Page 25 of The Next Lie

“Because of secrets you kept.”

My teeth click together and I give him a breath of space. He isn’t wrong. That’s the inconvenient thing about Nash. He can be an arrogant, possessive bastard with an overdeveloped fondness for control, and still be standing on a fact sharp enough to cut.

“I have been protecting her her entire life,” I say.

Nash snorts. The sound is small. Dismissive. Designed to irritate.

It works.

“What exactly is this sudden interest in her, given all that protection?” he asks. “Aren’t you a little old for her?”

There it is.

I narrow my gaze and step in again, until only a few inches sit between us. “Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?”

Something flickers across his face. Recognition, maybe. He looks down for half a second, then back up with a slight shake of his head. His voice, when he replies, is quieter. Rougher at the edges.

“I took one fucking look at her and it was like a goddamn truck slammed into me.”

I hold his gaze for a long moment, then I step back, because I understand that. God help me, I understand it so well I nearly hate him less for saying it.

“Yeah,” I say. “Well.”

I walk around the desk and run a finger along its edge, my back to him. “I used to send her letters when she was a kid. Absolutely nothing there, mind you, except making sure she was okay after all that shit went down. I just…” I stop, and my head drops back on my shoulders. I stare at the ceiling for a long minute, the only sound in the room the hum of the fluorescents while I wrangle my thoughts.

I’ve agonized over this I don’t know how many days. How many nights, trying to make sense of something that doesn’t make sense. It just…is. It just happened. It wasn’t, and then it was. It had nothing to do with age or anything other than who she was as an individual.

But it still made me feel like I should feel…wrong. And I don’t. And I don’t know how to feel about that.

“I never even clapped eyes on her from the time she was a seven-year-old child until she was an adult. In all those years, I never even saw her, not once. I wrote her letters, made sure Cal was taking care of her properly, made sure she was happy. That’s it. It wasn’t until I decided to look in on her—visually check on her—when she was an adult—that everything…fucking changed. And then someone may as well have jerked the damn rug from under my feet.”

There’s a long beat of silence, during which I turn around. Nash studies me.

He wants to doubt it. I can see that. Wants the world cleaner. Wants me to be a villain he can put down and feel righteous about afterward.

I don’t blame him. I have wanted worse things.

“How old?” he asks.

“When?”

“When the rug got pulled.”

“Nineteen.”

His jaw tightens.

I smile thinly. “Don’t posture at me. I did not touch her. I did not speak to her. I did not insert myself into her life. I watched from a distance because distance was the only thing I trusted myself with.”

“That supposed to make me feel better?”

“No. It is supposed to make you informed.”

His nostrils flare. The old Nash would have swung by now. This one breathes through it. He has learned restraint. Or Reva has taught it to him. Either way, it looks uncomfortable on him.

“I guess I can understand that,” he says finally.

The concession costs him. I appreciate that more than I should. He turns toward the door, then stops with his hand on the knob.