Page 94 of Dare You to Lie

“Would you like a glass of wine?” It was midnight, but I wasn’t ready to go to bed yet either. I felt giddy from talking with Sid. It was crappy that I couldn’t share that with my sister.

“Sure. Only one glass.”

I poured us each a glass, carried them into the living room, and handed one to Rebecca. She took a sip and smiled. It was a bottle from Sid’s parents’ vineyard. They had given us a few bottles to try when we visited there, and his mom brought two more today. She wanted Sid and me to choose one that we could serve as a signature wine for our wedding.

“This is so good,” Rebecca said, smacking her lips together.

I nodded in agreement. “Do you want to talk any more about what happened with Luke?”

She sighed. “Not really, but I probably should.”

“I won’t say anything.”

“Thanks. I think I knew for a while that it wasn’t working out, but I kept trying because we’d invested so much time in the relationship.” She paused, taking a sip of her wine. “But the signs were all there. He never invited me to his apartment. He didn’t want me to meet his parents. I never met any of his friends. I don’t even know if he has any. He wouldn’t tell me anything about his past. I found out from Jacob that he went to law school with Will and had a degree, but when I asked him about it, he got angry and told me it was in the past.”

“He got angry?”

“Yeah. In fact, any time something came up having to do with his past, he’d get angry, and he always said ‘It’s in the past. Forget about it.’” She shook her head. “He really didn’t want to talk about Will or anything having to do with him, and any time Will was around, Luke would make up an excuse and disappear. It was strange.”

“He never told you why?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Things got worse when Will started helping me at the restaurant.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s helped with a few things, like connecting me with Elijah and then asking Elijah’s brother Jackson to tend the bar. And the wine from his parents’ vineyard.”

“Luke didn’t like that,” I said.

“Not at all. He was furious about it. We got into a huge fight about how much time I was spending with Will and how I was letting him do things to help me when I should ask my boyfriend.”

“Did you ask Luke to help?”

She nodded. “All the time. He made excuses. I even asked him to tend bar for me, and he said no. Then I asked if he’d do it temporarily until I found someone, and he still said no.”

I frowned. “Then how could he be angry?”

She shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me. I think he had a lot of emotional trauma to work through. There was this dark energy around him, and he hardly ever smiled, especially here recently. In the beginning, he smiled a lot, but then it was like the darkness crept in again about six months ago. He went away—to help a family member, he said. He never told me anything more about it, but clearly something happened.”

I pulled her in for a hug. “I’m so sorry, Becks. It has to be hard when you’ve put that much time into a relationship.”

She sniffed. “The worst part was that I kept thinking it was me. That I’d pushed him away.”

“You didn’t do anything. Something was going on with him.”

“I know. I hope he gets the help he needs.”

I smiled. “This is why I love you. Even when someone does something bad to you, you still care about them and wish them the best.”

She chuckled and sniffed again. “I can’t help it.”

“I admire it.”

She sat up. “I’m really proud of you too.”

“Me?”

She nodded. “Yeah. You’ve changed. I didn’t want to believe it. I thought if I got my hopes up and then you left, I’d be heartbroken. But I see now that’s not going to happen.”

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