Chapter Sixteen

Hale

 

This morning wasn’t supposed to happen. I wasn’t supposed to come downstairs to find Becks here and I especially wasn’t supposed to find Pris naked with Becks. I shouldn’t be surprised. Pris did her best to drag me to bed.

If I hadn’t spent most of the night grilling her about what she knew, and if it wasn’t too late for her to find a place to sleep, I never would have let her stay here.

Becca doesn’t know that and neither does Trin. Both are plenty pissed, but it’s the hurt and disappointment in Becca’s eyes that just about tears me apart.

“Nothing happened,” I say. “Priscilla’s not my fiancée.” I pause. I don’t want to admit what I do next, but I need to be honest. “We dated for a time.”

“We did more than that, Hale,” Priscilla purrs.

She smiles, enjoying herself. Pris has always had a mean streak, but I’ll damned if I let Becca bear the brunt of it.

I meet Becca’s gaze. “What Pris and me had has been over for a while. She came here yesterday, unannounced, and spent the night.”

“I certainly did,” Pris says.

“In the guestroom, by herself,” I snarl through my teeth.

Trin races into the guestroom. “Someone slept in here,” she calls out.

Becca swallows hard. She doesn’t appear any less relieved, nor does she seem to believe me. But I think she wants to. Trin bounces out of the bedroom and tosses—never mind, “tosses” is too mild a word. She throws Pris’s clothes at her, shoes and all. If Pris didn’t duck, Trin would have taken out an eye with a leopard print shoe.

“You might need these,” Trin says, happily. “In fact, you really do. Get dressed and get going before someone gets hurt, and when I say someone, I mean you.”

“Hale?” Pris says.

“Pris, just get out. I’ll be in touch.”

Damn. Those weren’t the right words to say around Becca. She gapes at me, devastated.

In the quiet, all I hear is Pris tugging on her clothes and the distant lull of the ocean. It doesn’t take Pris long to dress. She didn’t have much on to start with. But when she starts to leave, it’s as if nothing I said matters and she’s leaving on her terms. She stops beside me, wrapping her arms around me to kiss my lips. I turn away fast.

She barely grazes my cheek, but I’m not giving her another chance to make up for it. I pull her hands off from around my neck. “Not happening,” I tell her.

“I see,” Pris says. “You don’t need me now. Do you, Hale? You got what you wanted last night.”

Becca gasps. “It’s not like that,” I say, yet again. But it seems nothing I say is good enough. Dark circles ring Becca’s eyes. She seems tired, defeated, and I’m only making things worse.

“I thought things were going to be different,” Becca says.

“They are, baby,” I assure her.

“Baby?” Pris repeats, her head jerking between is. “Don’t tell me she’s the reason you wouldn’t commit to me?”

I think back to the women I dated before Pris, and all those times Pris and my life in New York never seemed like enough. With everything I had and built, my loneliness never made sense. It does now.

“Becca is the reason I never committed,” I admit. I meet Becca square in the face. “I never forgot you, Becks, and you never forgot me, either.”

Pris plays with her hair, trying to save face. “You say that, but you always did know what to say. Didn’t you, Hale?”

It was more like I knew when to duck and stay out of Pris’s way. She has a different memory than I do and is doing her best to stir the pot.

“Pris,” I say. “It’s over. I told you that a few months back when you demanded a ring and I wouldn’t give it to you.” I’m looking at Pris now. I have to. I owe her as much. But I feel Becca. The hurt and anger she’s experiencing slides across her skin like the first drops of rain before a major storm. “I also told you as much last night, Pris, when you tried to kiss me and asked me to join you in bed.”

Pris could easily lie. It’s something she’s good at after years spent getting what she wants. She’s also good at taking jabs and kicking those who are already down. But this time, she doesn’t. Something she sees between me and Becca keeps her quiet, at least as much as her personality allows.

“This is what you want?” she asks.

I almost reach for Becca’s hand, but I don’t want her to deny me again, especially when I lay it all out there. “She’s who I want.” I capture Becca’s gaze. Not with my words, but with my heart. “I never got over you, Becks.”

There have been times in my life where everything stops. There’s no air. There’s no need for breath. There’s nothing but you and that other person. The first time I felt it was back in high school. It was a Monday and Becca had found out she’d been accepted to Duke. She flounced toward me in her uniform, her sunny hair fluttering behind her as she leapt into my arms. She was so excited for the opportunity and to be so far away.

I held her, no longer as the beautiful girl I was friends with, and she saw me as more than they guy she joked and laughed with. It was the same look we exchanged the night we first kissed. It’s the same look she gives me now. There’s no air. No need to breathe. There’s just us.

“Fine,” Pris says, dissolving this brief wrinkle in time before I’m ready to let it go. “I just don’t see how she’ll ever be enough, Hale. I don’t see how any woman will ever be enough.” Pris was always struttin’ around like a peacock, telling the world that she was the best and that anyone who tried to match her would end up cowering in the shadow of her plumage. Still, despite her nasty tone and superior attitude, I catch the barest hint of hurt. That doesn’t mean I’ll allow the snub against Becca.

“Don’t,” I tell her. “You don’t get to disrespect Becca, especially in front of me.”

Pris’s expression crumbles. It’s brief and if I wasn’t staring directly at it, I’m not sure I’d catch it.

“I need you to go, Pris,” I tell her as gently as possible. “Either me or Mason will reach out.”

“That’s it?” she asks, her voice quaky.

“That’s all it’s going to be, Pris.”

She opens her mouth, but doesn’t say a word. I think she needed to see me with Becca to accept that what we had is over. It still bothers me. I never wanted to hurt Pris, and wish she didn’t have to see me like this with Becca to believe I’d moved on. Whatever Pris imagined we had convinced her that no one could take her place. So, as much as this moment is hard, she needed to witness it firsthand.

Without another word, she steps away.

The door opens and closes seconds later. Becks and me just stare at each other. I want to tell her something, anything to erase her lingering pain. Instead, I leave her to her thoughts, permitting her to work through them.

It takes Trin walking toward us for me to finally look away. “I went upstairs,” she tells Becca. “That bed has been slept in as well and there’s no evidence anyone has been there except for Hale.”

My hand passes over my jaw where my stubble is turning into a beard. “You don’t trust me, either?” I ask Trin.

“I didn’t trust her,” Trin replies. “And Hale, as much as I love you, none of this looked good.” She smiles softly. “Except what you said to Becca.”

Trin is trying to soften the blow. I nod, letting her know I understand where everyone is coming from. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d caught Becca with another man. Forget it. I do know, and it wouldn’t have been anywhere near this polite.

“I’ll let you guys talk,” Trin says. “Food’s on the counter.”

The front door opens and closes again. One vehicle drives away. Then another. Still, we don’t speak.

She covers her face. I think she’s going to start crying. I want to hold her, tell her I’m sorry for all she found. I also want to apologize for Pris’s presence and for allowing her to spend the night. But she doesn’t want me to touch her. That anger and hurt keeps me at arm’s length, building a wall between us and keeping me far away.

When it seems like too much time has passed, I finally speak. “I wanted to say all the right things, but none of them came out.”

She drops her hands away. Her face is red and blotchy, but I don’t see a single tear. “I’m going to start your interview. The audio to dub into the beginning of your ABC special.”

“What?” I follow her when she stomps away. “Becks, I don’t want to do this now. We need talk this shit out.”

“I’m doing your interview,” she says. She throws the office door open and gets to work. I stop in the hall, watching her move fast. She pulls out the camera equipment she special ordered. The mic, the tripod, the little cameras that clip on clothing, they’re all there.

She stops when I step in and shut the door behind me. She didn’t expect me to follow, too caught up in what she saw and how it made her feel.

Fresh tears trickle down her cheeks. She wipes them awkwardly away, fighting to make them stop only for them to run faster.

“The last time we spoke we talked about making love, what it would be like now that we were together. How it would feel not to be rushed.”

She wipes her eyes with the edge of sleeve, watching me closely instead of answering.

“I still want us to make love. I still want you to fall asleep against me and wake up with your face being the first thing I see. But there’s more. I want to travel with you and see your smile light up when we watch the sunset from a castle in Ireland, or while shopping in those little stores you find only in France. I want to swim the Dead Sea with you and watch your cheeks flush as we hike through the forests of Austria. I look forward to laughing when you fuss with Trin’s babies. But I also want you to know, I’ve thought about making babies of our own.”

She gasps, in shock and more. I don’t mean to pressure her. I only want her to understand what she means to me, what she’s always meant to me.

I walk slowly to her, carefully taking her hands in mine. I look at how they fit across my palms. My hands are large, calloused, and marred from all the years I played ball. From all those times I scraped them, doing everything I had to do to make that winning touchdown. Until I made the final play, the impossible one, the one that made USC national champs. The one that blew out my knee and ended my NFL dream.

Becca’s hands don’t share my scars from the too-long practices in the rain and mud, and from men far bigger than me mowing me down. Her skin is delicate and her scars are emotional, buried deep beneath long, slender fingers, and skin so soft, all she needs are wings. Our hands are different sizes, shaded in different tones, toughened with different memories, but somehow they fit. We fit.

“You say all these things, all these pretty words that I want believe,” Becca says. “But what you didn’t explain was why that woman was here?” Her irises shimmer as she waits for me to answer. “I need you to tell me the truth or I swear to God . . .”

Becca doesn’t need to say what she’ll do. I already know she’ll leave and this time not look back. We’ve had our share of trouble. But like me, cheating isn’t something she’d tolerate no matter how much it would kill us to walk away.

“Neesa discovered some activity in my private accounts one of those nights I was with Pris. We were at a special event. There were a few big-wigs from Wall Street, many who Pris would cozy up to when she didn’t think I was paying enough attention to her.”

Becca’s lips part slowly. “You think they used her to get information?”

I nod. “I didn’t trust Pris with anything private. We never shared bank accounts, passwords, nothing personal or any delicate information. For the most part, we led completely separate lives.”

“Unless you needed company?”

Becca isn’t being petty or nasty. Her voice is soft and reasonable. She can accept that Pris and me weren’t serious. But she won’t easily forget we were physically intimate.

“Pris and me were never friends. Not like you and me,” I stress. She dips her chin. “We never talked about anything worth talking about. But she was with me long enough to overhear some of my business interactions and dealings. I was on the phone a lot. I’d take calls in my office and also after hours, making deals, strategizing with my clients. Sometimes, others in finance would call me, trying to cozy up by offering inside information.”

Becca’s eyes widen.

My thumbs slowly pass over her knuckles. “I never took them up on it,” I insist. “I never wanted to be a part of all that bullshit. Once you start, you don’t stop. Before you know it, you owe a lot of people and they’re looking to collect any way they can.”

“I believe you. But do you think Priscilla would take inside information?” she asks.

“Nothing was ever said, but if you ask me, the majority of her family’s fortune was made through embezzlement.”

Becca tilts her head. “You think Priscilla is the key to all this?”

“In a way, but not directly,” I explain. “Pris is a lot things. But she’s not one to get mixed up in illegal activity.” I sigh. “But she is one to share what she knows. She knew a lot just from being around me, and while she’s not stupid, she can be manipulated under the right circumstances.”

“In bed?” Becca offers.

I shrug. “Most likely. She craves attention and everyone within the social circles she frequents knows it. It would take the right person, needing the right information, to play along with what she needed.”

“Someone who didn’t have much in the means of scruples?” Becca guesses.

“And someone who wouldn’t think twice about eliminating the competition,” I agree. “Pris and me had a long talk last night. We discussed some of the things she’s learned being around men in finance. Many of my competitors and people I’ve associated with through Wall Street were her lovers and frequented her bed.”

“That didn’t bother you?” Becca asks.

“Of course, it did. I hadn’t realized how much business I’d conducted around her.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Becca scans my face, trying to read me. “I meant her discussing men she’d slept with while she was with you.”

Becca still doesn’t get it or maybe can’t understand the relationship I had with Pris. “What happened between me and Pris isn’t something I’ll ever look back on fondly, Becks. At worst, it was toxic. At best, we met each other’s needs.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. I lift her chin when she bows her head. “It’s nothing I’m proud of. But the way you and me left things screwed me up.”

“I apologize,” she says.

“I’m not trying to blame you, Becks. I was a hot mess. Not just because of what kept happening between us, but everything that happened with my family. I didn’t want to care that deeply for anyone anymore. I distanced myself from Trin. For a time, I wouldn’t even talk to Mason or Sean. When Pris came along, I knew this wouldn’t be a woman to love. This would be a woman I could have, who’d have me, yet not in a way that mattered or could hurt me.”

Becks nods, residual tears leaving her eyes. What I tell her isn’t pretty and not something I’ll ever be able to atone for. It’s simply the truth and the ugly side of what I’ve done.

“Tell me more,” Becca says quietly.

“There’s much to tell,” I say. “With all the men Pris had, I never imagined she’d want me to propose.”

“Not about you and Priscilla,” she says. Her hands squeeze mine. This time, she’s the one reaching for me. “I don’t want to hear about what you did with other women, okay?”

“All right,” I say. “I’m just trying to be straight with you.”

I give her a second to settle before I continue. “There were two names that kept coming up. She slept with both men quite a few times. She didn’t know they knew each other, since they never seemed to attend the same events. When they did, they appeared to keep their distance. One night, when she was out with her friends, she saw them in a bar uptown, drinking like they were old friends. She left before they could see her. Mostly for her sake, not theirs.”

“She didn’t want to approach two men she was sleeping with,” Becca presumes.

“No,” I clarify. “She was trying to save face, so she could continue seeing them when she wanted to.”

“Who were they?”

“Walter Cooling and Aston Malroy. Ever heard of them?”

“No,” Becca says. “Should I have?”

“They’re big in finance, but nowhere close to where I am.”

“I see,” Becca says.

So did I, which is why I woke up Mason around two in the morning. “There’s more. Clark, my intern for the past year, was a young man Pris suggested I hire.”

Becca eyes widen. “Was she sleeping with him, too?”

“No.” I laugh, although I shouldn’t. Pris would have sex with anyone to get back at me, especially if she was mad enough. “Walt introduced him to Pris as his nephew. Made him up to be a good kid and a good resource for her in case I started seeing anyone else.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Becca states slowly.

“It does if you know her. Our inner circles saw us as a couple to some extent. She always took me to the parties and events that most mattered to her. To my knowledge, she never took those other two. Walt therefore knew Pris cared about me as much as she was capable of, just as he knew she’d come back to warm his bed when she was mad at me.”

“So, having this intern was supposedly a win for both Pris and Walter. Clark would spy on their behalf, informing Pris if there was another woman and reporting to Walt about your business?”

“That’s right. He told her he didn’t know me well enough to ask me to hire Clark, which is true. But he asked her if she could help his nephew. In exchange, Clark would help her, too.”

“Wouldn’t Pris question why Walter didn’t hire Clark himself?”

“Sure. Walt’s answer was simple. He had taught him all he could.” My hands slide onto her hips. She lets me, listening closely. “Want to hear the best part?” She nods. “Walt doesn’t have a nephew, only nieces.”

Becca shakes her head. “The intern was only there for Walt and Aston.”

“Exactly. It’s the same thing I told Mason this morning.”

Becca leans back, analyzing me closely. “How did Pris know to find you?”

I smirk. “That’s a good question. Guess who told her?”

“Oh, my God,” Becca says. “Clark—the intern—because he was supposed to be keeping an eye on you for her.”

“Yeah. The kid screwed up without even knowing. The only ones aware that I’m here are my legal team and the courts. Unless you have access to my files.”

“Which Clark apparently did,” Becca says. “He’s the informant.”

“Yup. The team and feds are already on it. So long as Pris keeps quiet about our conversation, they should be able to snag him before he can leave the country.”

“Do you think she will? For your sake?”

I think back to Pris’s mean streak and exactly how mean it can be. “I don’t know. When she’s mad, she can be a little vengeful.”

“A little vengeful? Hale, why on earth would you ever be with someone like that?”

I speak long before I think about everything I’m saying. Becca still doesn’t get it. “Because she wasn’t you, Becks. This wasn’t a woman to befriend or even someone I always got along with. Unlike you, she was someone incapable of breaking my heart.”

Becca breaks down, crying all at once. I press my head against hers. “Priscilla wasn’t you,” I repeat. “She couldn’t hurt me and I knew that I could never love her.”

Becca lifts her head, gulping with how hard she’s crying. “Do you think you could ever love me?”

This is the moment I always told myself I’d run from, except that I don’t. I’m done running.

“I’ve always loved you, Becks. You just never fucking loved me enough to tell you.”

“Oh, God.”

I silence her with a kiss, pulling her so all she knows is my body and how bad I want her.

Forget the lead Pris gave me.

Forget that I’m still fighting for my reputation.

I want Becca. This beautiful woman life never made sense without.

My mouth claims hers. I lift her, gently squeezing her ass as I prop her on the edge of the desk. Her nails drag up my back, her arms hooking underneath mine, her long fingers cupping my shoulders.

Fuck. She tastes so good. I don’t want to stop, but I won’t make her do something she’s not ready for. She grunts when I pull away.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“Giving you moment to tell me no.”

Her tears fall slowly. “We’ve already had a lifetime of no and not yet. I don’t want to wait anymore. Not when I’ve loved you before I understood what love was and not when I’ve been so alone without you.”

“What did you say?”

She smiles, her eyes shimmering. “That I love you, Hale. I always have.”

She loves me.

I love her.

And now, there’s nothing here to stop us.