Page 20 of Haunted

His eyes glaze over as he looks off in the distance.

“You know how shit is around here, and when you find someone good, you don’t want them part of that. You don’t want it touching them. I wanted to keep Jules as far away from it as possible. I fell hard for her and knew she was the one. We had plans. We were going to leave here and start a new life. I wanted to wait to get married until we left, but she didn’t want to wait that long.”

“So, what? You were just going to leave? Disappear into the beautiful fucking sunset and never tell us?”

He looks down at the bottle in his hand before taking a deep swallow, then lifts his head. I’m not sure what his eyes hold, but the look is dark and pain-filled. There’s also a bit of fear, which I find strange. What is there to be afraid of?

“We were going to tell everyone before we left. The day we got married, which was the day we were going to tell everyone, something happened.”

“What?” I ask when he doesn’t continue.

His eyes slide away. “Someone attacked her.”

“Fuck!” I curse, and lean forward, mimicking his position by resting my elbows on my knees. I snatch up the beer, open it, and down half the bottle.

I bring narrowed eyes to him.

“Why are you shacking up with all these females when you have a wife lying comatose in the hospital? Doesn’t seem like she was much of ‘the one’ if you have no problem breaking your vows.”

He still doesn’t look at me when he answers. “Because she’s no longer here.”

“The fuck she isn’t, Theo. She’s only miles away.”

His eyes come back to mine and they look cold-blooded, like he feels not one ounce of guilt for cheating on his wife for years while she lies helpless in the hospital. As soon as the look appears, it’s gone.

“A man has needs, Luca,” he informs me quietly, like I don’t know that.

I nod, then lean forward. “A man with a wife in the hospital gets real fucking acquainted with his hand. Or as fucked as this sounds, he gets a divorce. What he doesn’t do is repeatedly and unashamedly break his vows by whoring himself out to women.”

He flinches. I know I’m being an ass. It can’t be easy on him having a wife he can’t touch, but fuck if I’ll be okay with him cheating so easily. I’ll never be okay with anyone cheating under any circumstances. And it’s not like he held out for long. He’s been doing it for years. He’s always been a manwhore. Now that I think about it, I can’t remember a lengthy period of time he hasn’t had some woman around.

Ignoring that for now, I state something that’s been bugging me. “I’ve been dreaming about her.” His eyes snap to mine. “For years. If I never knew about her, why is she in my dreams? And why is she always so sad and asking for my help?”

His knuckles turn white as his grip on the beer bottle tightens. Lines appear around his mouth when his lips form an angry line.

“No clue. There’s no reason she should be.”

I watch his eyes for any deception. I hate to think about my brother lying, but he’s already done so by omitting the truth about Jules. Fortunately, there’s nothing nefarious in his expression.

Aria calls her dad’s name from her room, and Theo gets up to check on her. I watch as he disappears down the hallway. Suspicion forms in my mind as I wait for him to reappear. When he does, my eyes lock on him as he reclaims his seat.

“Aria.” He frowns at my bringing her up. “Is she Jules’s?”

“No,” he grunts. “Jules and I were only together for a few weeks. She’s from a woman I met about a year before I met Jules. She showed on my doorstep several weeks after the accident and left Aria for me to raise. She disappeared, and I haven’t seen her since.”

I nod.

“The nurse made it sound like Jules gets no visitors. Does she not have family?”

He takes a pull from his beer before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“She does, but they’re dicks. They knew about me and her and demanded she have nothing to do with me. When she refused, they cast her out and disowned her. That was another reason why we were leaving. We wanted to start somewhere fresh where no one knew us or our background.”

Although it’s still fucked-up that he kept Jules from us, I can’t say I blame Theo. Especially with the huge social and upbringing gap between him and Jules. The world is a cruel place, and some of the people in it are even more so.

“Do they know about her being in a coma? They haven’t tried visiting her?”

He shifts back in his seat, getting comfortable by throwing an ankle over his knee.

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