“I don’t understand.” I looked at Preslee, pleading for some explanation.
“Don’t bother lying anymore.” She practically spit out the words. “Apparently, you have quite the reputation for being a nasty drunk.”
“What?” My head was spinning as the cop yanked me upright. “What are you talking about?”
“I found proof, Kris. Proof that you were here. Drinking. Then you drove off in that red Porsche of yours.”
Red Porsche? Drinking?
Oh shit. My heart dropped to the pit of my stomach. I felt sick as I finally realized what was happening.
My shoulders slumped. “I’m not Kristian Fields.”
“What did you say?” one of the officers asked.
I sighed. I hadn’t wanted to do this, not this way, but my hand had been forced. I couldn’t even look at Preslee now. I was so ashamed of myself for lying, and I could only imagine how Preslee would react, but it looked like she thought I was the one who’d hit her. No matter how pissed she was at me for what really happened, I couldn’t let her think that.
“Please, take my wallet from my back pocket,” I managed to say.
“Is this some kind of joke?” one of the cops said.
“No, it’s not. Please, just look,” I begged. This was humiliating.
I felt a hand fishing around in my pocket. “My license and credit cards are in there,” I told them. I couldn’t even bear to look at Preslee. “It will tell you that my name is Bedford. Kristopher Bedford.”
“He’s right,” I heard the cop say. “This says Kristopher Bedford, not Kristian Fields.”
I met Preslee’s horrified gaze. “I’m so sorry, Pres,” I said. “I’m not who you thought I was.”
Chapter 17
Preslee
“Kristopher Bedford?” I asked, once I regained the ability to speak. I was nearly frozen with shock. “Who the hell is Kristopher Bedford?”
“I am,” Kris mumbled miserably. “That’s my name. My real name.”
“But…no,” I managed. None of this made sense. I had to sit because my knees suddenly felt like rubber. For a moment, I was sure I’d pass out, and had to remind myself to breathe.
“How can your name be Kristopher Bedford? Let me see that license,” I demanded. The officer handed me the entire wallet, and, sure enough, there was a picture of Kris and the name Kristopher Bedford. His credit cards said the same thing.
My hand shook as I handed the wallet back. “You told me you were Kris Fields. Lawyer. Son of Quaid Fields, the asshole lawyer who...” My voice cracked.
“No, I didn’t. I told you my name was Kris. You filled in the rest yourself.”
I thought back, frantic. Had he? Had he only told me his first name? I had assumed he was Kris Fields because Quaid told me his son’s name was Kris. I went over our first meeting in my mind, the images and words overlapping in my panic. He shook my hand and told me his name was Kris. He invited me for coffee. Never once had he said his last name. He never said he was a lawyer.
He was right. I was mortified and disgusted with myself. I had only assumed. But the look on his face told me that he knew what I’d thought. And he hadn’t corrected me. It hadn’t been an outright lie, but the deceit was just as painful. I had been careless, and now I felt like such an indescribable fool.
“Miss?” one of the cops asked. “What do you want us to do here?”
I’d almost forgotten they were there. I blinked rapidly, sorting through my possible actions.
“I’m sorry to have wasted your time,” I finally answered. “I was under the impression that he was Kris Fields, and I was clearly wrong about that. Please, accept my apologies for bringing you out here on a wild goose chase.”
“Not a problem, ma’am,” the other cop said. He glared at Kris. “If you feel that this guy is a threat to you, though, we’d be happy to escort you home.”
I regarded Kris, long and hard. “No, but thank you,” I replied. “He’s no threat to me. He’s nothing to me.” I saw his face fall at my words.
The police officers unlocked the handcuffs and apologized to Kris for having put them on. I heard Kris mumble something about it being his fault in the first place, then assuring them that he was fine. The cops left. Kris and I stared at each other.
The bartender finally spoke up. “You two need to leave,” he said gruffly. “I don’t need any trouble in here. Take your domestic issues someplace else.”
I was so furious, I almost yelled at him, but it wasn’t his fault my life was in shambles. No, I’d made this mess well and good on my own. We’d already caused enough commotion.
I stormed out of the door, unable to look at Kris, much less be within punching distance of him. I pulled out my phone to call a cab.
“Preslee, please.”
I heard him close behind me, but didn’t turn. “Please, let me explain.”
“I don’t want to hear more lies. Just leave,” I said flatly. I was struggling not to cry out of embarrassment, heartache, and cold fury.
“Pres…”
“Don’t call me that.” I spun around to face him. “You don’t get to call me that! You don’t get to call me anything, you lying bastard!”
“I didn’t want to lie to you!”
“But you did!” I hated how my voice shook.
“Preslee, please believe me. When I saw you at Quaid’s office, I knew I had to get to know you. I don’t know what it was, but something about you made me want to help you. I didn’t think you’d want to talk to me if you didn’t think I was helping out with your case.”
“And after that?” I asked. “You’ve had weeks to come clean with me. Why did you keep lying over and over?”
“I didn’t actually lie,” he made the mistake of saying. “I just…didn’t correct you.”
Temper boiled away the rest of my feelings. “Did you seriously just say that?” I struggled to keep myself from yelling. “You committed a lie of omission then, you pathetic bastard! That’s just as bad. Maybe you should’ve been some slimy two-faced lawyer. I can’t believe I ever trusted you!”
“I’m sorry.” His voice was low, broken.
“Damn right you’re sorry!” I raged. “A sorry excuse for a man. Letting me trust you. I slept with you! I feel like such a fool!” All of the raw emotion was pouring out of me. “You took advantage of me, Kris. No matter how
pure
you thought your motives were, you took advantage. Plain and simple. You let me believe that you were somebody you weren’t. You could have just told me who you were. Why didn’t you just tell me?” My voice broke as the pain came rushing back. I didn’t know if I’d ever had a broken heart before, but I doubted it could’ve felt like this.
“I didn’t think you’d want to open up to me, and then it just got worse and worse the more time passed…”
“Right,” I mocked. “The more I trusted you. I knew the whole time that something was off. Hell, Ava tried to tell me to trust my gut, but I was stupid enough to believe that you were actually trying to help me! That you were a nice guy…I’m such an idiot!”
“I have been trying to help you,” he insisted. “I wanted to help you find out what really happened. Get you justice instead of some payoff.”
“But you made a fool out of me while you did it,” I reminded him. “I hate you for that. I feel like I’ve been running around in circles for weeks now, and I just found out that you were taking advantage of me. Exactly the way Quaid tried to. How can I ever forgive you for that? What makes you any better than that snake?”
“I never meant to hurt you.” He clenched his fists, his expression stricken. “You have no idea the guilt I’ve felt. How many times I hated myself for not telling you the truth.”
“Oh, poor you,” I spat. “My heart’s breaking for you, Kris. It really is. Tell me more about the pain you were feeling when you were having sex with me. Tell me how much it hurt to let me fall asleep next to you. Tell me how it hurt to see me cry and still not tell me the truth. Tell me all about how guilty you felt. Really, I wanna know. Did you have a nice laugh when I fell for you?” Tears burned in my eyes, but I refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing them.
His eyes lowered.
“You can’t even look at me, can you?” I asked. He didn’t respond. “You know, more than anything, you’ve made it impossible for me to trust anybody. Damn you for that most of all. I only have Ava and myself. I know that now. The thing I regret the most about my accident is that it didn’t happen after I met you. At least then, you’d be gone with the rest of my memories.”
“You can’t mean that, Preslee” he whispered, his eyes still on the ground.
“Believe me, I do.”
A yellow cab pulled up in front of us. Kris made no move to stop me as I brushed past him and walked to the back door.
“Preslee, please…please don’t go,” I heard Kris say from where he stood behind me.
I stopped, but didn’t look back at him. “Go to hell, Kris.”
I got into the cab and gave the driver Ava’s address. I didn’t look out the window as we pulled away.
And yet there was still a part of me that wanted to look back at him, that wanted to tell the driver to stop so I could run back and throw myself in his arms.
That was the part of me that burst into tears in the back of the cab. All of my anger, frustration and hurt poured out of me in an endless flow of tears. I can only imagine what the cab driver must have thought at my hoarse sobbing, but he didn’t say a word.
How could I have been so blind? How could I ever trust myself again?
Chapter 18
Preslee
As soon as I got back to Ava’s apartment, I collapsed onto the sofa. It was too much effort to even take off my shoes. All the strength had fled from my body as I laid there and cried on and off for hours. Shadows traveled across the living room as time passed, and eventually the light faded and the room darkened. I didn’t bother getting up to turn on the light. I was numb, empty.
I heard Ava’s light tread as she bounded up the stairs. She always seemed to have so much energy. I steeled myself for what I knew was to come. I wondered how many times she’d say “I told you so.”
The door opened. “Pres?” she asked. I heard a note of concern in her voice, and I realized that the sight of a dark apartment set off a red flag. I wondered how long it would take her to stop panicking whenever I appeared to be gone with no explanation.
“I’m over here, on the couch,” I mumbled in the darkness.
“What are you doing lying around with the lights off?” she asked, fumbling for the light switch. “Are you sick?”
“You could say that,” I replied.
She turned on the light and when she spotted my red, swollen, tear-stained face, she flew to my side.
“What happened? Oh my god, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, for the most part.” I sniffled. “I’m just…a mess inside right now.”
“Did you have a hard day? What happened to you?”
I told her everything.
Ava gasped when I got to the part about finding the receipt and the name on it. I held up my hand to signal that there was more, then told her about calling the police, and Kris being handcuffed.
“Good!” she cried. “I’m so glad you did!”
“Except his name isn’t Kris Fields.” She stared at me, confusion on her face. I gave her the rest of it, including the fight in the parking lot before I’d gotten into the cab.
“I don’t understand,” she said when I finally fell silent. “So you thought when he introduced himself that he was Kris Fields?”
“Right – because Quaid told me his son’s name was Kris.” I threw up my hands in frustration. “I mean, I guess I figured that I was at Quaid’s office and oh, look, here’s this guy named Kris. It made sense at the time. I didn’t think too hard about it. Obviously.”
“Did you ever tell him you thought he was Kris Fields?” she replied, folding her legs up underneath her. I tried my best to remember.
“I have no idea,” I admitted. “But he must have known who I thought he was, because he told me all about how guilty he felt the entire time we were together. I’m such an idiot.”
Ava put her hand on my back and rubbed up and down. “Honey, there was no way you could have known.”
“How can you say that?” I asked with a bitter laugh. “You told me yourself that you thought there was something funny about him. Now we know why he never talked about what he did for a living, because he didn’t want to give himself away. It all makes sense now.”
She shook her head as she brushed a curl back from my face. “Come on, anyone who’d been in that same position would’ve assumed he was Kris Fields. The odds of meeting someone with the same first name...I can’t run the numbers, but I’ll bet they’re high.”
“Yeah, but I was stupid enough to have slept with him,” I pointed out. “I’ll bet most people wouldn’t have done that.”
“Hmm, I don’t know…” she said with a smirk. “I’m betting all the straight women would have.”
I narrowed my eyes at her and she squeezed my shoulder.
“The worst part is,” I continued. “I feel so betrayed. I thought I could trust him, you know? It really seemed like he was trying to help me, Ava. I mean he took me around from place to place, asking questions. I felt like he wanted to find the person who hit me as much as I did.”
“Maybe he did. Maybe he still does,” she said softly. “Just because he lied about his name to get close to you doesn’t mean that he didn’t sincerely care, honey.”