Page 85 of Reveal

“But that’s what you’ve said the last three times I’ve brought him up.”

“I know. It’s just . . .” I lean my head back on the seat rest and close my eyes. Lucy’s sound asleep in the back seat, and maybe I don’t want to ruin a perfect evening talking about him. And maybe if I pretend he never happened, then he’ll never follow through.

“You’re naive if you think he’s just going to go away,” he warns as if he’s read my mind.

“Ryker—”

“Just hear me out—”

“Please.”

“I’m not going to ruin tonight, but . . . he needs to be dealt with.” His hand twitches on the gearshift as he reins in his temper.

“It’s not that easy.”

“Yes, it is. You have dirt on him. He knows it. You two are playing a game of chicken that neither of you are going to swerve on. Vaughn, men like him . . . you don’t want to mess with men like him. They’re cowards who ruin you out of spite. They’ll ruin you simply because they like to watch you cower in fear. They get off on it.”

“Then there’s nothing I can do if it’s out of spite. I don’t give in, he’ll ruin me. I do give in, he’ll still ruin me to prove he can. When a person’s endgame is to fuck me over in every way possible, it seems so much easier to stick my head in the sand and pretend he doesn’t exist. When I do, he leaves me alone.” I unbuckle my seat belt and move to get out of the car.

“What does he have on you, Vaughn?”

I try not to be pissed off the minute I meet his eyes and see the doubt woven into them. “Nothing that I don’t know of.”

“What about your uncle? You said he mentioned your uncle.”

“Hell if I know. I left with Sam and never looked back. Ever. I’ve had my private investigator that I use for Wicked Ways check to see if he’s alive or dead. It’s a shame he’s still alive, but I’m not going to apologize or be sorry about whatever karma-induced accident left him paralyzed. That’s about all I care to know. That family doesn’t deserve an extra second of my time. Not one. So what does the senator know about my uncle? Beats the hell out of me. But if Carter’s a man who gets off on fear like you say he does, then just bringing up my uncle has me scared when most days I can rationalize that he can no longer touch me.”

“What do you mean, ‘most days’?” he asks.

“Most days I know I’m out of his reach, but sometimes when you’re rich and want something bad enough, you have everything at your disposal to get it. Let’s just hope Sam and I were blips on his radar who he thinks fell off the face of the earth.” I push the handle to open the door and climb out.

“Vaughn.” He exits the car and looks at me over its roof. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Then why even bring it up?”

“You can stick your head in the sand all you want, but it’ll just make you more vulnerable because you won’t be able to see it coming. Carter’s not going to go away. Not until he gets everything he wants from you—your body, what you have on him, everything.”

“Then I guess you should have never offered me in the first place,” I whisper harshly, well aware that Lucy is sleeping a few feet from me. I push off from the car and take a few steps to get some distance from him and the ever-present reminder that is beginning to ruin this perfect night.

But I force myself to calm down and turn around and face him. I hang my head for a beat before I meet his eyes. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”

“I deserve it.”

“Yeah, you do—”

“I exacerbated the situation. The one you refuse to let me apologize for . . . so we keep going on, and this huge fucking elephant in the room rears its ugly head every time we get two steps forward only to pull us ten steps back.”

“I promised myself I was going to forgive and try to forget . . .” I look down at my hands twisting together and know he’s right about all this, but at the same time I would prefer to live in the fairytale land we just left at Belvedere Castle.

“We’re both works in progress.”

I smile softly. “Definitely works in progress.”

“Again, I’m sorry. He had his eyes set on you, Vaughn, and . . . and when he said he had dirt on you, I played his game. Fuck, did I play it.” He runs a hand through his hair in frustration and walks to the end of the driveway and then back.

“And now we know what he thought he had,” I say, thinking about my uncle and what it is that Carter was using his name for other than to try to scare me. To let me know he could hold the same kind of fear and power over me.

“If there’s anything else, Vaughn—anything at all about your uncle that you’re hiding—you need to tell me.”