Time to Pretend (38 page)

But she was in shock. She knew she was in shock. She focused on putting one foot in front of the other. Usually, she dropped her purse and keys on the table by the front door. Today, she hadn’t thought to put them down. She squeezed the keys in her hand just to remind herself they were already there.

Daniel caught her halfway down the stairs. The lights were off, and the sun had set more than an hour before. He barreled into her, reaching out to grab her before she fell the rest of the way to the landing.

His strong arms closed around her waist, holding her close.

“Lainie.” He breathed her name, the name only he called her, into her ear.

She barely heard him. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come here.”

“Let us explain, Lainie. Give us a chance to explain.” The need to leave overrode any other logic. She fought his hold, tearing at his hands with her nails. “Let go. Let me go.”

“No.”

Anger lent her an energy her earlier, weaker attempt lacked. She stomped on his instep and jabbed backward with her elbow.

Other than to cough, he didn’t react to her attempt to free herself.

Lifting her as if she weighed nothing, he carried her down the stairs and sat her on the sofa in the living room. “You’re angry, Lainie. You have every right to be.”

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He stood over her, a tall, hulking figure she didn’t recognize.

Light flooded the room, casting out the shadowy figure. Alaina stared up at him. She had no idea if her face formed any kind of expression.

“I want to leave.”

Evan sat next to her. The cushion sank next to her thigh, and she had to shift to avoid leaning toward his comforting heat. “Alaina, please. Just listen.”

His jeans were fastened, and a fresh white cotton shirt covered the chest Daniel had so recently kissed. She wondered if his erection had disappeared yet. From the way he was sitting, she couldn’t tell.

“I can’t do this,” she said. Her voice trembled no matter how she tried to keep it steady. “Not tonight.”

“You knew.” Daniel had hooked his thumbs through his belt loops. He moved them to splay over his hips. “How long have you known?”

“Please.” Hot tears spilled, tracking salt down her cheeks. These were the tears she couldn’t find as she stared at her mother’s lifeless, bloated body. “I can’t do this now.”

“Why not?” He was angry now, and his volume adjusted to match his temper. “Isn’t that why you came here, Alaina? Wasn’t it your intention to catch us in the act?”

Pain curled up in her chest. Some clinical part of her brain labeled his attack as defensive. Guilt made him lash out. Evan’s hand closed around the one on her lap that scrunched the fabric of her skirt. Why in the world had she dressed nicely to go see her parents?

Alaina stared at his hand. It was so much easier than confronting Daniel’s rancor. Not trusting her voice, she shook her head.

“Damn it, Lainie! Look at me when I’m talking to you!” Something snapped inside Alaina, flooding her system with fire when she desperately needed it. Her chin shot up, and she was suddenly on her feet. She jabbed a finger into his chest and lowered her voice. “You think this is some big secret you’ve been keeping,
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don’t you? Well, I have news for you, Daniel, I’ve known since the beginning.”

“The beginning? Really? Then why haven’t you said anything?” He didn’t believe her. Rage unlike anything she’d ever felt burned through her brain. She blinked away the fog of tears and took a swing at him. Evan closed his arms around her from behind, pinning her arms to her sides.

“Honey, I’d let you hit him if I didn’t think you’d end up more hurt than him.”

Evan’s smooth tones washed away the worst of her fury. Alaina hated that because it made the pain easier to feel.

The anguish came through loud and clear when she answered him at last. “I wanted you to tell me. I wanted you to trust me enough, to love me enough to want to share this with me.” He reeled, backing away as if Evan hadn’t stopped her from punching him.

Alaina wiggled in Evan’s embrace, wanting to be free. The longer he touched her, the more acute the pain became. He made her relax enough to feel the way her mother’s passing squeezed at her heart.

She didn’t want to feel that, not now. Not yet. She wasn’t ready for it.

“Trust.” Daniel snorted. “That’s rich, coming from you. You have huge trust issues with men, Lainie. You have yet to fully trust either Evan or me.”

In case he was unaware of the hypocrisy of his line of reasoning, Alaina was tempted to point it out. “Yes,” she said. “I have issues with trusting men that stem from my fucked up relationship with my father. I’m well aware of my shortcomings, Daniel, but I’m not half as fucked up regarding men as you are.” Blood drained from Daniel’s face. Evan’s arms dropped away at long last, and he moved to stand next to her. He peered at her through eyes wide with shock. “Alaina, that’s cold.” She turned on Evan. “Cold?
I’m
cold. He’s been stringing you along for how many years, and you have the nerve to accuse
me
of
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being cold?” A chilling thought made her shiver. Since she was already in for a world of hurt, she might as well go all in. “Tell me, Evan, was your mother right? Are you with me because that’s the only way you can hold on to Daniel?” He held up a hand. It was a strong hand, large enough to completely enclose one of her breasts. The pads of his fingers were rough because he frequently forgot to wear work gloves. His palms were callused for the same reason. She loved the way he scraped them gently across her skin when he touched her.

“Yes. No.” That hand rose to beat a path through his hair. It was mussed from where Daniel had run his fingers. “Maybe that’s why I agreed to meet you, but that’s not why I’m still with you. Alaina, I love you. That’s why I’m with you. No other reason.” She believed him. Of the pair, only Daniel set off the alarms in her psyche that made her distrust him.

“Don’t be mad at Evan.”

She swiveled back to look at Daniel. Blood had returned to his face with a vengeance, mottling his cheeks ruddy with embarrassment.

“He’s wanted to tell you from the beginning, but I wouldn’t let him.”

Alaina nodded as if she knew. Perhaps on some level, she had known Daniel was the reason Evan had shared everything about his life, including past boyfriends, except his relationship with Danny.

“You’re ashamed of your feelings for him.” Daniel flinched at her unvarnished assessment. “I didn’t want to lose you, Lainie. I don’t want to lose either of you.” His gaze flicked to Evan as he spoke, fear and pain so palpable it slammed into Alaina’s gut.

It was more than she could take. Sinking down onto Evan’s sofa, she buried her face in her hands, curled into herself, and submitted to the urge to sob. The fit started slowly, with a hiccup and a few
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shudders. From there, it escalated to the point where every muscle in her body ached.

Evan rubbed her back, and Daniel knelt at her feet. They both said things to her, apologies mostly, but the words were vague and meaningless. The events of the day had caught up with her. This confrontation with Evan and Daniel only delayed her tears. When she had envisioned them coming clean, she thought she would listen quietly and with the appropriate gravity. She planned to assure them both that their relationship could only improve with no secrets between them. She thought that when they finally stopped pretending there was nothing between them, everything would automatically turn to sunshine and roses. Birds would sing a symphony just for them.

She hadn’t thought tears would be part of the process, and they weren’t, not really. Grief over her mother’s passing wrenched deep, buried emotions from her gut. By the time she was able to gather her wits, she found herself seated on Evan’s lap, her face buried in his shirt, and her legs lying across Daniel’s. He rubbed her calves and massaged her feet as he had done so often in the evenings.

Silence fell, and it was highly uncomfortable, but Alaina didn’t care. She concentrated on the feel of Evan’s arms around her. This was strength she desperately needed right now.

“I’m sorry, Lainie. I never meant to hurt you.” The apology penetrated the stillness. “And Evan, man, I’m sorry for everything.

I’m not as brave as you.”

Evan reached out, twining his fingers with Daniel’s. Their joined hands rested on Alaina’s thigh, and things finally felt right, or as right as they could be under the circumstances. Alaina knew Evan would say nothing, so she filled the quiet.

“I’m not mad at you, Daniel. I am hurt a little bit, but I understood that you both needed to tell me in your own time. I never meant to force the issue, not this soon. I knew you weren’t ready. That’s also why I didn’t ask you to move in with me even though you spend more time at my house than at either of your places.” Her voice was raw
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from crying, and speaking hurt, but she had to let him know he wasn’t the reason for her tears.

She sat up, pushing away from the warm comfort of Evan so she could see them both. “When you deny your feelings for Evan, you hold pieces of yourself away from each of us. It seems to me that Evan is the only man you’ve ever loved, and that scares the hell out of you. You’re extremely lucky that Evan is loyal, otherwise he would have moved on years ago.”

Daniel looked away, shame darkening his features. “I wasn’t raised this way, Lainie. You don’t know what this means.” When Alaina had pushed herself upright, Evan hadn’t done more than loosen his hold. The hand on her waist tightened. He pursed his lips. “It means you’re going to Hell, Dan. This way, at least you won’t get punished for lying, too.”

“You’ve also had sex out of wedlock, used condoms, taken the name of the lord in vain, and failed to go to church on Sunday.” Alaina tried to keep her face as serious as possible. She didn’t want to add to Evan’s dry teasing.

He stared at her, and she knew he was reasoning with himself. She let him have the time. Evan seemed to instinctually understand that Danny needed a minute to think, not that he was a big talker anyway.

He reached over the arm of the couch and grabbed a glass of water one of them must have procured when she was crying.

“Drink this. I think you leaked at least this much on my shirt.” Alaina did as she was told. His shirt was very wet where her face had been. The water soothed some of the rawness in her throat.

“This is why you wouldn’t marry me.” Evan and Alaina both waited for Daniel to continue. The bass of his voice rumbled through the air, nearly drowning out the whisper of his words.

“When I asked you to marry me and you said Evan’s name, I thought you meant you wouldn’t marry me because you couldn’t
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marry us both. You really meant you couldn’t commit like that because I was hiding my feelings for Evan.” She hadn’t meant that, but she wasn’t going to correct him now.

Just because it wasn’t a correct assumption didn’t make it wrong.

“I’m sorry.” The intensity of his contrition penetrated to her soul.

He followed it with a hard kiss that left her breathless.

Then he turned to Evan. “I’m sorry, Evan. I haven’t treated you the way you deserve to be treated. I don’t know why you’ve hung around for as long as you have, but I’m grateful. As long as I live, I promise to honor what is between us.” Sometimes Alaina forgot just how good Daniel was with words.

From the look on Evan’s face, he had forgotten, too. Daniel reached over and cupped Evan’s cheek. He stared into Evan’s eyes, making promises Alaina knew he would keep, and then he kissed him with a tenderness that brought fresh tears to her eyes.

When the kiss ended, Daniel ran a trembling hand through his hair. “This isn’t going to be easy.” Alaina brushed away her tears. “Nothing worth having is easy. If we lie to each other, if we pretend things aren’t true, then this thing between us won’t last, and I really, really, really want it to work out.” Evan brushed another tear from her cheek. “Why are you still crying, honey?”

The tears came faster now that she didn’t have an excuse to talk about something else. “When I told you I wasn’t upset about this, I wasn’t lying. I went to see my parents about Zach.” Beneath her, Evan’s whole body tensed, but it was Daniel who spoke. “Did they come up with a good reason to justify abandoning their son?”

Alaina nodded, not that she agreed with her parents’ reasoning.

They shouldn’t have hid this from either of their children. “My mom was sick. For the past few months, she’s been fighting lung cancer.

They didn’t want Zach to see… They didn’t want me to see…”
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Sobs forced her to break off, and she hated it. She hated being so weak she couldn’t get through a few simple sentences. Evan’s hand played up and down her spine. He was a man of few words and infinite patience. Between her and Daniel, they both needed someone like him in their lives.

Daniel handed over a wad of tissue.

She wiped her face and breathed herself back into control. “She died. She asked me to take care of Zach, and then she died. She didn’t say she loved me or Zach. She didn’t say goodbye to either of us. She said my dad was a horrible father, but she loved him, and then she died. I didn’t cry or anything. I just took her pulse and listened for a heartbeat, and then I left my dad all alone with her body.” Years of strained silence had destroyed any closeness she might have had with her mother. Part of the reason Alaina chose psychology was in hopes she would finally come to understand why her mother did the things she did. It hadn’t worked. While she loved her mother dearly, they had never been friends. Now that she was gone, any chance they might have become friends was also gone. Alaina mourned that loss just as much as she mourned her mother.

Evan pried open her hands and took the remains of tissue from her. Daniel dried her tears with a fresh tissue and offered her more water. She didn’t expect them to be broken up by her mother’s death.