Chapter 42
Chapter Forty-Two
ELIZABETH
The Lies That Bind Us
What is going on? I feel like I’ve suddenly fallen down Alice’s rabbit hole, where everything is bizarre and different and nothing makes sense.
Not understanding, I turn my confusion toward Fallon. “What does that even mean?” I demand.
Fallon’s shoulders hunch forward, his normally confident posture collapsing in on itself, like a man carrying too much weight for too long. “I was going to tell you.”
Oh my god. Let me off this spinning teacup from hell. “ Tell. Me. What? ” I shout.
“Liz, let’s go back to the house. We can talk there,” Julien implores, but I’m not having it.
I cross obstinate arms over my chest. “I’m not going anywhere until someone starts making sense.”
“Seattle,” Fallon says, confounding me even more.
“What about Seattle?”
I turn to Jayson, my feet on a pivot, wanting someone to give me a straight answer.
“He knew you were in Seattle.”
Reality tilts with a sickening lurch. “When?” Because surely, Jayson doesn’t mean…does he? I spin back around, and the regret I see on Fallon’s face makes me want to vomit. “When?”
“Kitten—”
My nails cut into my palms when I clench my fists. “ When?! ”
“The guy I hired after?—”
“Stop.” I furiously shake my head to cut him off. Only Ryder, me, and Trevor know about Peter. About what really happened that night. And that secret will remain buried with that evil bastard and never see the light of day. “You knew where I was that entire year?”
“He found you months later.”
Going back to that time, I try to figure out the where and the when. It must have been after I was released from the private facility Daniel kept me in under a false name when I was in a coma.
Swallowing the bile that wants to rise, I ask the one question that will completely destroy me if he says yes. “Did you know about Elizabeth Ann?”
Fallon looks horrified. “Fuck, Elizabeth, do you really think I would be that cruel? I swear I didn’t know. If I did?—”
“If you found me, why didn’t you tell them?” I frantically gesture at Jayson and Julien. “You knew they were looking for me.”
Fallon’s ire meets my own. “But you didn’t remember them. You didn’t remember anything. I wasn’t about to upturn your life again when you were happy. You were happy there. In every picture I was sent, you were smiling. You had a new life with Daniel and Drew. You were safe.”
“It wasn’t for you to decide what was best for me! My life was always here. With them. With Ryder. How could you do that to him? How could you not tell him?”
“Liz, please?—”
I whirl on Jayson. “Shut. Up!”
Ugly silence stretches into forever, thick and unbearable. Fallon’s head lifts, his blue eyes clouded with something close to remorse. “Ry knew.”
Two words.
Two devastating, world-shattering words.
My stomach drops so violently, I might as well have walked off the side of a cliff.
“No, he didn’t.” The denial rips from my throat.
“I told him when we were in Barcelona. He made me promise never to tell you.”
Why would he do that?
Reality doesn’t just tilt—it slants at an impossible angle that can never be corrected.
“Ryder knew?” My voice breaks, along with my heart.
“Yes.”
And just like that, my anger explodes, splintering into something sharp and vicious.
“ My husband knew…and he didn’t tell me?
” Fallon reaches for me, but I jerk away and throw my fury at the two men who’ve been my everything since I was six years old.
“Who else has been keeping my own damn life a secret from me?”
Jayson flinches, pain flashing across his features, and Julien has the audacity to look devastated.
Tears blur my vision. “Fuck you!” I say to them and jab a finger at Fallon. “Fuck you.” Then I look down at the grave where my husband is buried. “And fuck you. None of you had a right to do that. My life is my choice, whether I remembered it or not!”
Not able to stand there any longer without punching one of them, I take off up the hill.
How many times will I be forced to fight the same battle?
Why is it so hard for everyone to let me make my own decisions?
Good or bad, fail or succeed. It’s my damn choice.
I don’t need to be bubble-wrapped from life and placed in a gilded cage.
I may stumble along the way, but I’ve proven over and over that I’m strong enough to survive whatever the world tries to throw at me.
But what I can’t wrap my head around is the fact that Ryder knew since Barcelona and didn’t say anything.
I may have lost my memories, but my heart knew where I belonged.
It led me to CU. It brought me back to them.
It gave me my second chance with Ryder and opened itself up to Fallon… and hurt Jayson.
If Jayson knew where I was, if someone had just told him, that entire year never would have happened.
Jayson wouldn’t have started drinking. He wouldn’t have started fighting.
His life would have turned out vastly different.
All those damnable what-ifs that could be but never got a chance to be fully realized.
I fling open the side door to the garage more forcefully than I should. It rebounds off the Hardy plank with a loud crack and slams shut as soon as I walk inside. Going straight for my car, I make sure the extra key fob is in the glove compartment box, then start the engine.
The passenger door suddenly opens just as the garage door lifts, and Jayson drops into the seat.
I don’t even look at him. “Get out.”
He pulls the door closed, locks it, and secures the seat belt over his chest. “Not happening.”
“Suit yourself.” I resist the urge to wheelspin out of the garage, my annoyance urging me to take out my frustrations by driving reckless and fast. I catch Knox and Tate’s perplexed looks through the window glass when I pass them.
Jayson’s fast breaths fill the interior. He must have sprinted after me soon after I stormed off. “Are you?—”
“Don’t talk,” I snap.
As soon as I get to the front driveway, my damn phone rings, and Marcus’s name pops up on my dashboard’s screen.
Pressing the button on the steering wheel, I put on a bright, cheery voice. “Hey, sweetie.”
“Why are you leaving the party? Did something happen?”
I detest lying, especially to my children. “I’m just heading to the store real quick.”
“It’s past nine. They’re closed.”
“Convenience store. We’re running low on bagged ice and drinks. I won’t be gone long.”
“I would’ve done that.”
The centrifugal force slams Jayson against the side of the door when I come into the curve too fast.
“I’ve got it. Go dance with Hannah.”
Through the anger, a smile sneaks its way in when he grumbles, “I’m never bringing another girl to the house.”
“Love you.” I disconnect and focus on the road ahead.
The headlights cut through the darkness as I drive with no particular destination in mind. Just the open road and my muddled thoughts.
“How long have you known? Did Ryder tell you?”
Jayson turns in his seat. “Does it matter?”
Not really. I’m still going to be upset with whatever he says. “Humor me.”
Jayson props his elbow on the side of the door and stares out the window. “Remember that shitty PI we hired?”
I remember them telling me that they hired one. “Yeah.”
“Ran into him a few months ago at one of my AA meetings. Apparently, he moved to San Francisco for the fresh air.”
“And?”
“And it turns out there was a bunch of stuff he never told us.”
Slowing down, I pull off onto a dirt road that leads to an old retaining pond. “And he somehow remembered everything when he saw you?”
Jayson drums his fingers on the sill. “Dying has a habit of forcing deep confessions.” When all I can do is gape at him, he says, “Pancreatic cancer.”
“I’m really sorry to hear that.” The average five-year survival rate for that form of cancer is very low.
Parking the car next to a copse of trees, I shut off the engine. “What I don’t understand is why Ryder didn’t say anything. Why would he tell Fallon not to tell me? Out of everyone, he knew how much I hated secrets.”
Jayson’s hand covers mine in my lap. “I don’t know. But the one thing I do know with absolute certainty is how much Ry loved you. Don’t be angry with him, or—and I can’t believe I’m saying this—with Fallon for honoring a promise he made to Ry.”
“You’re right. I can’t believe you said that.” He flashes me a dimpled grin, and seeing it makes everything a little less crappy. “I’m really glad you’re here.”
Our fingers thread together. “Me, too.” He looks around, but there’s not much to see other than a few trees and a field overgrown with Broomsedge. “Where is here exactly?” he asks.
“About a half mile from the house. Old pasture that hasn’t been used in a while. The owner lets the kids ride their bikes out here.”
Getting out, I climb onto the hood of the car and use the windshield as a backrest. The metal is still hot, but the heat feels good on the backs of my legs. The car bounces on its shock absorbers when Jayson joins me, our shoulders touching when he lies back.
“Sky is pretty tonight,” I say, gazing up at the stars.
Jayson turns his head, and I can feel his eyes on me. “If you want to talk, I’ve been told by a very reliable source that I’m a good listener.”
“That so?”
“Yep. Smartest woman I know. Blonde hair. Green eyes. Musically gifted and drives a red Hellcat.” He bumps me with his shoulder and tucks his arm under me when I scoot closer.
Resting my head against his chest, I tell him, “I wish we could stay and sleep out under the stars.”
Ryder and I would have date nights under the stars in the backyard.
Not wanting to miss a campout, the kids would often join us.
We bought a big mesh tent to keep out the mosquitoes and would pile blankets and pillows in a heap inside it.
To lull them into sleep, I would tell the kids one of Hailey’s stories, reciting it by memory.
Charlotte’s favorite was the one about Princess Elizabeth and her two princes.
Jayson presses a kiss to the crown of my head. “Who says we can’t?”
“The search party that will come looking for us if I don’t come home.” A plane passes overhead, its red light blinking through the summer haze. “Remember when you told me they were UFOs, and I believed you?”
He chuckles. “I remember you throwing acorns at my window that night because you were afraid that if you went to sleep, you’d be abducted.”
“And you came over and stayed up with me until I fell asleep.”
“I also got into trouble the next day at school because I kept nodding off in class.”
I giggle at the memory. “What was our teacher’s name?”
He scratches the stubble on his cheek. “Miss Fitch.”
“That’s right.” I snuggle deeper into his side. Pointing up, I trace a pattern in the sky. “Found your constellation.”
I gave it to him when we were eight years old.
The constellation of Bootes that contains the fourth brightest star in the sky, Arcturus.
According to a stargazing show Mom took Hailey and me to see at the Morehead Planetarium in Chapel Hill, the Bootes constellation is also associated with Arcas, one of Zeus’s human sons.
Jayson and Arcas—for some weird reason, my eight-year-old brain decided the two fit.
Our fingers steeple together as we draw imaginary patterns in the sky.
“You were always the brightest star in my world,” he says, stopping on Jupiter.
My body vibrates as I laugh. “That’s a planet. The brightest star is there,” I tell him, moving our fingers to where Polaris shines more brilliantly than anything else, other than the moon. “ You aren’t just a star to me; you’re my whole damn sky .”
His hand drops to his stomach, and he rolls to his side. “You remember that?”
Bending my elbow, I rest my cheek in my palm and brush back a wayward strand of his dark-chestnut hair when it falls over his forehead.
“Of course, I do.” I sigh when my phone starts ringing.
Reluctantly sitting up, I pull it from my back pocket and turn the screen around so Jayson can see it’s Julien. “I guess we should head back.”
The light of the moon enhances the silvery-gray of his eyes. “I think it’s best if I head on out when we get there. It’s okay, Liz. Really,” he says when I open my mouth to argue. Taking the matter out of my hand, he slides off the hood and opens the passenger-side door. “Hey, Liz.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t let anger make your decisions. Hear Fallon out.”
This is such a different side of Jayson I’m seeing. But it had to have been there all along, just like New Elizabeth was always inside me, biding her time to reveal herself.
Standing on my side of the car, I fold my arms over the roof and drop my chin onto my forearms. “Why are you being so magnanimous? You hate Fallon.”
Melancholy creeps into his crooked smile. “Because you love him,” he replies and gets in.
I love you, too , I want to say, but I don’t. Because I know I can’t have both. That is one lesson Old Elizabeth taught me well.