Page 80 of Dearly Betrayed

I shake my head and finish my drink. “No. I can’t.”

“Jayson—”

“You know how it is. Don’t sit there and pretend like this is an easy decision for me, like this is something I want. Fallon betrayed me, she betrayed the family. She stole from me and planned on using what she stole to destroy me. From the start, she came here with ill intentions.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Casey muses, swirling her glass. “I actually think she came here with good intentions but saw an opportunity to vent some of her hurt and frustration, and she made a bad decision. She regrets it now.”

“We’ve all got regrets then.”

“Talk to her, Jayson. You love her. She loves you too. This whole stupid documents thing is just a dumb mistake.”

I rub my face then look at her, eyes narrowed. “She loves me too? She said that?”

“Oh, god, don’t make me play schoolyard games.” She rolls her eyes. “You know how Fallon feels.”

“I actually don’t.”

“Then I’ll spell it out for you. That girl is up in her pretty little prison room crying her eyes out because the man she fell in love with thinks she betrayed him.”

“She did,” I say but there’s no venom behind it.

“She tried to make that right. Yes, I know she went about it all the wrong way, but still. Can you blame her? She’s in a strange place, totally alone, without her family, and she’s afraid all the damn time.”

I wipe my face with both hands. “Is that how you felt when you first married Adler?”

“Pretty much.”

“That must’ve been hard.”

“It was worth it,” she says with a smile and bumps her shoulder against mine. “I know it hurts right now, but go talk to her. Trust me, this doesn’t have to be the end for you two.”

I grunt in reply and signal the bartender for another drink.

“Even if I wanted to do that. Even if that was remotely possible—which it’s not—there are a million reasons why I can’t. Like your brother, for example.”

“I’ll deal with Adler.”

“No, you won’t. You know how we were raised. It’s family over everything.”

“Fallon’s family now. You said the words. You signed the papers. You kissed her in front of a priest. It was a nice kiss, by the way.”

I close my eyes. It was a perfect kiss.

“Doesn’t matter,” I say and throw back another drink.

We lapse into silence. Casey sips and watches the other people at the bar while I drown my misery, getting progressively drunker. I think of Fallon alone in that room and my self-loathing and misery doubles, triples, quadruples, until I’m a seething black mass of disgust and negative emotions.

“I’m heading to bed,” she says once she’s finished her single glass of wine. “I have to be up early. Freaking kids.” But she’s smiling as she says it.

“I want to forgive her,” I say, and I must be drunker than I realized if I’m admitting it out loud. “I really, really do.”

Casey puts a hand on my shoulder. “Then go talk to her.” She limps off, rubbing her hip as she goes.

I put my face in my hands, because what I want and what I have to do are very different things.

I married Fallon out of obligation. I didn’t want to do it, but I had to for the family.

Now I’ll end things with her out of obligation.

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