Tangled In Lies (Tangled & Torn #1)

25. Evangeline

Chapter 25

Evangeline

M y heart pulses so violently I’m genuinely concerned it might explode.

I put my hand on my chest, as if that could keep it all together, and stare at Phoenix with my mouth hanging wide open.

“The baby wasn’t mine.”

My brain reboots, and I yell the first thing my mind can grasp, “She cheated on you?”

Phoenix shakes his head, still completely composed. “She didn’t.”

I rear back. “What? She didn’t? But how is this possible then?”

Phoenix waves his index finger back and forth. “I can’t be the only one handing out answers. A truth for a truth?”

He raises his brows, looking at me like he knows he’s got me cornered, and I have nowhere else to go. He isn’t wrong. He just doesn’t know I was already planning on telling him everything today anyway.

So I push away the sense of dread that wants to overtake my brain and nod. “Deal.”

His mouth curves into a ghost of a smile because he knows exactly what he’s doing.

Beautiful bastard.

I wait for him to tell me more, still in shock over his revelation. It also raises the question of what else he hasn’t told me.

He raises an eyebrow. “I think it’s your turn.”

Of course. Dang it.

I open my mouth, still not completely sure where to even start, when he lifts his finger again.

“How did you know I was at the warehouse where they arrested me?”

Shit. Going straight for the throat.

My mouth is dry, and I reach for my juice, drinking the whole thing in one gulp.

Phoenix’s gaze on me is intense.

Try to focus.

It wasn’t his baby.

It. Wasn’t. His. Baby.

I didn’t kill his baby.

Oh my God, I didn’t kill Phoenix’s baby.

But you still killed your sister and her baby.

I cringe at the thought, then blurt out the words before I chicken out. “Text message.”

Phoenix’s expression doesn’t change, like he expected this answer. “From Freddy?”

“Yes. He texted me to call nine-one-one, what to tell them, and the address.”

He opens his mouth again, probably to ask more, and this time, I’m the one to lift my finger to interrupt him.

“My turn.” I pause for a moment, my thoughts going a mile a minute. “If the baby wasn’t yours, who was the father?”

“Chris Wellinger.”

“What? Are you serious?” I’m yelling again, but I think we both know my composure left the room a long time ago. “You kidnapped and beat up the father of your fiancée’s baby?”

Wow, that sounded bad in my head but even worse out loud.

“Yes.” His gaze narrows on me for a split second as if to tell me I’m done with my turn. “Was that the first time Freddy contacted you when you called nine-one-one?”

Sweat forms at my nape, and I have to rub my hands on my pants several times to get rid of the clamminess.

Just tell him.

Soon, he’ll know my worst secret. The one I’m most ashamed of and would gladly die for if I could have a redo.

I push back my shoulders and say, “No, it wasn’t the first time.”

His head moves up and down like he’s nodding to himself, taking in the information and probably trying to connect the dots like I am.

Because apparently, Chris Wellinger, one of my dad’s long-time business partners, was the father of my sister’s unborn baby, and Phoenix kidnapped Chris and then went to prison for assault. My father hasn’t mentioned Chris since, and I’ve never seen him at any events again either.

But if Phoenix wasn’t the father, then . . . “Why were you marrying my sister when she was pregnant with someone else’s baby? ”

His answer is immediate. “She found herself in a shitty situation, and I wanted to help her, so I did and told her I’d marry her.”

Time seems to slow down as I blink at him and try to process the news he just dropped on me.

Holy shit.

Can a heart and a brain explode at the same time?

“You.” I point at him while simultaneously doing another poor imitation of a gaping fish. “You . . . you were going to marry my sister to help her because she was pregnant with someone else’s baby?”

“Yes.” He averts his gaze for the first time, picking at his pants. “Does it seem like such an outlandish thing that I’d want to help a friend?”

It takes my brain a moment to digest his words. Then I hold up my hand. “No, that’s not what I meant. I’m just shocked. You guys looked so . . . so happy together. So in love. This is . . . wow.”

He huffs. “That was the whole point, to make people believe the relationship was real. She was a good friend, so it was easy.”

Easy . He said pretending to be in love with my sister was easy because she was his friend.

His friend .

My sister made me believe she was in love with Phoenix, the guy she knew I had a crush on. She knew she was going to destroy me with that. I kept telling myself I was happy for her, that if she and Phoenix were in love, he and I were clearly never meant to be. But they weren’t. They fucking weren’t in love. They were only friends .

Why didn’t she tell me what was really going on? Why was she causing me so much pain on purpose?

Maybe things would have gone differently if she had told me the truth. Perhaps she would still be alive. The things I said to her that night. Oh my God.

I rub my forehead, a headache already brewing.

The past mixes with the present in such a twisted way that everything I thought I knew is turned upside down and tossed overboard.

“Eve.”

My head snaps up. “Huh?”

“I asked when Freddy contacted you for the first time.”

I avert my gaze because I can’t watch him when he finds out what I did. My hands shake, and I wrap my arms around my stomach, sinking deeper into the chair. I want to disappear, be anywhere but here.

My voice sounds far away when I say, “A few days before the nine-one-one call.”

“A few days before?”

I hear the confusion in his question, but I still don’t lift my gaze.

My vision blurs. My legs bounce. I stare at my lap.

“Yes.”

He shifts around. “What did he message you?”

“To call nine-one-one.”

“About me?”

“Yes.”

He doesn’t wait for a second and fires off the next question. “But you didn’t call them?”

I shake my head. “I didn’t.”

“Eve, look at me.” He waits and waits, and then he’s suddenly on his knees in front of me, with his hands gently on the outside of my thighs. “What made you change your mind? Why did you call the cops a few days later?”

He stares at me like he can figure it all out as long as his gaze is on me.

The body tremors have reached uncontrollable levels, and I’m shaking violently from head to toe. The sensations attack me from all sides: the crawling feeling under my skin, my suddenly sluggish heartbeat, the unbearable pain in my chest, the dizziness and nausea.

I want to curl up into a tight ball and cease to exist.

My chin drops to my chest, and all of my emotions come out in a pained noise that sounds inhuman. “Because my sister died. I was supposed to make a phone call but didn’t do it. I killed her, Phoenix. I’m the reason my sister is dead.”

Phoenix’s hands are on me. He pulls me into his arms. Gently. I bury my face into his chest, wanting nothing more than to disappear. I don’t want to feel like this anymore. Pain, guilt, and shame are all ripping me apart from the inside.

Phoenix walks us to the bed and maneuvers us onto it, his embrace solid and unyielding, never letting go of me. He makes me feel safe in a way I’ve never felt before. Nothing bad can happen as long as I’m with him. It’s a faulty notion, an illusion to screw with me because we both know we’re not safe. No one is safe from the devil.

“Shh.” Phoenix rubs his hand over my back.

My body seems to remember the soothing motion, immediately calming down. Silent tears run down my cheeks, but I do nothing to stop them. Weirdly enough, they offer me solace. Maybe I can cry all of this pain out once and for all.

“Eve, it wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know you were dealing with a psychopath. There was no way you could’ve known. You can’t blame yourself.”

It takes me several tries to get words out of my mouth. “If only I had told someone right away. Maybe things would have gone differently. But I thought it was just some idiot playing games.”

He blows out a breath, the motion tickling my hair. “Most people wouldn’t have taken it seriously, and I honestly don’t think it would’ve made a difference had you told someone.”

“I don’t know. I just feel like I should have done something.”

“Even if you’d gone to the police with one text message from what I assume is a burner phone, it wouldn’t have mattered. If they had acted on it, which is doubtful, they probably wouldn’t have found him in time.”

In time to save my sister. That’s what he’s not saying.

And maybe he’s right. That’s the whole thing about retrospection and could haves and should haves. There’s no way of knowing. Logically, it makes sense the police probably couldn’t have prevented what happened. Involving them could have actually made things worse. But my heart doesn’t want to hear anything about that. It’s hurting, even after all this time, and I don’t think it’ll ever not hurt when I think about my sister. The grief is my living proof of how much I loved her. Just like there can’t be happiness without unhappiness, maybe there can’t be love without hate or loss either .

I sniff. “Connie didn’t deserve this.”

He shifts us around so we lie facing each other and cups my cheeks. “You’re right, she didn’t. But listen to me, you didn’t deserve any of this either. And you certainly are not responsible for her death.”

I stay quiet and focus on keeping my breathing as even as possible.

He wipes a thumb over my tears. “So you haven’t told anyone about this in all these years?”

I close my eyes for a moment and shake my head.

“Eve.”

His voice is laced with pain when he says my name.

I bite the inside of my cheek in response to hearing it. “I couldn’t.”

“You’ve been living with this secret, with this sorrow, all this time. I wish I would have known.”

The torment in his eyes is almost too much, spearing me straight through the heart.

“I killed your fiancée and what I thought was your baby.”

“Fuck.” He exhales harshly, then closes the distance between us to wrap his arms around me. “Everything could have gone so differently. I was so confused, so hurt and angry, when I found out you were the one who called the police. I didn’t understand why you hated me that much.”

I’m pressed against his chest, and it’s easier to talk when I don’t have to see him. “I’ve never hated you, Phoenix. Not for a single day in my life, and trust me, I’ve tried.”

I expect him to pull back, but he doesn’t, allowing me to stay in this warm cocoon.

After a moment of silence, he says, “You know, there was a time when I was hoping you’d hate me. ”

I repeat his words in my head, but they don’t make sense. “You wanted me to hate you?”

“Not really, but I didn’t want to drag you into my messed-up world, so I kept telling myself if you hated me, at least you would take yourself out of this equation and move on.”

“What equation?”

“The equation of you and me, Angel. The inevitability of us. I was trying so hard to stay away from you because I knew it would be better for you. It would allow you to follow your dreams and travel the world, enchanting millions of people with your music. I didn’t want you to be stuck with me and the consequences of what it means to be the heir of Montgomery Enterprises. I never wanted that life for you.”

My breath gets stuck in my chest.

I didn’t imagine it.

He’d wanted me too.

I thought there would never be a future with Phoenix and tried to make peace with that, especially once he and Connie announced their engagement and she told me about the baby. I thought I’d dealt with it properly, healed as much as I could. I didn’t expect this excruciating pain behind my rib cage at his admission, or that the loss of what could have been would threaten to tear me apart.

During this conversation, I’ve allowed myself to share a piece of my burden and secrets with another person for the first time. I never expected we’d end up here. With a heart I thought had healed enough to survive.

But I was wrong, so very wrong.

Now, I’m left with old wounds that have reopened to the point I’m not sure they’ll ever fully close again.