She lets out a sexy, gravelly chuckle that sets my body on fire. I hate to continue, but I have to.
“But it doesn’t change anything about what I have to do. In fact, I can’t fully be with you and enjoy this life you’re talking about until I’ve settled the business of my past, and he cannot just live free when my mother is dead because of him.”
Her eyes grow serious as she stares at me. “There’s something I need to tell you. Something I found in my research.”
My spine straightens and fear pricks my skin. Something about him? About me? I swallow, afraid to even ask.
“What is it?”
“Come inside with me.” Shakily, she climbs out of the car and holds out a hand to me. As I take it, I stare at her skeptically. Following her inside, I can’t seem to settle the nerves in my stomach. Everly knowing something without telling me doesn’t sit right with me.
Once we reach her laptop, she opens it and I notice the shake in her hands. Before she pulls anything up, she turns toward me, clutching her fists together in front of her.
“Okay, before I show you this, just know that I have no proof of anything yet. I just found it, and I have my suspicions. I think when I was researching Ayers all those years ago, I was so focused on his crimes and uncovering the details of the trafficking he committed I didn’t take the time to research the victims more.”
“Just get to it,” I snap.
She winces before turning back to her laptop. I watch as she clicks through some folders in her drive. Then, she holds the laptop up to me, and there’s a photo of a young woman on the screen. The picture looks old, taken without her knowing it and zoomed in.
“Do you recognize this girl?” she asks, a quiver to her voice.
I stare at the photo a little longer, scrutinizing her features, and I can admit that there is something familiar about her, but I can’t find a memory or name in my head that I could assign to that face. So I shake my head.
“A little familiar maybe?” Everly asks.
I swallow, clenching my jaw and look again. “I guess.”
“She was your nanny. There is no record of her name or employment, but there are pictures of her with you later on. This photo was taken about three weeks before you were born.”
My eyes travel up to Everly’s face and back to the photo. I want to see more familiarity there now that I know she was my nanny, but there’s really nothing. “If I wasn’t born yet, why was she there?”
She reaches out, clutching her hand around my wrist, and I glare at her. A very bad feeling travels up my spine, and the air in the room seems to freeze. I’m unable to breathe until she reaches down and zooms the picture out revealing the woman with the dark hair and olive skin, standing behind my mother and father as they pass through the hotel lobby.
My eyes catch on my mother in a photo I’ve never seen of her before, and I notice the strange empty sadness on her face, and my heart aches for it. And it takes a moment before my gaze dances over to the girl behind her, and I freeze when I see the large globelike mound under her shirt.
I look back at my mother, noticing that her body is much like I remember it, frail, thin, definitely not about to give birth.
My head shakes side to side, and I don’t even realize I’m stepping backward until my shoulder hits the wall of her living room.
“Your dates are wrong,” I say boldly.
“They’re not, Cullen.”
“Where did you even get this? It could have been photoshopped or something.” I sound defensive, naive, and juvenile, but what she’s asking me to accept doesn’t seem to fit in my brain. It’s too big and all wrong. The more I try to think of what she’s implying as truth, the more my mind quiets.
“Cullen, look at me,” she whispers, stepping forward.
“No.” It rushes out of me, and when I look at her, one truth settles like a puzzle piece landing in its place. “You want this because you think it makes everything better between us. Like if my mother wasn’t my real mother then I won’t be mad at you anymore. You’re just the same meddling bitch you were back then. Nothing has fucking changed!”
The expression on her face falls to the floor, her eyes losing the life in them as she stares at me. “Cullen,” she whispers hopefully.
“You’re fucking wrong, Everly.”
“I might be, Cullen,” she argues. “But the only person who has the truth is your father, so you can’t…you can’t hurt him the way I know you want to.” When she reaches for my face, I swat her hands away.
“This is what you wanted all along. I’m just a story to you.”
“No!” she yells, stepping forward. “Cullen, you know you are so much more than that to me. I don’t care how things started between us. You know I’m in this with you now.”
“I have to get out of here,” I snap, moving away from the wall. I head straight for her purse to get her car keys, but she puts her body in front of me.
“Please don’t leave!” she screams. Her hands land on my chest, and I snap. All of the anger and rage built inside of me flies out, this time like a volcano, and I wrap my hand around her throat and shove her hard against the wall. As the scarf she wore loosens and falls to the floor, I see the large purple bruises under my hand, but I don’t let go.
I want to hurt her. Right now, I hate her. I always have. Everything else I felt for her was just confusion. Love and hate are basically the same thing anyway.
19
Everly
Out of all the times Cullen has lost control or looked so filled with rage he would combust from it, they didn’t compare to the way he’s staring at me now. Except I see so much more than anger. I see regret, pain, self-loathing, and fear. Mostly fear. I see the young boy in the courtroom behind the eyes of a man who was never able to grasp at anything good in his life before it was ripped away.
And now I am one of those things being taken from him. I did this on purpose. I didn’t just tell him the truth, I used it as a weapon against him to break him down. I kicked the ladder he was standing on, and I did it because it was the only thing I knew could save him.
He would have killed his father—I know that. Given the chance, he would have found him, lost his temper, and killed him. Maybe for me. Maybe because he saw it as the only way to make things right again, someone other than the woman he loved to direct his anger toward. And I just brought all of that anger back on me.
Now as he holds me against the wall, his hand tight around my throat, I’m desperate to do anything to make him stay. I can’t lose him now.
My hands clasp at his shirt, and I squeeze the fabric in my fists. “Cullen, please,” I beg.
With moisture pooling in his eyes, he sneers at me. He’s on the edge, ready to lose it.
“I fucking hate you so much.”
I want to beg him, cry, plead, barter, but what he needs right now is the version of me he had in the beginning, the one who fought and challenged him, the woman in the courtroom. That’s what he needs now.
“I don’t believe you,” I mumble, looking him dead in the eye. “I think you don’t hate me at all, and you’re just too afraid to face the truth. And that’s what I am to you, Cullen. I’m the truth.”