Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lou
There was only one truth left to tell, and I risked everything to do it.
I waited as the two bridesmaids who’d stayed through the long weekend took the last of the apricot-filled kifli from the platter on the table and then approached the reception desk to check out.
“Aren’t they delicious?” I smiled. “The kifli are one of my favorites.”
If Wade were downstairs, he’d be giving me a sideways glance right now because I said every pastry was one of my favorites. It wasn’t a lie. I loved them all.
“Incredible,” one girl gushed.
“Thank you so much, Lou,” the other chimed in. “This place is seriously so amazing. No wonder you’re so happy.”
Happy. I felt myself blush. I was happy.
I was happy now. Not before.
Before this, before him, I’d been hiding. I’d been accommodating everyone else in my life, twisting myself into knots to please them, and I’d equated their happiness to my own .
Except it wasn’t mine at all.
People pleasing had buried the real me. My wants. My needs. For the longest time, even my dream. And I’d convinced myself it was okay because I was pleasing people whom I loved. People who needed me. Family who loved me.
But love—their love—wasn’t something I ever needed to earn, and it wasn’t something that was ever at risk.
Wade had shown me that. By asking what I wanted. By giving me what I wanted. By seeing all my buried pieces and loving them when it would’ve been easier not to.
Because of him, I realized real love wasn’t risked by having boundaries. And I hoped real love wouldn’t be lost because of one small lie that spiraled into something I hadn’t planned on.
“Thank you,” I murmured. A strand of hair slid over my shoulder, a new sensation as I tucked it behind my ear. “So, heading back home today?”
I hadn’t braided my hair this morning, and I had no plans to do so tomorrow or the next day or the day after that.
The braids were part of my disguise. My armor. The part of me that wanted to please everyone by only being all the things she wasn’t. But not anymore. I was Frankie’s twin, not her foil. And I didn’t want to hide from all the parts of us that were the same.
“I think we’re going to check out the donut festival this morning and then head home after lunch.”
“Oh, perfect. You’re going to love it.” Memories from yesterday flashed through my mind. The food. The smiles. The way Wade had looked at me.
They thanked me again, gathered their things, and then left their room key on the desk on their way out. The hallway settled into silence, and a different memory crept out.
The thud on the stairs. Blaze’s body tumbling like a weighted slinky down onto the floor. The dark pool of blood by his head. The way I hadn’t corrected the EMT.
I shuddered and turned my gaze from the steps to the photo on the wall .
For my entire life, Frankie had stood behind me—or more aptly, in front of me. My own personal guardian angel… or devil depending on the situation and the trouble she was causing. My chest constricted as it hit me.
Wade was right. I was afraid. Of being seen. Of being similar. I was afraid, without Frankie, there wasn’t enough of me.
But I wasn’t afraid anymore.
My feet were moving before I even realized where they were taking me. My steps quiet as I ascended to the second floor, assuming that Wade was still on his video call in his room.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to rummage or risk another bump on my head to find what I was looking for. The painting Kit had done still rested against the closet door, waiting patiently for its time to shine. Just like I had been.
I carefully brought it back downstairs, removed Frankie’s wedding photo from the wall, and hung the painting in its place.
This was my inn. My future. And the man I wanted to spend it—hoped to spend it with—was upstairs, still believing I’d been his brother’s girlfriend.
He said it didn’t matter—that whatever I’d felt for Blaze or had with Blaze didn’t matter, but it mattered to me. I couldn’t put the past behind us when his version of the past was a lie.
Resolve knotted in my chest, and I ran through my truths in my mind again, prepared to tell him when he finished his work call and came downstairs.
I lied to you, Wade.
I love you, Wade.
Forgive me. Please.
My head jerked as the front door swung open, bounding off the stopper as Harper barreled inside, her face distraught.
“I knew it.” She held up her phone like it was weaponized, and as she got closer, I saw her eyes were red like she’d cried the whole way over here.
“Harper—”
“How could you, Lou?” she choked out .
“How could I what? I don’t know what you’re talking about?—”
“You cheated on him!” She was practically yelling now. “ With his brother!”
She dropped her phone on the counter in front of me with disgust, the screen bouncing twice until it settled, a single, giant word headlined the screen.
CHEATED .
Underneath, it read: Blaze Stevens’s new girlfriend spotted kissing mystery man.
The rest of the article swam in my vision. Letters blurring into dots. It didn’t matter what it said. None of it was true. But Harper didn’t know that. All she knew was this.
Cheated .
I swayed, past colliding with the present. Almost a year ago, Gigi had given me a jam jar with my own premonition. Cheated . I’d been upset and heartbroken, unsure how the word could mean anything good for my future. Never in a million years could I have anticipated this would be the scenario that would play out.
“Harper…” My tongue fumbled for solid ground.
“He’s in a coma, Lou—unconscious—and you’re out here screwing his brother.”
Holding the edge of the counter, I tried to approach her, but she backed away like she was Blaze’s knight, chosen to fight for him when he couldn’t fight for himself.
“Please, Harper, it’s not what you think?—”
“Unless you’re about to tell me this isn’t you”—she grabbed her phone off the counter—“then I’m pretty sure it’s exactly what I think.”
Harper’s sense of loyalty brandished like the sharpest sword, a weapon she rarely had cause to use, though I’d seen it handfuls of times before. But not like this.
She swiped her cheeks with the back of her hand, her lip quivering.
“How could you? How could you do this to him?” she demanded, every question ripping away the weak ties still holding my story together. And then, too upset to continue, she turned and headed for the door.
“Harper, wait!” I caught up to her just past the staircase and grabbed her arm.
She spun on me. “I can’t believe you,” she charged again. “I can’t believe his own brother?—”
“Harper, I wasn’t with Blaze.” The words were firm. Steady. Pressurized from the truth being held hostage in my chest for so long.
“What?” Her lip quivered, brow tightening. “What do you mean?—”
“I mean exactly what I said.” As I spoke, I found myself standing taller, the weight starting to lift. “I wasn’t with Blaze. I was never with Blaze. When he fell, I let the paramedics think I was his girlfriend so they’d let me go to the hospital with him. I needed to know he was going to be okay. He’d fallen on my property, and I was afraid…”
Her jaw dropped, a different kind of turmoil rolling in her eyes. “You… lied?”
I winced but slowly nodded. “I was going to tell everyone the truth, but then the papers…” I tried to reach for her, but she flinched away. “They ran the story that I was his girlfriend—that he was up here for me, and I was going to correct them, but I couldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because if they knew he wasn’t here for me, they’d have to wonder why he was here, and if they started looking for that reason… for him…”
The implication was clear, and she understood because only then did her expression start to soften when she realized I’d lied to keep them from hunting down Blaze at the hospital. That I’d lied to protect him.
But softening wasn’t forgiveness, and her anger gave way to shadowed betrayal .
“But you lied to us. To your family.”
The ball in my throat inflated. Not Frankie, I thought, but that didn’t make any difference.
I’d lied to them because of Wade. Because if I told my family the truth, I risked them getting involved. I risked them jumping in to rescue me because I’d always been happy to be saved. I’d always been happy to let them help because Frankie never would. If I’d told them the truth, my brothers would’ve reacted like they had last night—blowing up everything to protect their little sister. Including my chance with the only man I wanted.
So, I lied to them because that lie protected the truth: that I wanted more time with Wade.
“I’m sorry, Harper.” My voice cracked with emotion. “I never meant to hurt you.”
Like last night, I didn’t feel the weight of owing her an explanation. I’d made a choice to preserve something I wanted—something I’d never felt before and was afraid I’d never find again. Maybe it was wrong, but at the bottom of it all, whose happiness was I most responsible for? Theirs or my own?
“And that’s supposed to make it okay?” Harper’s voice lashed at me, and then she spun and fled back through the door.
I pressed my hand to my chest, my heart thumping in its cage.
I’d been her once—aware of the lengths I’d go to protect my dream. That all changed when I let the paramedics believe I was Blaze’s girlfriend, and then, somewhere along the way, being with Wade had become my dream, and I’d been willing to lie to my family to give me a chance at having him.
Maybe one day Harper would know what that felt like, too.
Turning, I walked toward the desk in a kind of daze, and that was when I heard him, the slow, heavy pace of his breaths. When I felt the warm electricity of his presence.
My head snapped to the steps, finding Wade standing on the small landing at the end of the first flight.
I didn’t need to wonder how long he’d been standing there. His eyes glittered, like a hunter who’d just caught a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
He’d heard everything.
My arms fell to my sides, my heart freefalling through my chest. “Wade?—”
“You were never in a relationship with my brother?” His voice cracked through my apology as he descended the rest of the stairs, his steps slow and heavy like the fall of a gavel.
“When the ambulance came that night, they wouldn’t let anyone but family ride in it with him?—”
“So, you lied.”
“No—yes. I didn’t mean to. They asked too many questions. I said yes to one and they thought I meant yes, I was his girlfriend?—”
“But you didn’t correct them because you wanted to get in the ambulance.”
Every word tightened the invisible grip around my throat, my pulse fluttering like a bird
“He didn’t have anyone… I wanted to know he was going to be okay,” I confessed.
“Because you were afraid of getting sued?”
“Yes. That too.” My throat bobbed. It was time for the whole truth.
“And at the hospital?” His eyes narrowed into slits. “You lied to my mother.”
“I don’t—Everything happened so fast. They’d already told her who I was—who they thought I was by the time she came in the room, and then she was so devastated. I was still processing what had happened… a famous actor had fallen down my steps and was now in a coma. I couldn’t… I didn’t…” I drew a trembling breath, forcing myself to steady under his steely interrogation. “She was so afraid. Just like Mom had been with Kit, and I couldn’t… I thought I could comfort her until the doctors helped your brother, and then I could explain the misunderstanding.”
“The lie,” he corrected flatly.
My mouth opened and then closed again as I conceded with a wordless nod.
“And even when I got there, you didn’t say anything—didn’t correct anything.”
“I didn’t think, Wade. I got caught up in how the story—the lie unfolded, and I was too scared to fight it.”
He stepped closer. “Even when I said you weren’t Blaze’s type?”
I shivered, recalling our first argument that night. “Especially then,” I admitted. “You accused me of being like all the other women who wanted to use Blaze for his money and fame—who were lying to get something out of him. If I had told you the truth then, when you were so bent on hating me, you definitely would’ve sued me.”
It gave him pause. There was no hiding that. Nor could he deny it. He’d been livid that night, angry with his brother for putting himself in this situation, but even angrier that he hadn’t been able to stop it. And to think—to know someone tried to take advantage of his unconscious state—Wade would’ve taken out his own frustration on the white lie.
“And is that why you kissed me? Why you fucked me?” he said coldly but without malice, the questions like a weapon with two ends, cutting us both as they left his lips.
I flinched, his words like a slap to the face, but still I didn’t look away. Lifting my chin, I answered, “No. Not at all.”
Again, he came closer, the heat of him making my skin prickle. “And I’m supposed to believe you? You lied to me. Every day?—”
“I tried to tell you the truth,” I interrupted him, once more feeling that overwhelming urge to fight—to claw and scrape and cling to the thing that I wanted. “I tried to tell you before the kiss?—”
“You said you broke up?—”
“No. I said we weren’t together.” I inched forward, feeling a little bolder now as our chests almost touched. “You assumed it meant we’d broken up just before his accident.”
His eyes flared. “You didn’t correct me.”
“You asked me what I wanted, and all I wanted was to kiss you. And when that happened… what you made me feel… I wanted one night of unspoiled fantasies?—”
“Enough,” he ground out, the glint in his eyes sharpening. “And you said the same thing when I fucked you. You let me think it was only sex.”
“I wanted you, Wade. I wanted you the way I haven’t wanted anything for myself before. Not even the inn—not even the dream made me feel this way. You didn’t just see me. You made me want to be seen. No one has ever—” I broke off, the sweetest pain tearing from my chest up my throat like a flame through a paper funnel. “And I just thought since you knew Blaze and I weren’t together currently… that we’d never…”
“Fucked,” he said flatly.
My chin jerked. “I wanted to live in the fantasy just a little longer.”
“You mean the lie.”
I winced again and murmured, “The way I felt about you was never a lie.”
“Lou—”
“I’m sorry, Wade,” I pressed on, lifting my hand to his arm. “I love you, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the whole truth about Blaze and me. I was afraid of losing you—afraid of losing the first thing I’ve been brave enough to want for myself.”
“I have to go.” He shrugged my touch away, the slight movement hurting even worse than the harshness of his words.
“Please, don’t leave. Just let me explain,” I begged. I knew I’d made a mistake, and I was ready to make amends for it however I needed to, but I wasn’t going to stop fighting for him. For what we had. “I want to fix this. Please, let me fix this. I love you.”
This time, it was his turn to jerk as though struck. “Don’t,” he warned .
“Please…”
“I have to go because Blaze is awake,” he snarled.
The world fell out from underneath me.
“Awake?” My voice hardly made a sound.
“My mom just called. He’s out of the coma and is asking for me,” he said, the words stacked, cold and hard, like an igloo wall around him.
“Oh, thank God.” My hand fluttered to my mouth, the news freeing tears down my cheeks. Blaze was awake. “Let me grab my purse and call Violet?—”
“Why would you come?” he interrupted harshly.
I grabbed for the edge of the desk, the question knocking all the air from my lungs.
“Wade…” I stared at him, wishing I could stop the hot tears that sliced down my cheeks.
“You were never part of his life. There’s no reason for you to be there.”
And then he turned and walked out of the inn, and I was afraid, out of my life, too.