and transparency, but the second that it’s something that could condemn me, I don’t want to hold to my own core values. What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing is wrong with you, Lena. You didn’t do this. Your asshole late husband did. He made a mess for you to clean up after, as he always has done.”

“If people find out about this, they’ll all look at me differently and think that I knew. It’s bad enough everyone had an opinion after he cheated on me when Jayla caught him and…”

“Fuck what everyone else thinks,” she snaps. “It’s no one else’s business. When people find out that he was engaged to another woman while still married to you, then they’ll see him as the jerk that he was. You won’t take the fall for this.”

“I can’t… I can’t let that information out, Tatum. I can’t let Jayla find out about any of this. It will destroy her and the memories that she has of Aaron.”

“You are not the keeper of the secrets. You can’t be. You can’t keep this from her. I get why you would want to, but you can’t protect him forever. She’s going to find out sometime. What happens in ten or twenty years when this kid comes looking for their half sister? Or what if she does genetic testing one day and sees that she has a sibling that she knew nothing about? She’ll be angry with you, not her father, because you knew and didn’t tell her.”

“I didn’t think about that.” I sigh.

I bite my bottom lip as her words sink in. Anger nips at the guilt I’m feeling.

Of course, it would be all on me to be the bearer of bad news to our daughter.

“Why would you? You can’t keep protecting him. From the moment you and Aaron started dating, you were the buffer between him and the rest of the world. Remember when we were seventeen, and he was trashed? He wouldn’t give you the keys to your car even though everyone was trying to get them from him.”

“And he wrecked, and I took the blame for it.”

“Yup. Of course, because of Henry no one else knew about it but like four people. Aaron always expected you and his dad to clean up his mess. He expected you to cover for him, to make it okay, to be at his beck and call. You’re the reason he graduated from high school. He was too busy partying to do any of his homework. You always just did it for him. It didn’t change when he became a cop, either. Shit, you could walk onto the force and have the same knowledge as anyone there.”

I bury my face in my hands. Embarrassment hits me hard, but only because I was such a fool for so long. My husband was only with me because of what I did for him, not because he loved me. I start sobbing. Tatum hurries over to shut and lock my office door.

She’s right. I didn’t even realize that I was doing that. I always did everything for Aaron from the second that we met.

I used to tell Tatum that Acts of Service was my love language, but in reality, it was always because I thought doing those things for him would make him see me and see that I was amazing.

It wasn’t him that needed to see me, though; it was me. I didn’t see myself. I had become Aaron’s wife. Jayla’s mom. The Marshall girl. I never had my own identity. It’s why I wanted to become the mayor because that gave me an identity outside of everything else.

I didn’t realize any of this until Aaron passed away. I found myself falling into the widow identity, and Tatum helped pull me out of it. It’s taken a lot of therapy to get myself to this realization.

“This is different.”

“No, it’s not. You don’t have to protect that piece of shit anymore.”

“Tatum.”

“No, Lena!” she says loudly as she hits the desk with her hand. She has tears in her eyes. “Why aren’t you pissed about this?”

“What’s the point of wasting my energy on him anymore? It’s done, and I…”

“But you’re wasting energy on it. You’re sitting here staring off into space and not doing what you’re supposed to be doing. You’re giving him more energy than he deserves. He’s still controlling you from the grave, but in a way that you don’t even realize it. He’s still winning.”

I let out a loud groan, and my stomach lurches.

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