For a moment, I couldn’t process the words. “You what?”
“I told Will,” he repeated. “It wasn’t a big deal.”
I actually laughed out loud in response because that was the only thing my body seemed capable of doing. “Not a big deal?”
“It wasn’t,” he said. “I had just found out I was going to be marrying you. I was?—”
“You were what? Torn?” I snapped. “Confused? Emotionally compromised?”
“Yes,” he said, clearly exasperated. “All of the above. I’d kissed you minutes after telling Emma I was running away with her, but we were getting married and I’d never even seen her. I was a mess, Kate.”
All I could do for a long minute was stare at him. Hard. “You told Will.”
“He’s my brother.”
“And I’m yourwife.”
“You weren’t back then. Not yet.” His jaw tightened. “I confided in him. That’s all.”
“That’s all?” I echoed incredulously. “That’sall?”
I started pacing because if I stood still, I knew I might scream. “I kept this secret for years.Years, Nate.”
“I know?—”
“I didn’t tell anyone.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t tell my mother, or my father, or a single friend.” When he said nothing, I went on. “I could have. Do you know how many times I almost did? How many times I wanted to show someone your messages? Or talk about you? Or just say his name out loud?” My throat tightened when I looked back at him. “But I didn’t because that was the rule. That was our thing. We both agreed years ago—in writing might I add—that we both operated in circles that could use our online relationship against us. We saw this coming, even then,” I added under my breath, more to myself than to him.
How could I have been so foolish?
Regret flickered across his handsome features. “I know.”
“And you told Will.”
“He’s not just anyone, Kate.”
“It doesn’t matter!” My voice cracked and I hated that it did. “It matters tome, because I carried this alone. The entire time. After that kiss. After we agreed to run away together? I was still carrying it all alone and you… you got to talk about it.”
His eyebrows pulled together. “That’s not fair.”
“It’s not fair?” I scoffed. “What’s not fair is that you got to talk to someone about how torn up you were and I just had to swallow it. Process it all by myself. Now, because of that, it’s all going to get dragged through the fucking tabloids, and both of our reputations are going to be obliterated. And you know who always gets it the worst? The woman.”
“It was one conversation,” he snapped. “One.”
“One too many!” We stared at each other, both breathing too fast as we faced off. My head was spinning, nausea swirling through me.
Finally, he spoke again. “We must’ve been hacked. Or overheard. Or something. This isn’t… it’s not that deep.”
Not that deep.Something inside me twisted into an ugly, furious knot. “Pray tell, how is it not that deep?”
He exhaled hard. “After we got married, he was worried. I’d told him about Emma that night and I agreed to talk to her, but then I never spoke to him about it again, so after we got married, he wanted to make sure I’d taken care of it. He came by and we talked downstairs in the lounge. Someone must’ve overheard. That’s the only explanation.”
I frowned. “I thought you said it was just one conversation, but that’s two conversations, Nate. One of which has now been leaked to the press.”
His mouth pressed into a hard line. “He was just worried, Kate. That’s it. He came over because he was worried. It was a ten-minute conversation. If that. One drink.”
