“Youcare.”
I shrug. “Shouldn’t. Changed my life for the better.”
“It wasjail.”
“It was a wake-up call.”
“Buthe lied. Andyou paid the consequences.”
“Wasn’t fully innocent. I was there. I dared him. And you know what they say.So much potential. Learned his lesson. And now he’s the CEO of a budding café empire in the middle of the mountains, and I happen to really like where my life has taken me since. So it turned out all right from where I’m standing.”
She flinches so hard I feel it in my own chest.
Or maybe that’s the weight of all of the exaggerations that just came out of my mouth making my heart heavy.
“You still shouldn’t have paid for his mistake,” she whispers. “That’s not fair.”
And now my chest is feeling something else.
Warmth. Comfort. Relief.
She believes me.
She believes me.
“Long time ago,” I repeat.
“Does Emma know?”
“You know she and Chandler don’t keep secrets.” I keep my face as straight as I can so as not to clue Laney in to the fact that I believeEmmadoesn’t keep secrets fromChandler, but I’m not sure it goes the other way.
“DoesSabrinaknow?”
“What doesn’t Sabrina know?”
“But she never—of course she didn’t. Why would she tell me? But why didn’t she—”
“Laney. Long time ago. Let it go.”
She studies me like she’s looking for what I’m not saying. For the parts of the story I’m leaving out.
None of those parts really matter though.
Not to me.
“You want me to let it go, but it’s bothering you enough to cause problems between you and Chandler.”
Dammit. I hate logic. “You believe me,” I say instead of making more excuses about why Chandler would be on my shit list now.
Thatis what matters to me.
That she believes me.
She flinches. “I’m sorry if I ever gave you the impression I wouldn’t.”
“Wasn’t the most reliable guy for a lot of years.” It’s true. Hiding from who I was back then won’t change it.
“But youownwhat you do.I didn’t do itisn’t a phrase in your vocabulary. So if you say you didn’t do it, why wouldn’t I believe you?”
