Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
Rhett
Present Day
“ I ’m … your why,” Lainey whispered, the emotion deepening in her eyes, in her posture, in the softness of her voice. “I’m … your one. Oh God .” She rested her forehead against her knees, hiding her face from me. “I can’t, Rhett.” She finally tilted her head to look at me. “I can’t hear this. Not those words. Not from you.”
I’d overstepped.
And I’d overshared.
I shouldn’t have gone there—not now, not when there was so much to show her and tell her.
But I couldn’t hold it all in. I couldn’t lie and give her some bullshit reason for why I’d never had her name lasered off my skin.
A lie wouldn’t help things.
It certainly wouldn’t heal things.
The only thing that could do that was more truth.
“It’s time you see this.” Still holding my phone, I swiped past the picture of Ridge and me that she had been looking at, and I scrolled back fifteen years, almost to the end of my archives. When I reached the video, I handed her my cell. “Hit Play.”
The phone rested in her palm, and she stared at the screen. “What is this?”
“Something I should have shown you a very long time ago.”
The volume was loud enough that I knew when she played the video.
But if the sound hadn’t told me she was watching it, her face would have.
Her mouth opened, her jaw hanging in shock.
Her head shook, like she didn’t believe what she was seeing.
I could hear the tremble in her breath, and the quivering in her chest, and the tiny groan of pain every time she drew in air and released it.
“What is this?” she asked again. “Rhett, what am I looking at right now?”
The first question of what I suspected would be many more.
“Do you remember when I called you from the boat? You were getting your hair done, and Penelope and I were about to take off for Timothy’s beach house.”
“Of course I remember.”
“I took that video as soon as you and I hung up.”
“You’re telling me my sister was doing coke?”
Penelope’s erratic behavior and her using were things I’d never discussed with Lainey.
Until now.
“I’m not telling you, Lainey. I’m showing you.”
She pointed at the screen. “And that’s her, sitting on the floor of your boat, right before you guys took off for the beach house?”
I got why she needed the information repeated.
This was a fucking lot.
I nodded. “Yes.”
I heard the video play again, and when those twelve seconds ended, the video repeated for a third time.
The phone dropped from her hand as though it were on fire, landing on the bleacher, and the sound of it hitting the metal vibrated between us as she glanced up.
“I don’t understand. Why are you showing this to me now?”
“And why didn’t I show it to you then? I should have. I should have forced you to watch it. I know that now. But I wanted to protect her. And I wanted to protect you and your parents from the truth. That makes little sense—I get that—but I didn’t want any of you to think she was a cokehead and …”
“Fuck!” Her hands went to the sides of her cheeks and pushed back until they were holding her hair. “There’s more, isn’t there? More I don’t know and more you haven’t told me?”
“Yes.”
Her head shook again. But this time, it was like she wasn’t letting the thoughts inside. “But there was another couple. They saw you. They heard you.”
“They did, you’re right. But there were things they didn’t see and things they didn’t hear. And those things, Lainey … they were vital.”