Page 65 of Somebody To Love

“When did you plan to tell me that you owned it?”

He sighed. “So that’s what this is all about?”

I shook my head, not sure why he was so nonchalant about my anger. “You lied to me, Ty.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t.”

“You said you were my match, my date that night... but you weren’t. Were you?”

He shook his head. “You’ve got it all wrong, Piper. I was your date that night.”

“Oh really? I just happened to be matched with the president of the dating agency? Are you going to tell me that you’re a client in your own company and we just happened to be matched with each other? Do you think I’m stupid or something?”

He pulled at his tie and angrily ripped it off. He swore in frustration. “I didn’t want you to find out like this. Yes, I wasn’t one hundred percent truthful—”

“Truth isn’t based on percentages, Ty. Either you tell the truth or you don’t. There aren’t any shades of gray when it comes to being a liar.”

He sat down and shook his head. He looked up at me and gave me a pleading look. “Listen, I admit, I did lead you to believe that I was a client instead of the owner, but I knew we were building something together and that would have been ruined if I had told you the truth right away.”

“So you lied to me instead? To be clear, Ty, whatever you thought we were building was being built on lies. And I’m done listening to yours.”

I grabbed my purse and was about to walk out the door when he grabbed my arm. “Why does it matter how we ended up together? As long as we’re with each other that’s all that you should care about.”

“Just listen to yourself, do you really believe that?”

He nodded. “Yes, I do” His gaze burned into my own. “So what, I bent the truth a little? I was going to tell you eventually.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Piper—”

“You honestly don’t understand that what you did was wrong, do you? You manipulated me, Ty.”

“No I didn’t—”

“You did. By starting a relationship with me based on lies, by leading me to think something was true when it wasn’t... You lied to me... manipulated me into having a relationship with you and the best you can say is that you were going to tell me eventually?” I held back tears. “God, you must have had a great laugh reading my evaluation and my relationship history.”

“I would never laugh at you, Piper. I respect you too much to—”

“Stop,” I said putting a hand against his chest. “Stop with the lies. You don’t respect me. Because if you respected me you would have told me the truth. If you had respected me you wouldn’t have led me on, you wouldn’t have straight out lied to me about being my match about only knowing Sylvia a short time.”

He shook his head and opened his mouth to deny it all, but I wasn’t going to listen. “You manipulated me, Ty. You lied to me to get what you wanted. That’s not what you do to someone you care about.”

I stormed out of his house. I was so upset that my stomach felt like it was tied in knots. I took the elevator down to the ground floor, my heart beating triple time, scared that Ty was going to meet me at the ground floor, and convince me to listen to him, but also afraid that he wouldn’t. That he didn’t care enough to stop me from walking out of his life. I held my breath as the elevator door opened.

No one. No one was there. I quickly walked out of the building and got into my car. I held the tears at bay until I was home and then as soon as my door was shut and locked, I let myself sob.

I was done with love.

Chapter Ten

Dana shook her head as she digested all that I had just told her. She had pretty much forced a confession out of me. I had spent the past week in bed, barely doing any work, hiding from the world and she had knocked on my door for like an hour straight until I opened it.

She had alternated between yelling, “I know you’re in there” and “Don’t make me kick this door down.”

When she had actually started kicking the door, I had opened it. And to my surprise, I had also found Becca outside. She had jumped out the car as soon as I opened the door and had apologized for Dana’s behavior.

“I told her not to kick the door,” she’d said, giving me an apologetic look.