Or was it?
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Alice snuggled closer to Niko, her pulse slowing but nothing could stop her heart from swelling with contentment. After his shift at Vicenzo’s, he’d brought home dinner, and then they’d fallen into bed. And she never wanted to get out. Ever.
“This is some rock.” Niko lifted her hand and studied the two-carat princess cut diamond.
She stroked her thumb across the platinum band. “Yes. Richard had it custom made and designed. It’s not really my taste, but he was so excited to give it to me, I couldn’t burst his bubble.”
“Why not? Did you assume he couldn’t take the criticism or were you afraid of hurting his feelings so you suppressed your own?”
“A little of both I think. Sometimes you tell a white lie to protect the people you love. And although I’m not in love with him, I still love him. If that makes sense.” Because you can’t truly love someone else until you love yourself.
“It does but you were being unfair to him. He deserved the truth. Don’t you think if he found out you hated the ring, he’d be even more hurt?”
“Probably. It isn’t that I hated the ring, I’d simply have preferred something less flashy.” Richard was from a rich family and placed part of his self-worth on expensive things. Being poor had taught Alice that material items wouldn’t fill the void of loneliness.
“The old ‘What you don’t know won’t hurt you?’ adage?” He blew out a breath and settled his arm behind his head. “Well, when you find out the truth, it hurts.”
“Are you trying to tell me you’ve never lied to spare someone’s feelings? Or circumvented the truth to avoid an unnecessary confrontation? Once the words are out there, there’s no taking them back.” Boy, this conversation was moving into dangerous territory. Alice was keeping an important truth from him. She’d told herself that if Niko was kept in the dark, then her deception couldn’t affect him. Granted, he’d still be hurt when she left but the end of an affair was nothing compared to the devastation caused by the whole, lurid story. Yet what would be accomplished by telling him? Nothing but pain for him and his family. And for her.
“If I said no, I’d be lying. I try to tell the truth whenever I can because I’ve been on the receiving end of the lies. I met Maria while practicing at the gym that her father owned. After I won my match, she invited me to her family’s farm to recover from the ass-kicking I’d received.”
Maria must have been the woman that he alluded to in their first interview. The one that hurt him enough that he still carried residual anger toward her. “You said you won.”
He offered a wry grin, the dimples peeking out. “I might have won, but it wasn’t an easy win. They never were.”
“No, I’d imagine they weren’t.” She was glad her voice lacked the bite of jealousy that hit her at his comment. Maria was a long time ago and soon, Alice would be a distant memory.
“Once I found out what Abuela’s farm produced, I was psyched. You know how much I like chocolate, and when Abuela promised to teach me how to make it, well, enough said.”
“Yes, enough said.” Yet so much was being left unspoken. Alice slipped her leg around his. Rubbing her toe against his hair-roughened shin, she traced the line of his hip with her fingertip.
“Abuela and I hit it off immediately and I thought that would make Maria happy, but it turned out to be the complete opposite. She didn’t want to have anything to do with the farm and anytime I worked with Abuela in the barn, she’d pick a fight and then disappear to the beach to surf.”
“She sounds delightful.” Alice couldn’t keep the bite out of her words. The woman didn’t deserve Niko. “A real bit…peach.”
His laughter rumbled under her ear and she turned her head to kiss his warm skin before she propped her chin on his chest.
“Yeah, but I couldn’t see it at the time. I was nineteen and although we fought in the day, the nights were a different situation entirely. At least at first. Then her old boyfriend started coming around after a few weeks. She’d assured me that she’d broken up with him not the other way around and that he meant nothing to her. Of course, I believed her.” His jaw tightened, the sharp tone of his voice lined with bitterness. “Until I caught her having sex with him on the beach. Then I found out the truth of why she invited me to the farm. She wanted to make him jealous and apparently, it worked. Had I not caught them, I wouldn’t have been the wiser. Evading the truth can be as bad as an outright lie”
It took every fiber of her being not to have a physical reaction to his comment. The one thing he disliked above all else is what Alice had done to him since the day they met. Lie. No words could pass the lump in her throat and she rested her cheek on his chest, her arm curving around his waist to avoid looking at him.
He turned on his side and forced her to meet his gaze. “Sorry, obviously I’m still a bit pissed about the entire thing. I wasn’t in love with her but it still stings.”
“We all have demons in our past. It’s how we became the people we are today, the good and the bad.” And she had generated enough bad for ten people. While she couldn’t tell him the entire story, she could share a part of her painful past. “My college boyfriend cheated on me many, many times. Each time I’d fool myself into believing he’d change. He never did.”
“We’re a pair, aren’t we? Both a victim of someone else’s lies. Except we’re better off without them.” He yawned, the tightness around his mouth loosening as he closed his eyes.
She’d never told any man about Lance, not even Richard. Why she felt comfortable sharing this with Niko, she had no idea. Or perhaps she did. Niko had evolved from a contestant to her friend and lover. He’d exposed a painful part of his past and she’d reciprocated because that’s what normal people did, shared stories of their lives to form a common bond. She’d never formed that bond with Richard.
Because you never loved him.
Sighing, she focused on the comforting rise and fall of Niko’s chest but as the hours ticked by, she only managed to drift along the edges of sleep. Not only did their conversation keep whirling around in her head, but also an important milestone waited in the impending dawn.
Rain hit the high windows as she opened eyes gritty from lack of sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night, she’d rolled to her side. Squinting in the dim light, she searched out the red letters on the small alarm clock. Another oddity about the sexy man in bed with her. For a techie, Niko tended to spurn new age technology for old school electronics. The clock read five-thirty a.m. It was Christmas Eve’s Eve, ten years to the day she’d given birth and put her daughter up for adoption.
Niko spooned her back, his hand resting on her stomach. The same place she’d carried her daughter. She’d been lucky to avoid any physical signs of childbirth but her soul was forever scarred. On that snowy morning, she’d gone into labor and driven herself to the hospital. Lance had broken up with her and had been horrible until the very end.
