Page 53 of Lush

His expression surprised and silenced me.

“My family… We all went to therapy right after Conrad died,” he said finally, almost like he was confessing a secret. “They said it helped. My mom, my sister—even my dad went. And I tried, I did. For a while.”

I blinked in surprise. “Therapy?”

“Went, yeah. Sat there, mostly. Never really talked.” He shrugged, but his tension showed. “I didn’t want to dig all that up. Figured if I ignored it, maybe it’d just go away.”

“Did it?” I asked gently.

Reese’s jaw tightened, and he shook his head. “It just sits there, like this damn weight that never leaves. I was angry. I felt like if I talked about it, all the anger, the guilt, it would just swallow me whole.”

That really broke my heart. “Shutting it out doesn’t make it disappear. It just makes it hurt longer.”

“I know. But when I was there, I couldn’t stand the idea—I felt like something broken that needed fixing, but I knew I couldn’t be.”

I placed my hand over his.

“It felt like…if I admitted I was messed up, that maybe I couldn’t come back from that,” he went on. “I felt like I’d just end up proving everyone right. That I was the screw-up they thought I was. And so I quit.”

I didn’t know what to say. His words unraveled something inside me, something raw and unsteady.

“I don’t know why I’m even telling you this,” he muttered, a trace of his old defensiveness creeping back. “Guess I figured… I dunno. It doesn’t matter.”

But it did matter.

Reese wasn’t soft. He was all bravado and reckless decisions. Back then, what got me was how he lived life on his own terms, ignoring all the rules. It was the opposite of everything I was, of everything I’d been taught to be. I told myself I came back for business. But deep down, I think I was always coming back for him.

Back then, in the shadow of family feuds and public scrutiny, he’d made me feel alive in ways I hadn’t known I needed. The stolen moments, the whispered arguments that turned into heated make-outs, the secret we shared.

With Reese, I wasn’t the carefully controlled version of myself that the world expected. I was just Laurene.

And he was the only one who sawher—my rawest form.

I should’ve said something cold, something to push him back into that safe distance. I wasn’t staying in Lush. We were under threat.

Instead, something in me faltered.

My old self was coming back. The sweet and kind Laurene. I hated how much I noticed the subtle hitch in his voice, the way he ran a hand through his hair like he didn’t know what to do with himself. He survived without me. And I hate that I can’t say the same.

“I have to tell you something too. I’ve been thinking…what if Blair Sterling could be behind the blackmail?”

Reese raised an eyebrow, clearly taken aback. “Blair?”

“Why not? She was at the engagement party that night, and I’ve been combing through old photos. She’s in almost every single one of them.”

Reese pursed his lips. “Blair’s more the type to stab you in the chest than stab you in the back.”

“When were you gonna tell me you were friends with her?” My voice came out sharp, a lot sharper than I intended. “Or were you just waiting for the right moment to rub it in my face?”

Reese’s expression hardened. “It’s not like that, Laurene. She’s not even?—”

“Did you fuck her while I was gone?”

I needed to know. If he’d done it, everything would’ve changed. It’d all be different.

“You think I’d do that?” Reese’s voice had a sharp edge now.

“Yes or no?”

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