He knew.
It was the only thing that made sense. Somehow, he knew. That I wasn’t simply Emily Wayborn, actress and professional girlfriend. That I was Emily Wayborn, formerly Emily Barnes, Amber’s best friend. Emily Wayborn, liar. He knew and I was caught and I could barely see straight, could barely get air inside my lungs.
“You knew,” I whispered. I’d lied, and he knew, and I needed to hear from him what that meant for us.
He stood to step out of his jeans then pulled back the bedcovers. “I said we’ll talk about this in the morning.”
I couldn’t wait even another minute, not when our entire relationship was on the line. “You knew and you didn’t say anything.” I’d spent months worrying he’d discover that I’d gotten close to him only to learn what had happened to Amber. Months of monitoring what I said and did, weeks and weeks of keeping my guard up, and he’d already known.
The more I thought about it, I wasn’t just anxious but angry. “You knew and you let me go on pretending. How could you?”
He spun toward me, his eyes narrowed with incredulity. “You’re mad at me? You were the one who came into my life under false pretenses. To use me. And you’re mad at me?”
My stomach twisted with the guilt, and even though I deserved the accusations, I suddenly didn’t have the will to defend myself. “You’re right. Let’s talk about this in the morning.”
I spotted the pile of my clothes I’d left in front of the bathroom earlier and crossed to gather them, already thinking ahead, already planning the picture that I wanted Amber to see. She wouldn’t be able to understand without my explanation that I’d hoped she was alive when I began things with him, or that I only let myself fall for him when I believed she wasn’t.
That last part was a lie – I never let myself anything with him. I never had any control. Now it was obvious – he had been manipulating me, not the other way around.
A fresh wave of rage rolled through me. Clutching my clothing to my chest, I swung toward him. “I thought she was dead, Reeve!”
He’d climbed into the bed. Now he sat up, his head tilted as though confused. “Dead?”
“How could you let me believe that?” My throat choked on a sob and I noticed my cheeks were wet. I hadn’t realized I was crying.
He took a moment to process. “I had no idea,” he said finally, softer than before. Even though he was a skilled liar I had a feeling he was telling the truth. “Why did you think that?”
“Because Joe showed me an autopsy report.” Why the hell didn’t you think that? He’d had the same report in his e-mail. But I wasn’t ready to let him know that I’d snooped through his things.
His brow furrowed. “The autopsy of that anonymous woman from the Dumpster last fall? How the hell did Joe get ahold of that?”
“He’s good at his job,” I said snidely, not exactly remembering where Joe had said he’d gotten it.
“Yeah, I guess he is. Except that it wasn’t actually a report about Amber, was it?” The hardness was back in his tone, and, instead of regretting that I’d pushed his kindness away, I was grateful that I’d succeeded. I knew what to do with harsh. I didn’t know what to do with compassion.
“The description matched her to a T. Including the tattoo on her shoulder.” I shuddered remembering how well the report had depicted Amber. I hadn’t wanted to believe it was her. I’d fought it as hard as I could. Until I couldn’t anymore, and I had to accept it. “I mourned her, Reeve.”
Tenderness flickered across his stone features and then disappeared. “If you had bothered to talk to me about it, I could have saved you that grief. But you didn’t.”
I rolled my eyes and bent to scoop up the panties I’d missed. “Like I could talk to you about that.”
“Right. Because I wasn’t supposed to know that you were her friend.”
“Yes, that was one of the reasons.”
“What were the others?” He twisted toward me, throwing his legs off the bed. “Did you think I killed her?”
My lips parted, taken aback by his reaction and by how fast he’d jumped to the correct conclusion.
When I took too long to respond, he stood and took an aggressive step toward me. “Tell me, Emily, is that what you thought?”
I shrunk back, holding my clothes to my chest as though they could protect me from him. He started to ask again, and I blurted out, “No. But I thought you might have had someone else kill her.”
“The whole time? The whole time we’ve been together, that’s what you thought?”
Yes, it had been what I’d thought. The terrible thing was that it said as much about myself as it did about him. It was humiliating. That I could be the type of person who would stay with a man who might have killed someone I’d loved – it was difficult to admit.
So I didn’t answer him, and that was an answer in itself.
The barely controlled fury in his eyes flared and his features turned to stone, but somehow I understood that what he was really feeling in this moment was disappointment.
I felt that disappointment, too, so vividly, both from him and from myself, and suddenly I understood that I really should have been embarrassed that I’d thought he could have done something that terrible and never talked to him about it. I’d been in a committed relationship with this man for more than two months. I’d let him in, let him consume me, and yet I’d still kept him at a distance, even when I knew he’d tried to let me in.