So many years, she had wished she had had the courage to tell him the truth. That he would, for one second, see the real her. And yet now that he did, she felt naked, terrified.
The sudden silence in the long hall made her heart thud so much louder in her ears. The show had begun.
“I’ll miss the show,” she said, moving away. But he pulled her back. Trapped her between the pillar and his body.
“Tell me about Calista.”
Her gaze flew to him. “Stavros, I—”
His hand under her chin tilted her up. “I deserve to know the truth, Leah. If you have never used drugs, that means you didn’t introduce her to them.”
She closed her eyes, holding back tears. “No.” His silence drove her to open them again. “I went to every party you forbade me from, I drank even though most of the time I couldn’t even keep it in, I flirted with boys who didn’t care an iota about me because it would enrage you, I spent money only because you said not to, but I...I never touched drugs. I didn’t even know that crowd...” She stopped, once again, skating the line of lies. “I didn’t know where she even got it...God, if I had...”
The confusion, the guilt in Leah’s eyes far too real, Stavros didn’t need to ask her why she had never told him the truth before.
Because he wouldn’t have believed it. He had been so blind, he had been in so much pain that he had shut everyone out. Only his failure had mattered, not the why of it.
He had so conveniently blamed Leah for it, absolving Calista of any fault.
“Then why do you carry such guilt in your eyes?”
“Because I loaned her that money a couple of days before. I was so angry with you for cutting my trip to New York short. I...hated you so much. So when she said that she needed cash, that you would never agree to give her so much, I gave her every last penny.”
She flopped against him, her body shaking. Feeling as if there was an anvil on his chest, Stavros wrapped his hands around her.
Calista had borrowed it from Leah, knowing that he would not like it, probably even aware that he would take it out on Leah. What had she been thinking?
He hadn’t known his sister then. It hung like a boulder around his neck, choking his breath. Leah had been right in this too.
* * *
Leah couldn’t speak for the pain in Stavros’s gaze, in his sudden withdrawal.
She had hated Stavros for being so tough on her and Calista, but Calista hadn’t once mentioned her unhappiness or her problems to him.
With him, Calista had almost been a different person. Loving, smiling, obedient...as if she had just slipped into a different skin.
Now she wished she had gone to Stavros and blurted it all out.
Calista had been troubled, she realized that now. Maybe even depressed.
With hindsight, she wondered how much of that had fueled her own antagonism toward Stavros, because it had been so scary and powerless to see Calista like that. She had been mired in her own pain about her dad’s death and Stavros had been a convenient target to lash out at. And yet she hated having to tell the truth now, hated this power that she had over him.
She didn’t want to cause Stavros any pain.
He was rigid, he was stubborn and arrogant, but God, he had loved Calista in his own way. He had tried so hard to keep Leah away from her because he had thought her a bad influence on her. He had given Calista everything except...except listening to her.
But how could she tell him that now? How could she tell him that Calista had already been in trouble long before Leah had come into her life? That Leah had followed Calista’s lead always?
The man she knew now, he still dominated, even used her attraction but hadn’t she pushed him to it by dangling the truth in bits and pieces?
Calista was gone. There was nothing to be done now. There was nothing to be achieved by digging into the ugly truth.
So, she swallowed all the other truths back, bolstered her own courage and looked into his eyes.
Managing a smile, she squeezed his hand. “She was not unhappy, Stavros. I think, just restless. She...she definitely hated your rules as much as I did.” She forced a smile to take the bite out of it. “But she...loved you.”
He remained silent. And Leah wondered if he knew that she was quaking inside. When she had lied to him before, it had been to protect herself. This time, it was to protect him.