It was never the lies that were lethal. No matter how scandalous or widespread, lies fell short of piercing the armor of righteousness, because you knew—even if no one else did—that what your enemy was saying rang false. No, it was the dark truths that were most dangerous, the ones you couldn’t admit to yourself until someone said them out loud for you. They forced you to face your demons, the ones you’d hoped would stay locked up forever. But once they were out, there was no putting them back.
They were there to haunt you for the rest of your life.
“He’s gone overboard since…you know.” Cleo’s lashes swept down. “Thank God Peter —my husband—and I have our own place, or I’d go nuts. Anyway.” She laughed nervously. “Enough about my dad. That’s not why we’re here.” Guilt crept back into her eyes, along with a healthy dose of nerves. “Like I said, I have something I want to tell you.”
“Me too.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Before you say anything, I have something I need to tell you.” Blake sucked in a breath. Oxygen filled his lungs, and he forced the words out before the air left his body. “What happened the night of the storm—”
Pain slashed across Cleo’s face. “Blake, don’t.”
He pushed on. He had to say it and get it off his chest. Otherwise, his guilt would crush him, inch by inch, until there was nothing left. “It was my fault. All of it. I know you said you don’t blame me, but I prayed for something like that to happen. I mean, not a car accident, and certainly not for you to get hurt. But I asked for God to make it all go away and—” His throat constricted. “I’m sorry. I’ve been running all these years, avoiding you, because I couldn’t face you. I couldn’t face what I did. I’m the reason you miscarried. I killed our son.”
A sob escaped Cleo’s throat. She pressed her fist to her mouth and shook her head. “That’s what I should’ve told you,” she said, her voice wretched with agony. “He wasn’t your son.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Something was wrong.
Unease dug into Farrah’s bones, weighing her down until she sank beneath a tide of doubts and nerves.
Blake returned from Texas a week ago. He’d texted her to cancel their date for the night after his return, and she hadn’t heard a peep from him since.
Farrah tried to shrug it off, but she felt the depth of his absence to her core. She missed him—the sparkle in his eyes, the richness of his laugh, the heat of his touch.
If it were anyone else, the silence wouldn’t be a big deal, but Blake never went MIA this long. At the very least, he would call or text her to say good night.
The last time he’d been this incommunicado had been in Shanghai…right before they broke up.
You’re being paranoid.
Farrah nibbled on her cardboard-tasting pizza. Her taste buds must’ve taken the day off while her mind spun intricate stories of why she hadn’t heard from Blake. Each story branched off into a new, more horrifying path until they formed a cobweb of paranoia that choked off the possibility of dwelling on anything else.
She hated feeling this way again. Hated that it was because of Blake—again. Last time, she’d made the mistake of waiting to confront him and stewing in her own anxiety. She wasn’t going to do that this time.
“Do you want more wine?” Olivia raised their half-empty bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.
Farrah shook her head. “All yours. You need it more than I do.”
Olivia had a new manager at work, and she did not get along with him—to put it mildly. She’d come home every day the past week ranting about how incompetent, misogynistic, and sexist he was
—a rare slip of form for a woman who’d handled Wall Street’s old boys’ club with admirable aplomb the past four years. If Olivia lost her cool like this, that meant the new manager must be a special form of horrible.
It had been Olivia’s idea to destress with an outdoor movie, so here they were, plunked on a blanket in the middle of Brooklyn Bridge Park while Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey mamboed their way across the screen. Grapes, cheese, wine, and a large grease-stained pizza box separated the roommates, and the Manhattan skyline—a cinematic masterpiece in and of itself—glowed golden behind the projector.
“Thanks.” Olivia filled her plastic cup to the brim. “Let me know if you change your mind. Is Blake still pulling the Casper act?”
“He didn’t ghost me.” Farrah took another bite of pizza before she gave up and tossed it into the empty box. She debated texting Blake, but her past five messages had gone unanswered, as had her phone calls. One more and she may as well register herself in the national stalker database, if there was such a thing. “LNY is opening in two weeks. He’s busy.”
That’s what she told herself, anyway.
She would’ve worried about Blake being sick or kidnapped or something, had behind-the-scenes videos of him not been splashed all over the official Legends Instagram account in the run-up to LNY’s opening.
He was alive and well and, apparently, avoiding her. But Farrah didn’t want to jump to conclusions without knowing the full story, so she kept that theory to herself.
“You’re probably right.” Olivia dropped a grape into her mouth.