The Lies That We Tell

Chapter 12

“I just don’t understand why I’m being asked to wait outside?” Aubree asks, pouting with tears in her eyes. “ We’re going to be married soon, anything that affects Tate affects me too.”

The detectives look at eachother, then the chatty one looks pointedly at Aubree. “Miss Miller, as soon as you become Misses Crawford, the right to be by his side for a discussion on an investigation he is involved in will be all yours.”

“Until then, it has nothing to do with you,” the quiet detective chooses this moment to speak up.

“Aubree, I’ve called a car to pick you up and take you home for now. He’s waiting outside as we speak,” My father chimes in.

“And what about my safety?” she huffs. “You’ve got two police officers stationed outside this door, and I overheard you talking about the officers guarding that stupid redhead, even though she just likes to sneak off and roll around with random men.”

“Aubree, if you’re attacked or threatened by anyone, you call me directly,” the chatty detective hands her a white business card. “I’ll personally make sure a protection detail is set up for you.”

“Tate, do something,” she whines. I’ve had a headache since I woke up, and her constant whining isn’t helping at all. “Tell them you need me to stay.”

“Aubree, honey,” I say from my place in the small, uncomfortable bed. “I think home is the safest place for you right now.”

“Fine, if you don’t want me here either, I’ll leave.” She pouts, standing up. With her arms folded over her chest and her small Chanel purse flung over her shoulder, she stomps out of the room.

I heave a sigh of relief at the silence that follows my fiancee’s dramatic exit. How did I end up here? Not in the hospital, I know how that happened. But engaged to a vapid self absorbed socialite. Maybe it’s the near death experience, maybe it’s the pain medications the doctors have me on, but I’ve never been so glad to have her leave so quickly. I wish I could say I love her, and maybe in the beginning I almost did love her. It’s not like I haven’t tried to make myself love Aubree, it’s just that my heart belongs to someone I can never have. The one person I’ve loved for as long as I can remember. Well, one of the two people. One, who is beyond my reach in any lifetime, in any world, and the other who would be utterly disgusted by my feelings for him and would probably have no issue with finishing what the guys who attacked me last night started.

I’ve hated myself for loving Rhyann ever since my mother explained why she would always be the one person I can’t have. Why Rhyann is so out of reach and I’d have better luck catching a falling star than I would loving her. That was the night my mother left my father and I vowed to make Rhyann hate me as much as I loved her. It was also the night after Rhyann and Liam found Rhyann”s father dead, hanging from the ceiling beams of his study. I always wondered if that was why my mom left, if the sorrow that hung over the Devereux home was what drove her away, or if it was the guilt she carried because of all that she confessed to me that night.

All of our worlds turned upside down after that, and I was scared that I’d lose Rhyann too. She was only ten years old, lost her mother to cancer the year before, and my mom jumped right in as the female role model for Rhy. Then her dad commits suicide and my mother abandoned us both. Rhyann was orphaned, left with no one but her grandfather to raise her, and I had never felt so alone. Something in me changed, I couldn’t bear to see Rhyann alone, I hated myself for making her hate me, and I decided we needed to be friends. I thought for a short time I could deal with being her friend if I couldn’t love her. We were just kids back then anyway, I didn’t fully understand what love was until later on. When I found out that Liam had claimed her first kiss.

I hated them both for that, hated the fact that he could have something I wanted but would never be able to have. So I went back to making her hate me. I thought it would be easier that way.

When her grandfather sent her away to that boarding school, things did get easier, for a time. I missed her laugh, the way she would call the three of us out on our bullshit. I missed her smile, and the shade of red her face turned whenever we made her angry, it was almost the color of her red hair.

The twins and I became closer, we had been best friends since we met in kindergarten, but we grew closer without Rhyann”s presence to divide us. When she came home on vacations, she bonded with the twins’ sister, Gemma. She was the last piece of the Morris triplets. When Gemma was murdered in highschool, Devon went off the rails. He disappeared for a week, they never found the guy who raped and killed his sister and when Dev came back he was a shell of his former self. But Rhyann came home that summer, and the two bonded for a short time, and it seemed we were going to have the same old Devon back. But something happened between the two of them, something that neither one has ever mentioned, and he grew to hate Rhyann as much as I wish I could hate her.

One night, after having two too many drinks down in San Diego, I confessed to Devon my feelings for Rhyann. Told him everything. Well, everything except the secret my mother swore to me the night she left. The two of us bonded over our love-hate relationship with the princess who ruled over our lives, and something happened. Something that, to this day, Devon and I will not speak of to anyone, and I fell in love with one of my two best friends.

After that, my only recourse was Aubree. She had joined her father on a business trip to the Bay Area, to meet with Rhyann”s grandfather about trying to buy parts of Devereux Publications. The business meeting was an epic failure for Aubree’s father, but the blonde haired girl was pleasant. She was soft where Rhyann was hardened from the lifetime of loss and lack of affection. She had a good sense of humor and self-worth that Devon seemed to lose when his sister died. She was everything they weren’t and I thought then, if I can’t be happy in the darkness with the two people who owned my heart, I’d rather be broken in the sunshine and brightness that was Aubree.

The only problem with that is the longer we are engaged, the more I see of her ugly side. My fiance is a wretched human being, she’s spoiled, selfish, vapid and has no compassion for anyone whose bank statement has less than six zeros at the end of it. But I’m stuck with her. Because to be without her while I watch the people I love fall in love with each other would drive me to meet the same fate as Garret Montgomery, Rhyann”s father.