Levi stands outside the door, and he motions me closer. “Do you know what this is about?” he asks in a low voice, clearly irritated. It’s important to Levi that he’s always aware of what’s going on, always in control.
I’m pretty sure I do know what this is about, but I shake my head. My involvement in this isn’t going to help Becca’s situation or mine.
Levi puts his headset on, listening.The headsets are wireless and have a decent range, so I pace down the hall a ways so Levi can’t watch me react. I look out a window that faces into the hotel gardens. A sprinkler is watering the grass so it sparkles in the early morning light.
“I don’t know how to talk about this,” Becca says, “so I’m just going to come out and say it.”
“Go ahead,” Preston says.
I hold my breath, waiting for her to tell him that she’s leaving, that she doesn’t feel a connection with him, that it’s not fair to him or the other women for her to stay through the tiara ceremony.
“I lied to you about my husband,” she says. “I lie to everyone about him, but I think it’s time for me to tell you the truth.”
A chill washes over me. Becca sounds so confident, so steady, and maybe a little resigned.
I see what she’s doing. She’s going to tell the story on her own terms before she goes.
“Okay.” Preston sounds uncertain, now, and a little off-kilter, which is unusual for him. He’s pretty good at keeping his composure, even when all the women are losing it.
“Rob and I didn’t have a good relationship. What I told you about him being a good father was true. He loved his girls with all his heart. But as a husband, he was critical and hurtful. He told me all the time how incapable I was, how unfit to be a mother and a wife. It seemed like I could never do anything right.” Her voice trembles, but she quickly steadies it.This is nothing like when she told me, crying and curled into a ball.
She’s hidden these things for so long, yet here she is, saying them out loud with confidence, like she’s not the least bit afraid. I know that must be an act, but I’m impressed and proud of her all the same.
“Wow,” Preston says. “That must have been difficult.”
It’s the understatement of the century. Becca is the fucking war hero.
“It was,” she says. “I didn’t want to lie about it, but I’ve tried so hard to preserve my girls’ memories of their father. Rosie hardly remembers him, but she knows him from stories and pictures.Thea remembers him well, and I never wanted her to feel like the father who loved her wasn’t real. He was. It just isn’tallhe was.”
“That makes sense.” He hesitates for a second. “What made you decide to tell me now?”
I bite my lip, staring out at the sprinkler pivoting back and forth. She’s telling him because she knows now that she has to, because she wants to own the narrative. But she can’t tell him that. I wonder how she’ll—
“I had a wonderful time yesterday,” she says. “And this morning I realized that I need to be honest with you, if I’m really going to give this relationship a chance.”
What?No. Did she say—
“Because relationships can’t grow in secrecy.They depend on the truth.”
Those words feel like a dagger aimed right for my heart, and I think maybe that’s how she meant them.
“Thank you,” Preston says. “For being open to this process and brave enough to tell me this. You’re an incredible woman.”
I press my fingers to the glass, waiting, praying she’s going to tell him that she can’t stay.
But no. She just told him she wants to give their relationship a chance.
Damn it. She’s not leaving.This was what I was afraid of last night, that she’s just going to go back to datinghimlike what happened between us was nothing to her.
LikeI’mnothing to her.
I can’t breathe. I feel like I’m suspended in water, hearing everything thick and slow.
“Thank you,” Becca says. “It’s not easy to talk about, but I’m going to try. I don’t want to lie anymore. I want you to know who I really am.”
My hands are shaking, and I barely hear the rest of their pleasantries. Preston doesn’t ask any meaningful questions and Becca doesn’t offer any more details. She knows they already have those, but now she’s given them some better footage, a way to reveal her secret on her terms. I’m still impressed with her for doing this—I know how hard it must have been.
But the other message keeps ringing in my ears.
