The more I know about her, the more I refuse to believe any of this was true. Jessie pushed her into this situation and Bex doesn’t seem to have a clue. “You nearly failed a class you were brilliant at just to keep the peace, Bex. So what else did you do to keep the peace? I’m not even sure you know. Yet somehow you don’t seem to resent Bronwyn for any of it.”
“She didn’t know,” she says, taping up the box. “I did my best to keep her unaware of it.”
“But why?”
She frowns at me, and I’d expected this. I can say anything I want about anyone, but Bronwyn is off-limits.
“Bronwyn’s father left them, so my dad wanted to be someone she could count on, and I wanted her to have that. But even when we were small, she had this sense of fairness…She’d have hated to think I didn’t find a mother in Jessie.”
“But it sounds like you never even told yourdad.You covered for her.”
Bex shrugs, as if the answers don’t matter. “I wasn’t covering for Jessie. I was protecting Bronwyn. It was better to have one of us believing it was all real, that it all worked, than none of us.”
I don’t know how she can tell me the story she just did and still insist she was the bad kid. Her stepmother punished her for excelling and didn’t provide anything she needed, and Bex threw herself under the bus, again and again, simply to make sure Bronwyn felt loved. She wasn’t bad.
She was fucking heroic.
• • •
“You have a moment?” Peter asks, stepping into my office.
It’s actually worked out well, having him here, even if he made it happen by saying, “You have to hire me. I know all your secrets.” Perhaps it wasn’t a threat, but it was hard to see it any other way after the past six months and what I’ve endured from my supposed friends.
He enters and slides into the chair facing me, running his palms over the chair’s arms as if it’s a purchase he’s considering. “You leave for Norway soon, yeah?”
The mention of it alone is enough to make blood flow faster through my veins. Bex, all mine, for three full nights. I alreadyresent every second we’ll have to spend filming and we’re not even there.
“Yeah. I leave Tuesday. Bergen and then Geiranger. Relatively quick trip.”
He nods. “Did, uh, Rebecca happen to mention me at all?”
I push down another twinge of irritation along with the growing urge to tell him the truth. But Kieran shouted his feelings to the world and look where it got him. I’m just waiting for mine to become reasonable before I let anyone know.
IfI let anyone know. That’ll have its own set of problems right there.
“No, but I doubt she would, under the circumstances,” I reply. “Wearelegally married, after all, and she’s not your type.”
“I’m not interested in those posh social climbers you’re so fond of. I want someone with a little life in her. That Peru trip she’s planning? I wager she’d go tomorrow if the opportunity presented.”
A year ago if you’d suggested snowboarding in a South American desert to me, I’d have asked why you’d bother when you could get from London to Chamonix in less than two hours. Now I picture Bex in Huacachina, tan and glowing, grinning at me as she straps on her board. Sharing a luxury tent together at night, swimming in the town’s oasis each morning. The whole world is the backdrop to a photo in which she’s front and center, and if she suggested hiking through the bowels of hell, I’d be daydreaming about that too. Just like Kieran was with Pen.
“I’m not sure posh social climbers are anyone’s type, Peter,” I reply, my tone cooler than it was. “But like I said…she isn’t available, so you might want to set your sights elsewhere.”
His shoulders sag. I wish that meant he was giving up, but Peter never gives up. And once he comes into his trust next winter, he’ll have the leisure and finances necessary to follow her to any corner of the world she’sin.
He glances over his shoulder to make sure Colleen, our receptionist, is preoccupied. “By the way, you might need to have another conversation with Bryce.”
My stomach sinks. “I assume he’s talking again?”
Peter nods. “Telling anyone who will listen.”
“Bloody hell,” I growl, leaning back in my chair. “He needs to go to rehab.”
“Perhaps,” says Peter. He shrugs. “But you’ve got something he wants.”
I hear it, even if he doesn’t—the way he’s now aligned himself with our insane idiot of a former friend because I have somethingPeterwants too.
“I truly hope you’re not suggesting that Bryce iscorrect.”
