54. Rei
Any other man would have demanded I leave his home, not caring about the cold, or wind, or what I’d left inside. Quentin only sat quietly while I gathered my few things and walked to the front door.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
He met my eyes and said, “Me too.”
My chest felt hollow as I stepped onto the front porch. As soon as I was down the steps, Jada was out of their car and walking toward me. She clung her shawl around her against the harsh wind. “How did it go?”
A hot tear slipped over my cheek, and I shook my head.
“Oh, Rei...” Jada breathed. “Come on, let me drive you home.” She went to the car where Bryce waited, and he rolled down the window for her. After they exchanged a few words, she came with me, getting in the driver’s seat of my car while I sat on the other side.
I leaned back into my seat, the warmers a source of comfort.
Jada backed out of his driveway to take me home. “Want to tell me about it?” she asked, eyes focused on the road.
Shaking my head, I said, “I don’t even know what the article says, but it can’t be worse than the look on his face.”
“The article wasn’t that bad,” Jada said firmly. “The journalist didn’t say anything different than the story you told me.”
That caught me by surprise. “What? They didn’t attack my character or speculate on our marriage?”
Jada shook her head, eyebrows pinched. “Not in the article I read. Should they have?”
“Any gossip reporter worth their salt would have flayed me alive,” I said. I found my phone in my purse and typed “Andrea Kelly” into the search bar. “Who released the first story?” I asked.
“I’m not sure... It was in the business section,” she said.
I clicked on the first article that came up while streetlights blurred out the window. The title said WIFE OF MYHOME EXEC HAS HIDDEN PAST.
My eyebrows drew together. That wasn’t a good title for a hit piece.
Then my gaze slid to the byline, and my jaw fell open. Camila Vargas.
“What is it?” Jada asked, glancing over at me. Her skin had a red glow from the stoplight, but then it changed to green.
“The reporter is one of the girls who used to work with me.” My stomach churned.
Camila had been one of the best workers I had.
Always showed up on time and focused on the job.
She’d been majoring in journalism when everything went down.
In a strange way... I was proud of her for working in her chosen field.
If only her report hadn’t been the start of my downfall.
I slid down through my messages and saw a text from Camila.
Camila: I saw the wedding photo and recognized you. I’m sorry, but if I didn’t report on this, someone would have. Care to comment? [attached file]
I shook my head and lowered my phone.
“I feel so stupid,” I muttered. “All this time, I’ve been worried about Conrad leaking my past, but so many people knew me before I became Rei Li.” I shook my head, blinking back tears as a wave of self-hate threatened to tug me under and drown me for good.
“You were under a lot of pressure with Conrad’s threats and the wedding,” Jada soothed, reaching over to rub my shoulder. “It would have been impossible for you to cover every base.”
I roughly wiped tears that had fallen down my cheeks. “I should have turned Conrad in to the police as soon as he started acting strange.”
“Babe, you believed the best in someone you knew for a long time. That doesn’t make you a bad person.”
“No, what makes me a bad person is getting Quentin to marry me under false pretenses.”
Jada turned the car into the driveway and parked. Leaving the car running, she looked over at me with a somber expression and said, “If you think you’re a bad person, then you’re sitting with someone just like you.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Providing for your baby isn’t the same.” Her fierce dedication to Twyla was one of the most admirable things about her.
She closed her eyes for a moment like she was gathering her strength.
“The only reason I agreed to marry Bryce was because I had a baby on the way. I wasn’t going to tell him until after the wedding.
But I had a little bit more time to change my mind than you did.
Does that make me a bad person?” She lifted her chin defiantly, waiting for my answer.
“You had a baby on the way, and you were scared. Here comes a billionaire offering to care for you both. That would be hard for anyone to turn down. Much less someone who was in your position.”
“So what I did was okay because I’m poor?”
“No, it was understandable. And at least you did the right thing and told him the truth before someone else did. I just broke that man’s heart because—"
“Stop!” she cried out. “You won’t give yourself any grace, so I will. You literally started out knowing that your birth mother, the one person who should have loved you no matter what, abandoned you.”
The words cut through me like a knife, but they were true. Even though I didn’t know her situation and my life was likely so much better now, the abandonment would always hurt.
“Then,” she said, “just when you thought you were on track to finally impress your adopted mom, your best friend died on your watch. Her family blamed you, and your family didn’t have your back.”
My lip trembled, and my eyes burned with a fresh wave of tears.
“The man you trusted as a mentor hired you without making sure you had proper insurance and then turned against you.”
I tried to swallow past the lump in my throat, but it wouldn’t go down.
Jada held my face in both of her hands, forcing me to look at her.
“It’s not your fault your friend died of mental illness.
It’s not your fault her family sued. It’s not your fault that your own business mentor didn’t think to hire a company with insurance.
It’s not your fault Conrad got wrapped up with the wrong person and dragged you into the mix.
You can’t keep punishing yourself for everyone else’s behavior! ”
For a moment, it felt like I couldn’t breathe.
If I wasn’t to blame, then who was?
Guilt hurt, but helplessness was worse.
Jada squeezed my shoulder. “What are you thinking, babe?”
I looked over at her, shaken to my core. “It has to be my fault.”
“Why?” she asked. “Why torture yourself like this?”
I shook my head, realizing something I hadn’t learned in years of therapy.
“It’s like I need to have made a mistake, because if I did, I could learn from it, and next time I could do better.
But if all of it truly wasn’t my fault, then there’s nothing I can do to prevent it from happening again.
” Blaming myself was painful, but it felt safer than admitting I had never been in control at all.
Jada’s voice turned gentle. “That’s the biggest lie you’ve told.”
I looked at her with my eyebrows raised.
“You think you have all this power to save the world, but the only thing you can really control is your next move.”
I turned her words over in my mind and made a decision. For years, I’d been in hiding, running away from my story. It was time for me to own it.