18. The Face of Truth #4
Because it was… it was more than a name, it was an entire identity, a reality she had never suspected, one she still, even now, could not suspect, understand, or reconcile within her confused mind.
Her head spun round and round, attempting to make sense of this shocking, cold truth that a single name had unveiled before her.
“What in God’s name are you saying?”
Her hands slipped from his grip. And he let them go without resistance, as if he had no strength left to hold on. He just stayed there, staring at her, watching her break little by little.
Color had drained from Kate’s face completely, her breathing began to quicken, her confused eyes darting over Jason’s, trying to understand something beyond her comprehension.
For amidst such a fog, she was also attempting to reconcile the warmth she had felt earlier, the desire, the intimacy, with this confession that changed everything, turning her world upside down, leaving her reeling, and utterly stunned, as if she had just taken a crushing blow to the gut, instantly knocking the wind out of her.
The very foundations of her trust, her attraction, and her understanding of everything that lay between them seemed to teeter beneath the weight of a reality that was spiraling out of her control.
She stumbled back a step, then another, her hand flying to her throat as if to physically contain the whirlwind of shock, fascination, and disorientation that had overtaken her. The room seemed to shrink, walls closing in, her entire world condensed into this single, shattering revelation.
As tears spilled freely from Jason’s eyes, he slowly reached up then and loosened the cravat at his neck. His fingers shook as he unfastened more buttons of his shirt, revealing the edge of the binding that had hidden his true nature for so many years.
Kate’s gasp could be heard loud enough in the room at what she saw.
“No,” she said. “That’s not—you can’t be—” She shook her head violently, as if she could shake away the words she’d just heard, or what her eyes now saw. “No. No, that’s not possible.”
Jason stepped forward, desperate to explain, to bridge the chasm of shock between them, but Kate’s hand shot up, stopping him in his tracks.
“Do not,” the word came out fierce, final. “Do not you dare…”
Kate was finding it difficult to breathe, completely panicked now. She pressed herself against the desk’s edge, seeking support as her world tilted on its axis, as though the very floor had been yanked from beneath her.
Jason was crying openly now, his tears cascading unchecked, blurring the contours of his face.
“You’re telling me…” Kate struggled to get the words out between gasps. She closed her eyes to not see. “You’re telling me that I’ve been married to… that I’ve been kissing… that I let you touch me and you’re—”
Her words died on her lips. She swallowed hard.
“There is no Jason Moore,” Gina, then, said through her crying, her voice now pitched in its natural register, higher, softer, undeniably feminine. “There never was.”
Kate’s face contorted as if struck, her eyes opening as the full implications became clear in her cloudy mind. The person she had married, had fallen in love with, had shared intimacy with—was a lie, a disguise.
“How is this possible?” Kate whispered in a broken voice. “All this time…”
“For ten years, I’ve lived as a man.” Gina’s words came in a rush now. “It was the only way I could move freely in the world, conduct business, live independently. The only way I could survive.”
Kate turned away, pressing her palms firmly against the desk for support, not wanting to hear more. Her face remained contorted by the awful truth, as shock, confusion, and betrayal etched across her features like a canvas of pain.
“Our marriage…” she began, then stopped, closing her eyes again as her own tears came down freely on the desk.
“Our marriage exists in name alone,” Gina finished. “I’m sorry,” she added in a whisper. “I am so, so truly sorry.”
Kate spun toward her, fury breaking through just a little. “You are sorry? Really? You’ve deceived me from the beginning,” she said abruptly and stopped again.
Jason, or Gina, or whoever, still appeared outwardly male, the visage of masculinity masking the truth, yet the voice, the trembling, the tears, the confession, the binding at her chest, laid bare everything.
“Yes,” confirmed Gina, and the single word carried the weight of months of guilt.
“Our partnership, our friendship…” Kate spoke with fury, with pain and confusion, all at once. “Were any of it real?”
“Those were real.” Gina stepped forward, then stopped. “Are real. Everything between us except—”
“Except your true identity.” Kate’s face showed the horror of those words. “Except the truth.”
She shook her head, struggling to reconcile what she had known with what she was learning. The person she had trusted, had opened her heart to, had been living a fundamental lie every moment they had been together.
“And all those times I…” She stopped, color rising in her cheeks as memories flooded back, every attempted intimacy, every moment of vulnerability, every time she had wondered why her husband seemed so different from other men.
Gina closed her eyes as fresh tears slid down her cheeks.
The softness, the fragility, the undeniable feminine presence before her struck Kate in a way that only deepened her confusion.
Her chest felt suddenly tight, as if a stone had replaced her heart, while a strange mix of sympathy, longing, and raw, unexpected ache pressed against her ribs.
The instinctive desire to reach out, to touch this…
person in front of her, flared violently inside her.
It was unbearable.
Something stirred deep within her. Something tender, something fierce, something that made her mind and body feel like opposing forces at war.
She turned her back on her again, not wanting to see, not wanting to acknowledge fully the storm of emotions threatening to overtake her.
She pressed a hand to her chest, heart hammering wildly, every pulse a reminder of the confusion, the desire, and the heartbreak that had been threading through their relationship all along.
The room seemed impossibly small, every sound and breath magnified, as if the revelation had condensed the entire world into this single, overwhelming moment.
Gina opened her eyes and saw Kate’s rejection in her body posture, turning her back on her again as if she were a horrible creature. That hit her harder than anything else.
“I wanted to tell you,” she said quietly. “So many times.”
“But you didn’t.” Kate’s voice was steady now, cold.
“I was afraid to lose you.”
Kate stood still after her words, her back to him, to her, rigid. Her shoulders squared. And when she finally spoke, her words carried the finality of a door closing.
“And now you have.”
She moved toward the doorway that led her away from him, from her, each step intentional and final.
Gina watched her reach the handle, with the desperation of someone who can do nothing. She didn’t try to stop her. She just stayed there, crying silently, while her back came to rest on the windows frame, trying to seek support there.
Kate paused at the threshold, her back straight with wounded dignity.
“Kate, please. Let me explain.”
When Kate turned, the moonlight caught the glint of the traces of previous tears that streaked across her face.
“I think you’ve explained quite enough for one evening, Mr. Moore-Sullivan.” The formal address was a deliberate wound. “Or should I say, Miss Moore?”
Gina did not respond.
Kate opened the door and walked away, leaving her alone in the study with nothing but the echoing sound of her footsteps and the weight of truth finally, terribly, revealed.