Page 166 of Darling Obsession

“If he wanted us to help him hide a body,” Damian quips, “I doubt we’d be doing it in his house.”

My siblings have gathered around me in my family room. A room I never invite them into. Savannah’s wandering around, looking at the family photos on the otherwise empty bookshelves. It’s making me uncomfortable.

I’ve called them all over to my house for “an emergency meeting,” which I’ve never done before. The last time I invited them all over, I lied to them.

I cheated in Granddad’s game.

But when Quinn left here today, after telling me our relationship would never work if she couldn’t trust me, and I realized she was right, I came to the conclusion that I need to come clean.

I need to tell my family the truth.

Granddad wouldn’t want me to win his game based on a lie.

My grandma once told me,Losing people you love makes you break or it makes you hard.And maybe she was right. But the part I didn’t know then was that she was the hard one. She’d let herself grow hard, over many years of marriage to a man who was in love with another woman.

And by the time she said those words to me, just before she died, I was already broken.

I’ve been broken for a long time.

I never wanted to end up as soft as my mom, because I saw firsthand how badly it ruined her when my dad died. How it changed her, made her desperate and needy for her new husband’s approval.

But I also don’t want to end up so hard that I settle for a loveless life.

Maybe the only way to start putting my broken pieces back together is to be honest with the people I love about what I’ve done—and let them love me as I am.

Or leave me if they can’t forgive me.

Maybe it’s not up to me to decide for them. And it’s wrong of me to deceive them just to try to keep them in a relationship based on lies.

I guess I don’t want to be like Granddad anymore, either.

“You might want to sit down for this,” I tell my siblings.

None of them sit down.

“Could you be more dramatic?” Jamie says irritably. “What is it?”

“I have something to tell you all.” I take a breath and dive right in. “The truth is that when I had you all over for dinner and introduced you to Darla, I lied to you. The woman I brought to dinner, Quinn, was never Darla. That was a lie.”

The silence in the room is beyond uncomfortable. I’m just waiting for someone to start yelling.

“Harlan.” Savannah speaks first, but she’s not yelling. “How could you do that?”

I guess I’m flattered that she actually seems shocked. And disappointed.

I suppose she thought better of me.

“Because I felt I had to. I’d already lied to you all, repeatedly, when I told you there was a woman named Darla I was after. So, when I received my challenge, I asked an employee, Quinn, to pretend to be Darla. Actually, I didn’t ask her. I made her do it. Basically… I blackmailed her.”

“Jesus Christ,” Graysen mutters.

“So now we have to worry about this woman coming back and suing us?” Damian says. “Not smart, Harlan.”

“No. I promise you, you don’t have to worry about that.”

“Yeah, because your promises are so trustworthy,” Jamie mutters.

“You’re missing the point. This is not about her. The point is I made her lie for me to cover up my lie.”

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