Captivating You (How to Marry a Billionaire #2)

Episode 59

EPISODE 59

SECRET LOVE

River

I nod to Alex and Seb. “Would you two excuse us for a minute? I need to talk to Brett alone.”

“Yeah, no prob.” Alex hands me the bottle of bourbon. “You need this?”

I shake my head.

“Speak for yourself.” Brett takes the bottle. “Thanks, man.”

Once I’ve led him away from Alex and Seb, Brett turns on me with fire in his blue eyes. “The fuck, Riv? You know I’d take a bullet for you, and you’re treating me like I’m the enemy here.”

“Interesting words,” I say. “I never once said why I wanted to talk to you.”

“You think I still can’t read you like a book after all these years? You may look like the quiet and contemplative cowboy to everyone else here, but I know better. You’re angry with me, and I want to know why.”

“I’m not angry.” I take care to keep my voice even. In truth, I’m not angry.

Brett is just Brett. You don’t punish a spider for eating a fly. It’s in his nature.

It’s in Brett’s nature to be in the here and now—to enjoy his good fortune and bask in it. He doesn’t think about Jake the way Alex, Seb, and I do. To Brett, the past is the past—even as horrific as ours was. He doesn’t worry about it coming back to haunt him. In a way, it didn’t happen for him the way it happened for the rest of us—at least in his head.

One day I’m going to be so rich, this thing we’re about to do will be a distant memory. Something like a dream within a dream.

Those were Brett’s words the night before, and that’s how he thinks of all this. As if it were a dream within a dream.

More like a nightmare, but semantics.

“You think I don’t care about him.” Brett takes a swig from the bottle.

“About who?”

“Who do you think? Jake, of course. You think just because I don’t write song lyrics in my head or have some great idea for a coming-of-age novel, I don’t feel him.” He touches his heart. “I do, Riv. Maybe even more than the rest of you.”

I don’t want to do Brett a disservice. He liked Jake. In fact, he was worried about him just as I was back then. Worried about why he was so quick to agree to the crime we committed.

“I’m the one who came to you the night before,” Brett says. “Remember? We shared some beers on your porch and I asked you to tell me what was going on with Jake. That I feared if his head wasn’t in the game, something could go wrong.”

“Nothing went wrong,” I say quietly.

My words aren’t a lie. The original plan went perfectly. Wrong didn’t happen until later.

Brett shakes his head, hands me the bottle, and lights another cigarette. Brett only smokes when he’s really bugged, and I get the feeling it’s not Misty and her secrets that have him going.

“You should have told me.” Brett takes a puff on his cigarette.

“About Marnie? It wasn’t my story to tell, Brett. Jake swore me to secrecy.”

“Fucking Marnie.” Brett shakes his head. “Couldn’t mind her own damned business.”

Brett never liked Marnie much, and he made sure the rest of us knew it. He thought she was using Jake, but in truth, she was a sweetheart, and she didn't deserve her fate. “That’s not fair, Brett. She was worried about Jake.”

“And you think I wasn’t ?” Brett takes another long drag on the cigarette.

“Did I say that?”

“Give me that.” He yanks the bottle of bourbon from me and takes a long drink. He hands it back to me, takes another drag on his butt. “You all think that because I don’t play a damned violin every time Jake is mentioned that I don’t care. Let me tell you something. Maybe I care more .”

“You and Jake weren’t close,” I say.

“Maybe I wanted to be.”

I cock my head. What the hell is he getting at?

“You know me better than anyone, River. I’ve let you in to places I’ve never let another, but there are still some things I don’t talk about to anyone. Things I don’t ever let myself think about.”

“About that night,” I say. “I know that. ‘A dream within a dream.’”

Brett threads his fingers through his blond hair. “You’re like a damned elephant, Riv. You never forget a thing.”

“Not about that time in our lives. Hell no, I don’t. It’s ingrained in my memory as if it’s etched in stone.”

“You think Misty’s telling the truth?” he asks. “Is she Jake’s sister?”

“I’d say we need to get a DNA test, but what good would that do? Jake’s gone. God knows where Lisa is. Who could we compare her DNA to?”

“Misty’s parents have money. They probably know where Lisa is.”

“My guess is they’ve paid her off to stay away. That was probably part of the deal.” I take another drink.

“Maybe. But damn, Riv. I almost want this to be true.”

I do a double take. Literally. I look at Brett, look away, and look back at him, meeting his gaze. “Say what?”

“See? You think I don’t care. You think it’s truly a dream within a dream for me. What you don’t know is I lost something fifteen years ago—something more important to me than my own damned life.”

My lips part, and I stare at my friend. At his mussed blond hair, his T-shirt, his bare feet. His blue eyes that now hold a hint of sadness. I take all of him in.

And I’m damned confused. We all lost something. What the hell am I missing?

“If this is true,” Brett says, “then we have a little piece of Jake right here on the island. We have his baby sister.”

My lips are still parted, and I close them. I’m more confounded than ever at Brett’s words.

“You’re going to have to throw me a bone here,” I say. “I don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about, Brett.”

“No, you don’t. But if you could read me the way I can read you, you’d know. Hell, you’d have known then.”

“You actually want Misty to be Jake’s sister?”

“It wouldn’t be the worst thing.”

I take another drink, look off toward the ocean, and try to figure out what the hell has happened to my best friend and why he’s been replaced with some kind of doppelg?nger. “She’s been nothing but trouble since we got here. Within two damned days, she’s turned this whole thing upside down. Rachel’s in the hospital, for God’s sake, and Emily got a call earlier from Ginger, telling her that Rachel said not to trust her.”

“Not to trust who?”

“Rachel only said ‘her,’ but she had to mean Misty. Who else?”

“Could be anyone. Any of the women. Even Evie.”

“I don’t get you.” I rub the ache springing up in my forehead. “Why do you want to give Misty the benefit of the doubt all of a sudden?”

“If she’s Jake’s sister, she deserves the benefit of the doubt.”

“And why, exactly?”

“Because if she is, then we still have part of Jake. We still have—” Brett stops abruptly, takes the last drag of his cigarette, and then throws the butt to the sand and stamps it out. “I don’t want her to leave.”

“Fine. She stays. I already told her I’m leaving, anyway.”

“You’re what?” Brett takes a step toward me. “No way, Riv. We’re all in this together.”

“I’ll stay on one condition,” I say. “Misty leaves. You choose.”

“I can’t.”

“What? I don’t get it.”

“I know you don’t. You never knew me as well as I knew you.”

“Enlighten me then.”

“I don’t want you to leave, River. And I don’t want her to leave either. In fact, I’d like to get to know her better.” He smiles. “God, Jake hated me sometimes.”

“He did. But he also loved you. He looked up to you, Brett. We all did.”

“He thought I was a bad seed, and in some ways, I was. But man, I would have done anything for that kid.”

“Of course you would have. You would have done anything for any one of us.”

“Fuck. You’re not understanding what I’m saying.”

I look at him then. Really look at my friend standing in the moonlight. The look in his eyes is one of longing. As if part of his soul is lost. As if?—

The truth hits me straight between my eyes. I know it as if it’s always been part of me, but I didn’t acknowledge it. Times were different, and we lived in small-town Montana. Brett was so popular with the girls. He loved the girls.

But...

He also loved someone else. And he didn't dislike Marnie. He was jealous of her.

“Fuck, Brett.”

“The only one, Riv. Jake was the only guy I’ve ever been in love with. Hell, I’m pretty sure he’s the only person I’ve ever been in love with. I love women. I love to fuck them. But I haven’t yet fallen in love.”

“Why don’t you date men then?”

“Because I’m not attracted to men generally. I’m not gay. Maybe bi, but I’ve never found another man I wanted to be with the way I wanted Jake.”

“And now... Misty...”

“Yeah. She’s part of Jake, Riv. Maybe I can still have a little piece of Jake.”