Chapter 14

“Hurt you…when did I? What are you talking about? This conversation needs to start making sense really fast, Dane. Eugene,” Lilith corrected.

“I’m sorry,” he said in his rumbly voice that should be raising goosebumps right now and wasn’t, because everything she’d thought she’d known about him had just slid off a cliff.

Eugene Long. She still couldn’t quite get her brain wrapped around the fact that her fake husband was the same lanky boy with bad skin and shaggy hair who had patiently tried to teach her the mysteries of the mathematical universe in eleventh grade. He had failed miserably, of course, because she hated math and bemoaned the fact there was no good practical use for her to learn all of that junk.

Big joke. She did the books for Relâcher now. And she was good at it. Dane wasn’t the same person he’d been in high school, either. But he was a liar.

Somehow, she couldn’t get her heart on that page though. For whatever reason, everything inside her rebelled against the idea that he’d deliberately mislead her. As if there was some logical explanation that was going to magically make these revelations snap into place and she’d be able to rationalize why he’d done all of this.

Which was ridiculous. And it was infuriating. There was no excuse for lying. It damaged people’s lives. Hers. More than once. She crossed her arms over the ache in her chest. “You have a lot more explaining to do.”

“I know.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, his eyelids slamming closed over his beautiful eyes. “It’s harder to spit all of this out than I thought it would be.”

“Too bad.”

She refused to reach out to him, to soothe him through his obvious angst. He deserved to hurt as much as she did, especially since her stupid brain had started trying to remember if his eyes had always been that color. Probably not. Contacts, likely, because why should anything about him be genuine? Nothing she’d been told about him was true, not his name, not his face. It put everything else in question. The gentleness in his touch as he held her hand, the fairies…the way he’d kissed her as if he’d found nirvana in her arms.

All fake.

Her heart wrenched as she internalized she couldn’t trust a single thing that had happened between them. None of this was real. She’d even been the one to introduce the point. Have fun. Don’t take any of this seriously. Meanwhile, that had been his plan from the first. She was a giant idiot.

“This is the part where you should be talking,” she reminded him shortly, too overcome to temper her tone.

“The show was a setup,” he said flatly. “The network pitched the idea to me. You were supposed to marry me without realizing who I was, and then, at the opportune time, I’d tell you on camera, so you’d feel betrayed and hurt.”

He launched off the couch to pace the length of the living room, and she had to force herself not to watch him, to analyze every step he took to see if it jarred loose her memory of him as a boy. But her gaze kept straying back over and over, strictly because the man had so swallowed the boy, there was literally nothing left of the Eugene Long she’d sat next to dozens of times as he droned on about x coefficients in a voice that was too high for a sixteen-year-old. Several of the other boys had made fun of him over it. That must have been a horrible thing to endure day in and day out.

That’s why he’d worked with a coach. It had been to change the timbre of his voice. That one tiny realization lodged in her heart and wouldn’t shake loose.

“So, the show was a setup,” she repeated like the parrot she’d apparently turned into during the last fifteen minutes. “You had a whole thing planned out. Except you just told me and there are no cameras around.”

“Yeah.” Misery pulled at his face. “Because none of this worked out like I was expecting. You’re not like I was expecting. I thought getting my revenge would allow me to move on, only it all blew up in my face.”

“You’ll forgive me if I’m out of compassion for how your plan fell apart.” She tightened her crossed arms to prove that she wasn’t softening one iota. “What revenge? If anything, I should be plotting to get you back for not telling me how important math would be in my future.”

“I tried.” The brief lift of his lips vanished scarcely before she registered his smile. “I wasn’t a very good tutor. Just like I suck at revenge. I’m no Count of Monte Cristo.”

“I never saw that movie.”

“It was a book first—”

“Are you kidding me right now?” she broke in before she remembered he often floundered over what to say. So what? This wasn’t the time or place to give him any help. “You’re supposed to be explaining why I started falling for an illusion, not picking out our next book club selection.”

“You weren’t supposed to fall for me!” he shot back, shoving his fingers through his hair in apparent frustration. “I mean, yes you were, originally. I spent two years working on myself because I got tired of being overlooked. The producer of the show is the one who pointed out that I was the kind of guy a woman like you might actually go for. Good on me, right? But then I realized you aren’t still the same mean girl as you were in high school. Not even close. And I couldn’t follow through.”

“Mean?” She blinked. “Like one of the nasty girls who pretended to be your friend while sniggering about you behind your back? I wasn’t like that. Then or now. Not to anyone, least of all you.”

Dane’s brows snapped together. Or Eugene’s did. She still couldn’t quite get that straight in her head.

“You obviously don’t remember high school the way I do,” he said. “That time in the gym is emblazoned across my memory, engraved in stone. And you don’t even recall it. Figures.”

“The gym? We never even had P.E. together.”

“No. The dance. A Walk in the Clouds. We talked about it for like two weeks beforehand,” he said with raised eyebrows like that was supposed to jog her brain into comprehension. “I showed up to claim the dance you promised me, and you just stared at me like I had two heads.”

A Walk in the Clouds. Oh, she remembered that dance all right. Like it was yesterday. “Dane, that was the night I found out my dad had another daughter.”

Her throat closed, and she couldn’t breathe.

The pain, the sheer anger at her father, the sense of betrayal—it came rushing back in a heartbeat, tunneling through her chest with excruciating ruthlessness.

Her friends had dragged her off to the dance anyway, as planned, despite a bone deep conviction that she would wind up curled into ball over in the corner. But neither could she stay at home like everything was still fine and her family hadn’t just fallen apart. Then the gym had been so hot and stuffy she’d nearly passed out.

“It was?”

And shame on her for still having the wherewithal to notice the bewilderment in Dane’s voice. Eugene. Dane. He was Dane, and nothing seemed to be able to change that.

“Yeah. My dad had been cheating on my mom for nearly their whole marriage. Not just cheating. He had a whole second house and family. The business trips he’d always taken were all lies.” Why was she explaining all of this to him? He deserved nothing from her. But that didn’t seem to staunch the flood of words. “My half sister is the one trying to destroy Relâcher. Because she resents me. I’m the other family as far as she’s concerned.”

“Lilith, I—” Dane whumped down on the couch cushion next to her and braced his head in his upturned hands, rubbing at his cheek absently. “Geez. And you found out that night? I’m sorry, I don’t even know what to say. I thought it was all a setup, that you had been stringing me along just so you could humiliate me. And that was after I’d spent an hour talking myself into going…well, it doesn’t matter now.”

“I don’t even remember you being at the dance,” she murmured, knowing that would probably drive the stake even deeper, but this was not the time to mince words. “I’m guessing you were, and I didn’t acknowledge you. I’m sorry.”

At that, he jerked his head up to stare at her, his blue eyes stormy. “Don’t you dare apologize. None of this is your fault. I’m the one who’s the idiot here.”

“Evidence does suggest that.” His quick smile did fluttery things to her insides. Even now. She sighed. “What now? Is the show basically shot now?”

Dane shrugged and collapsed back on the couch as if he couldn’t stay upright any longer. “I think that should be your decision. Given that you had a whole plan to save your spa with the show, and I’m the one who messed that up, I’ll do whatever you want.”

The reality of filming a fake reality show with her fake husband who had turned out to be someone else entirely crashed down on her, and it was too much for her to sort through at the moment. Knee jerk reaction—she wanted to quit. All of it. Never see Dane again. Never have to look at another camera. But if she quit, she’d lose any momentum Relâcher had gained. Rohina would win.

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything other than I can’t deal with this right now.”

He nodded three or four times in a fair impersonation of a bobble head doll, which frankly fit where she was at too. “I’ll stay out of your way until you figure it out.”

The problem with that, of course, was that she didn’t want to think about it, let alone come up with a decision about how to move forward. How was it fair that all of this fell on her to sort out?

She fled for her bedroom without a backward glance and curled up on her bed, dry-eyed and hollow. An eternity passed. Her brain whirled with cluttered images and snippets of conversation, some from then, some from now, becoming a kaleidoscope that spun painfully in her mind’s eye.

She woke with a start. At some point she must have fallen asleep. Dawn seeped through the cracks in her window treatment. Why was she wearing her clothes from last night, which still smelled like wood smoke?

Then it all crashed back down on her. She had to go on camera in a few hours with Dane and act like they were in love. If she chose to continue the show. Possibly she’d get lucky and they’d ask her to stage another fight.

That she could do.

Except as she stood under the spray in the shower, her heart felt like it weighed a million pounds. Getting mad required entirely too much effort. Everything took more than she had to give right now. Moving. Thinking. Breathing.

Cracking open her door, she eyed the hallway and listened for any hint that Dane might be wandering around in the living room. Nothing. It seemed clear, so she tiptoed from her room and stole out of the condo.

Once she cleared the threshold, she stomped to the elevator, annoyed with herself that she’d felt the need to sneak around in her own home. Or her temporary house. Geez. When had she started thinking of it as a home?

Lilith texted Eliza to let her know she was there, and then knocked just under the #218 sign.

Eliza answered the door, took one look at Lilith’s face, and widened the gap to admit her. “An in-person visit before coffee means bad news.”

“It’s Dane.” Probably most girlfriends wouldn’t need to be told the trouble had a man’s name attached, but she’d long avoided complications of that sort. The fact that she had fallen into exactly that annoyed her too.

Eliza just lifted her brows. “Like he had a heart attack or he’s missing?”

What, were those the only choices? “He’s a big, fat liar.”

Drained all at once, she sank onto the couch, completely over the subject. Was it too much to ask that it all just go away? But she needed advice, and Eliza had drawn the short straw. With far less editorial than she should have given it, she recounted the entire sordid mess.

“I should quit the show, right?” she asked, fairly certain that would be her friend’s viewpoint.

“Absolutely not.” Eliza toyed with her hair as her gaze narrowed thoughtfully.

“So, you’re in favor of me being a masochist. Great,” Lilith said wryly. “I’m supposed to keep acting like I’m in love with Dane on camera?”

Eliza made a face. “Hush and listen to me. First of all, Relâcher is doing great. I was going to send you some stats later today. We’re actually booking more appointments than before the downturn right now. And Brydie mentioned yesterday that she’s up twenty percent for the month, due to all the hubbub about the show.”

Deflated, Lilith shut her eyes. “Good. She makes great coffee. I hope her business keeps increasing. Then everything is working out like I hoped.”

“Come on, I’m not suggesting that you buck up and take one for the team. The increased revenue is just a bonus. You shouldn’t quit the show because staying on is the only way to get your revenge on him.”

“Revenge. Really. That’s your advice.”

“Sure. It’s perfect. Wait until the big reveal is supposed to happen and turn the tables on him. Embarrass him by pulling out a high school yearbook. Blast his before picture to every social media channel. I’m kind of shocked no one has ferreted this out yet, honestly. You should be the one to break it.”

It was a fantastic idea. She should be grabbing onto it with both hands, singing the Hallelujah chorus and praising Eliza’s brilliance. But the thought of being that mean to Dane actually made her a little nauseated.

“I can’t,” she whispered. “I’ll keep doing the show for the bonus only—keeping our business in the black. Helping good people like Brydie, and maybe some of the other Vivo business owners. That’s it.”

And she’d keep right on telling herself that was the only reason, until even she was convinced that Dane had nothing to do with her decision not to quit.