“Brooks had been seeing someone on the side.” He speaks slowly. “For quite a while. Well over a year.”
“No.”
Royal nods. “I confronted him last week. He had no clue who I was, but I told him I was an old friend of yours. Told him if he didn’t make a decision, I’d tell you everything. Said I’d make damn sure he’d live to regret ever hurting you.”
He rakes the back of his hand along his five o’clock shadow, his head cocked and eyes wincing.
“The night of his accident,” Royal says, “he was headed north on highway nine. Crashed a couple of miles outside Glidden, not far from her house. He was going to her, Demi.”
Twelve
Royal
* * *
“Demi, say something.”
Everything about her is frozen solid. Her stance. Her expression. Her stare.
“You okay?” I ask.
She snaps out of it without warning, her glistening eyes blinking like someone flipped a switch. Stomping down the hall, she yanks open a closet door and rifles through it.
“What are you doing?” I call out.
Demi won’t answer. Thirty seconds pass, and she comes back with a shiny nine iron gripped in her fist.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” My hands protest, and I back up against the door.
“This isn’t for you.” She marches past me, rips the door open, and flies outside in nothing more than jeans and a sweater. Her bare feet leave footprints in the light layer of snow that’s begun to fall in the last half hour.
I step into my boots and run after her. By the time I find her, she’s punching in the code to their three-car garage. An empty stall where his Mercedes once sat holds the spot between a gorgeous, vintage Porsche 911 painted in a glossy shade of Bahia Red and a black on black Range Rover with twenty-inch rims and custom tints.
“Demi.” I move toward her and quickly veer out of the way when I watch her lift the golf club above her head.
Whack.
One swing, and there’s a sizeable dent in the whale tail of the Porsche.
“Hey, hey . . .” I reach for her arm, but she pulls the club away, taking another swing. And another. And another. “Demi, okay. Enough.”
In no way am I about to defend Brooks Abbott’s behavior, but I kind of feel bad for that pretty little Porsche taking the brunt. She was innocent in all of this.
Demi drags the flat, steel club head along the driver door, leaving a deep scratch. I can’t help but mentally calculate the number of man-hours it would take to buff and repaint that kind of damage.
“Satisfied?” I smirk when she’s all finished.
Her shoulders rise and fall as she catches her breath.
“Let’s get you inside, Shoeless Joe Jackson.” I wrap my arm around her shivering shoulders. I’m sure her feet are ice blocks now, but I doubt she feels a damn thing.
Demi stops and looks down, dropping the golf club. And then she buries her face in her hands.
“What am I doing?”
“Come on, don’t worry about it. It’s over. Let’s go in.” My palm rubs circles into her tense shoulder. “I’d have done the same thing.”
I’m lying. I’d never take shit out on a pretty little car like that, but I’m not about to make Demi feel worse.
Once inside, I escort her to a sofa next to a fireplace and get the flames going. I wrap her in a blanket the color of clouds and the texture of cashmere, and her shivering begins to subside.
“You had the right to know,” I say. “You’re by that asshole’s side every day, hoping and praying for a miracle, and . . .”
“I know.” She pulls the blanket closer to her face, staring ahead at a photo of the two of them on a side table. They’re smiling, her hand on his chest and her engagement ring glinting in the sun.
“You doing okay?”
Her eyes move slowly to mine, then back to the engagement photo. She leans forward, slams it face down, then sits back in her seat.
“I never suspected it. Not once.” She clears her throat, jaw tensed. “That’s what gets me. I’m sitting here, blaming myself for his leaving, thinking if I would’ve fought harder, maybe he wouldn’t be fighting for his life. And that asshole . . . that asshole was screwing someone else all this time? How did I not know?”
“He clearly didn’t want you to find out.”
“How’d you find out?” She looks my way, brows furrowed.
“I live in Glidden,” I say. “Saw him running around with a girl who was definitely not you.”
I won’t go into specifics with her.
“Wait. You live in Glidden?” Her eyes narrow.
I nod.
“For how long?”
I push a breath through whistling lips. “Shit. I don’t know. A few years?”
“So all this time, you’ve been living fifteen minutes away from me?”
My palm rubs my thigh. “Not the entire time, but yeah.”
Demi leans against the arm of the couch, her hand wrapped around her forehead. “I’m sorry. This is just a lot to process. Feels like an alternate universe or something.”
I know exactly how it feels to be coasting along and lose your footing the moment the rug is swept out.
The gas fireplace flickers against a fake wooden log, casting warm shades of amber and gold around us, and we sit in silence.
For a tiny sliver of a moment, I’m flooded with warmth, and it’s not from the fire. My chest fills, expanding, and the sensation runs through me, reaching my fingers and toes.
It’s a feeling I’ve only known in a lifetime that doesn’t exist anymore.
Home.
Being with Demi feels like home.
Thirteen
Royal
* * *
I wake with a stiff neck, the hint of a sunrise peeking through the picture window across the room. Demi’s fire’s still going strong and she’s out cold, her head on my shoulder.
Carefully maneuvering myself up, I prop her against some throw pillows and cover her feet with the rest of the blanket.
Half an hour later, I’m finished shoveling her driveway when she walks out to the front porch in a robe and slippers, a white mug of coffee in her hands.
“Thought you could use this.” She brings it to me and then re-wraps her robe and ties it tight.
I take a sip of the best damn coffee I’ve ever had as we stand and lock gazes.
“Sorry about last night. For freaking out.” Demi tucks her shivering fingers under her arms as the wind blows her robe open. “You must think I’m mental.”
My lips purse. “Nah. I don’t think that about you.”
“Either way, I’m sorry you had to see that.”
She’s such a fucking Rosewood. Always apologizing, even when not necessary. Always letting her manners get the best of her.
“Don’t apologize to me,” I say. “Apologize to that pretty little Porsche who got the shit beat out of her last night.”
Demi rolls her eyes.
“How messed up am I, that I beat up the car of a dying man?” she asks.
“Dying’s a strong word. We don’t know that he’s dying,” I say. “And look, I can fix it for you. For free. In my spare time. By the time the douchebag wakes up, he won’t have a clue. It’ll be our little secret.”