When they reached the alley behind his loft, he helped her off the bike and held her by the elbow for a moment to steady her until the strength returned to her knees. "Come on," he said gruffly. "We need to get inside. I doubt the vultures are far behind."
Her head snapped up. "You think they know where we are?" she asked in a panic.
"Do you doubt it?"
"Oh, God. It never occurred to me. They haven't staked out your place before."
"I don't pretend to understand it. I just know there are damn few secrets in a town this size and odds are decent by now someone’s discovered you're living with me. Once they have that, finding my place is probably child play." He pushed the bike into the hallway and rocked it back on its stand.
"Of course." She followed him inside, then checked and rechecked the door she had closed behind them to make sure it was locked. "I'm naive not to have thought of it myself."
He looked up at her from where he crouched next to the bike. "No reason you should. I don’t know why they never bothered us here before. Dad's got clout in this town. Maybe they think I wield similar power." His shoulders moved in a negligent shrug. "Whatever their reason for leaving us alone, all bets are clearly off. Something set them off and it’s a whole lot stronger than fear of retaliation by the so-called heir to the Olivet fortune could ever be. If that's even what gave us breathing room in the first place."
He watched small tremors wrack her slender frame and surged to his feet, frustrated by the entire damn situation. He wanted to put his fist through the nearest wall and roar obscenities. "Come on," he said gently instead, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and hugging her to his side. "Let's get you upstairs."
They reached the second floor a moment later and he opened the freight doors on the elevator. Stepping into the hallway, the first thing they saw was Kurstin sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest on the floor outside Jon-Michael's door. She struggled to her feet.
"You look nearly as stressed out as Hayley," Jon-Michael greeted her. "You’ve heard the news, I take it." Releasing Hayley long enough to unlock his door, he ushered both women inside. His eyes narrowed on his sister. "How the hell did you get in here, anyhow?" If there was a gap in the warehouse's security, he needed to know so he could plug it before the vultures descended en mass.
Kurstin cleared her throat twice before she said, huskily, "Your neighbor recognized me and let me in."
Hayley left Jon-Michael's side and crossed over to his sister. She felt shell-shocked and in need of the comfort of her oldest friend's embrace. Wrapping her arms around Kurstin, she bowed her forehead into the curve of her neck. "God, I am so glad you're here. Thanks for coming." Another tremor shook her. "I don't understand how they found out, Kurstie."
Kurstin, who had stood stiffly within her embrace, pulled away. She pulled her iPad from her purse and walked over to perch on the arm of an overstuffed chair. She turned on the tablet and brought up a page. Standing, she shoved the iPad into Hayley’s hands.
Then took a step back.
Hayley was aware of Jon-Michael coming up behind her as she stared blankly at the headline for an online newspaper. It screamed to the world a pithy version of her dueling views on the death penalty. She grew increasingly cold as she read the article.
It was as if someone had climbed into her head. Climbed in and scraped down to the bottom of her brain to mine her barely-acknowledged-to-herself thoughts. The article exposed her inability to reconcile her long-held belief that the death penalty was wrong with her current ping-ponging between being sorry she was the one whose testimony was responsible for Wilson being on death row and not being sorry at all.
Jon-Michael swore with soft-voiced viciousness just as she glanced at the byline photo.
"But, that's Ty," she said numbly. "What is he—“
"Apparently he works for a newspaper in Rhode Island and has all along," Kurstin replied in a monotone. "He lied, Hayley. About everything. All the stations have been talking about his exclusive."
"Exclusive?" Hayley echoed in confusion. "My life is his exclusive?" She went back to the article. Ty actually presented her story with a gentle, sympathetic touch, but still she bled a little harder with each word she read. "How does he know all these things?" She felt as if he had reached inside her soul and exposed her innermost feelings.
Which would have been awful enough.
But he then thrust it forward with bloody hands as if it were so many entrails offered up to the carnivorous masses. Her pain was lion-and-the-gladiator style entertainment. Glancing over at her best friend, she saw that Kurstin's face was chalky.
And she saw the guilt written there.
No. Hayley's lips formed the word but no sound emerged from her throat, which felt lacerated and raw, as if she had swallowed a rusty razor.
"I didn't know I was talking to a journalist, Hayley," Kurstin said in a voice that begged understanding.
No! Hayley kept trying to swallow, but her throat felt pulpy, closed, destroyed by the dull-edged blade of betrayal. How could Kurstin have done this to her? Oh, God, how could she have done this?
"I thought I was talking to the man I was falling in love with, the man who loved me." To speak aloud of Ty's betrayal sent needles of pain stabbing along Kurstin's nerve endings, but she swallowed hard and forged past them in an attempt to make Hayley understand. "I didn’t even set out to do it. I said the word 'secrets' and he said he didn't have secrets, who did? And somehow it just...came out." She extended a beseeching hand. "Hayley, please…"
"No!" Hayley twisted sideways, stepping back before Kurstin's hand made contact. She truly feared the touch would eat like acid through her flesh to burn a destructive path to the bone. "No, don't touch me."
She could not stop staring in horror at her best friend, the one person in the world she had believed she could count on until the end of time. Her eyes shut with the pain, but she immediately forced them open again. She parted her lips to speak, but no words emerged.
So she simply turned away in silence and forced her weary muscles to carry her up the stairs to Jon-Michael’s bedroom.
Eighteen
Ty was packing to leave when the phone rang. Even as he rose to answer it, he cursed himself for hoping it was Kurstin.
He knew it wouldn’t be. She had too much style to give him the time of day, especially after the way he handled the termination of their relationship.
He hadn't had the balls to tell her face to face he had lied to her, used her. He sure as hell hadn’t attempted any sort of explanation to try to make her understand why. Taking the coward's way out, unable to face having to see the betrayal on her face, he had allowed her to find out for herself. For that alone, he knew she would never forgive him.
He’d had a shot at a once-in-a-lifetime relationship and hadn’t tumbled to the fucked up choice he’d made until it was too late to do him any good. But life went on, right? The decision had been made and couldn’t be changed. He would just have to learn to live with it.