Swim Deep - Page 78

“I put all my resources into finding a double,” Evan said. “I’d almost given up hope by the time the private investigator I’d hired sent me your dating profile. He and two other people, whom he’d hired specifically for this case, had been combing sites for years, everything from Facebook to Twitter to professional social media sites to dating sites. They did a worldwide search. For a few years, we came up short, though. I’d already taken steps to hire an actress if need be… to find someone with a passing similarity to Elizabeth who might be willing to have some minor surgery done in order to look more like her.

“When the private investigator finally sent me the link to your profile, and I saw your photo, I was stunned. You might have passed as Elizabeth at twenty-three. And when I say that, I mean you might have passed with people who knew her well. It was amazing to think you were right there

in San Francisco the whole time. We’d been searching the globe, and you were only a few miles away from me. Then I met you in person.”

“And you were shocked to the core,” I said bitterly, repeating what he’d told me once about how he’d felt upon our first meeting. “Wasn’t that what you said? That you were stunned to see something so new. So fresh. Honest. Rare. You fucking liar.”

I stared at him with blistering defiance, but fresh tears spilled down my face.

An angry glint flared in his eyes. “When I told you that, I was being honest. You were unlike anything I’d ever expected… anything I’ve ever known. I get the irony of that, Anna, given what I was planning. I get the screaming bad luck of it all. I’m being punished. Not for wanting to see Noah Madaster exposed for what he is. But for plotting to use you to get justice against him. I fell in love with you, against my will and against my better judgment. Fate sent me a gigantic Fuck You, Evan Halifax. I deserve your scorn, and I deserve for you to leave me and never look back. But don’t try and make out I was lying about my feelings for you. Don’t twist this story any more than it already is. God knows it’s sick enough.”

“I’m not the one who has been twisting things, and you know it. You realize that your plan for revenge is working, don’t you?” I asked him in a high-pitched voice. “Your plan to torture Madaster? First, he punched his fist through that pane of glass when he saw me. And he’s spent the last few days in the hospital because of a heart attack.”

I saw his expression shift subtly.

“You didn’t know about his most recent heart attack? You must be so pleased. He’s been suffering and weakening, just like you’d planned, seeing me on the grounds of Les Jumeaux.”

“Anna, please try to understand. Elizabeth’s body was never found. There was no means for finding the truth… for serving justice.”

“I’m not your means, Evan,” I shouted.

I stood and headed toward the bathroom. The full knowledge of what he’d done, how he’d manipulated me like a piece on a chess board, made my legs rubbery and my head feel like it was about to explode.

“Anna—”

“I’m getting a tissue and a drink of water,” I snapped, meaning to come off as defiant, but in fact, only sounding peevish and tired.

It was too much to take in, all in a matter of hours, too much to absorb. The husband whom I’d loved with all of my spirit, and whom I’d believed loved and cherished me equally as much, had really been plotting to bring me into his life for the sole purpose of revenge.

And I told Jessica that I loved him so much because he’d seen me. It seemed so ridiculously naïve and embarrassing in retrospect.

I stared at my pale, tear-damp face in the bathroom mirror.

You thought you were so special, didn’t you? But you knew, deep down, it was too wonderful to be true. All he saw when he looked at you was a means to an end.

It had happened. The floor had dropped away from my known world.

But I was still standing.

When it came down to it, I realized that you just kept going in the face of impossible pain. Why? Because there was nothing else to do. The heart kept beating doggedly. The cells kept up their chemical function.

The feet kept moving.

“Anna? Are you all right?” Evan asked anxiously when I came out of the bathroom. He stood five feet outside the bathroom door. His face had a strained, pinched look.

“No. I’m not all right,” I replied evenly. “I’m going now. I’m taking the car. I assume you’re okay with that.”

“No, Anna. You can’t go yet,” he said loudly, taking several steps toward me. I swung my body out of the reach of his outstretched hand and walked past him.

“I haven’t explained everything yet. You still don’t understand the whole story.”

“I understand enough. I understand how ridiculously out of place I am here,” I said, my gaze glued to my suitcase. One step at a time. I’ve got to get out of this house. This hell.

Because if he touches me, I honestly don’t know what I’ll do. Hit him? Once I get started, I might never stop pummeling until he’s a bloody mess.

Or worse, I might sink into his arms and beg him to tell me that it was all a mistake? That I really am the love of his life?

That I really am special in his eyes?

Tags: Beth Kery Romance
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