Page 165 of Green Flag
But that word was on the tip of my tongue. Forever.
There was just no way I could consider telling him how I felt, when he hadn’t told me everything.
And, in the spirit of being a big, brave girl, it was time to talk.
Not behind flirtation and sexual innuendo.
I slid forward, a tight breath through my teeth as he slipped free from me.
“Ever?”
“I saw the PI report.”
He was still behind me. His fingers stopped tracing circles across my hip.
“On your phone. Before the fight. My name was all over it.”
He sat up and I rolled over to look at his shocked expression. His mouth was open and he tried to speak, but I couldn’t listen to excuses.
“You’ve had this since then and I can’t understand why you would keep it from me. Do you… do you think I was in on it?”
His eyes widened. “No. No. Of course not—”
“But you didn’t tell me. I look responsible. You now have evidence that I was involved and… and if you want to get out of your contract…” I breathed in, forcing myself to say it. “If you want to get out of your contract, you have all the evidence you need to get my dad to let you go.”
His face fell. “Yes, but—”
So he’d thought it through too.
“Right.”
“ButI wouldn’t, because I couldn’t letyougo!”
Silence consumed our room, his booming, broken voice leaving an echo that pulsed with my heartbeat.
He would let me go eventually. That was thewhole purpose.
I cleared my throat. “When were you going to tell me? After you fucked me? After you were going to drop me?” And run into the sunset? “What have you done with the evidence?”
“I didn’t want to tell you,” he said and that felt like a slap to the face.
I was getting up, dragging the sheet with me, trying to find my clothes around the room.
“Because I didn’t want to upset you. Because I handled it. That document doesn’t exist anymore. It’s gone. There’s nothing to say it was you—”
“Because it wasn’t!” I roared. “It wasn’t me. It washim.”
I’d believed a lie for years.
I was naive and stupid and most definitely not mature for my age.
Maybe I was gullible here, too, thinking there could be something real when it had been built on fabrication.
I knew I wasn’t worthy of the happy ending, but god, I let myself dream of it and escape in it.
“I don’t need you to protect me either.”
“I didn’t want to tell you,” he said again. “But I was going to. I just needed to find the right moment— I needed to make sure you were okay.”
