“You told your dad my father was a pilot, but he wasn’t. It was a slip of the tongue. I could have corrected myself, but I didn’t bother because I didn’t think it was important enough for the counsellor to know.”
His gaze locks to mine. Understanding dawns before his face shutters, eyes emptying until they’re blank.
“She’s the first person I’ve made that mistake with foryears.”
I turn towards the door, face numb, mind thick and slow and toxic. The one clear thought beating in my head is to escape. To get out of here.
“Please, let me explain.”
Zane puts his hand on my shoulder, and I turn and shove him as hard as I can, needing some way to release the horror of being so exposed. So foolish.
“I already know the explanation. You didn’t get the capitulation you wanted, so you invaded my privacy to take it.” The overwhelming scope of his betrayal hits, knocking the wind out of me. “Was it fun?” My voice grows steadily louder. “Was it fun listening to me confessing all my secrets? Did it give you some sick thrill to manipulate me over and over and over? To laugh as I blindly fell into step with your plans.”
Paul hovers in the connecting doorway, jaw tightening defensively as he steps between me and his son. “What’s happened?”
All the pent-up anger and fear and humiliation of the past month swarms inside me, growing larger until I have to release it, or I’ll explode.
“Ask your son what happened on the night of his party. Ask him what he likes to do to his five grand whores.” My limbs shake, the words spilling out in a jumble, my voice unrecognisable to my ears. “You didn’t have to do any of this. I never told anyone. I never breathed a fucking word.”
I retreat a step, then another. Until my back is flush against the entrance.
“How could you?” I ask, then turn, yanking the door open, disappearing into the quiet solitude of the night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
AVON
I’m outside,fumbling with my phone, trying to work out who to call. This afternoon, I drove here in the Maserati but that’s obviously not how I’m getting home.
My mother would get here quickest but will have questions I’m too raw to answer. A taxi or Uber will take longer, leaving me standing awkwardly outside the mansion gates, with everybody in the cul-de-sac gawking.
While trying to decide, the garage door noisily rolls into its housing and Paul reverses his car into the driveway, gesturing me over. “I’ll drive you home.”
“I can call a taxi.”
“I have no idea what my son has done, but I’m not about to make things worse by leaving you out here alone, distressed and crying. Let me get you home safely.” While my fuzzy brain tries to produce an answer, he adds, “If you don’t want me to drive you, call your mother and I’ll wait with you until she gets here.”
Getting back into the vehicle is awkward but not as bad as declining the offer would be. Once I’m settled in the passengerseat, he uses the circular bay to turn, opening the gates, driving onto the street.
It’s easier to focus on the motion of the car, the reassuring normality of the drive home, than it is to think about Zane and his betrayal. His dad says nothing and I’m grateful. I wouldn’t know how to answer.
Déjà vu hits me over and over during the drive. Once more, I’m in a party dress, in a fancy car, being driven home by a male I barely know because Zane destroyed my life.
At home, I thank him for the drive in a quiet voice and let myself inside.
Mum calls out from her bedroom, “How was your night?” and I think about responding with something generic, something bland, before crawling into bed to cry myself to sleep.
Instead, I make myself walk to her door, inhaling a slow deep breath before I enter, tears already flowing despite how hard I try to hold them back. I climb onto her bed, letting her hold me, letting her comfort me as I shake with sobs, inarticulate in my misery.
She lets me cry, not making me talk before I’m ready. When I’ve settled, my sobs down to a few intermittent sniffs, she says, “That must’ve been a terrible gallery opening.”
I laugh and close my eyes, absorbing her warmth. “The gallery was amazing. Everyone was so nice and welcoming. But Zane and I broke up.”
It’s only been a few days since I told her the opposite and I worry that she’ll grill me for some underlying reason to explain my total collapse. But she just plumps the pillows so she can sit comfortably with her arm around me. “That’s hard. Did you have an argument?”
“Not really.” I leave a long pause, head whirling with the overload of emotion. “He wasn’t who I thought he was.”
My head churns through the evidence again, trying to find something untainted by the revelations tonight. I think of how it felt as he rushed to my defence in the corridor or when Dahlia admitted he paid her triple her usual rate for posting about the salon.
