A Beautiful Lie (Playing with Fire #1)(132)

“I met your friend Olivia,” Garrett said after a few minutes.

“She’s not my friend. She was just my nurse,” Parker quickly corrected.

“She definitely acted like a friend. She’s a bulldog, that one. Very protective of you.”

“That’s just Olivia’s nature. I’m sure she’s like that with everyone. I think history has proven I don’t do well with friends,” Parker explained.

The ease with which she said the words and the conviction in her voice saddened Garrett and angered him all at the same time. Parker didn’t deserve any of the things she had to deal with over the years. She deserved to be loved and cherished and taken care of. The fact that Garrett had a hand in the way she felt now broke his heart. If he hadn’t let her down in the Dominican, if he had trusted her love for him, she might still believe in friendship. She might still believe in him.

“You do very well with friends. Better than anyone I’ve ever known. The ones you had just never deserved you,” Garrett told her softly.

He didn’t need to include himself in that statement, it wasn’t hard to deduce that it was implied. Garrett failed her. He knew that and he lived with that fact every single moment of every day since they left the Dominican.

Parker never actually thought about what she would say to Garrett when she saw him again. She thought just being close to him would push her anger and disappointment down so far it wouldn’t matter what happened as long as they were together. She realized now though, it wouldn’t be so easy to let it go.

It was time to meet the next demon head on.

“After what happened between us, I still don’t understand how you could look me in the eye and not know what you meant to me. How you could honestly believe I was such a horrible person that I would throw away everything we shared for a man I never really loved.”

Each word Parker spoke was like a knife to Garrett’s heart. He wished he could deny what she accused him of, but he knew every word of it was true. He hadn’t known what he meant to her. He hadn’t believed she would stay with him if Milo were still alive.

Garrett’s head would still be in the clouds about that now if Brady hadn’t stepped in and set him straight the day the trial ended.



“So, you’re going to immediately go find Parker, tell her you love her, and ride off into the sunset with her, correct?” Brady had asked with a laugh as they made their way to the underground parking lot of the court house.

“I don’t think it’s going to be that simple,” Garrett had replied with a sigh as he tried calling Parker’s cell phone again. “I don’t know if she’s going to want anything to do with me now that all of this is over. What if she’s going to pretend like nothing happened between us? Hell, she’s probably mourning Milo all over again. He was dead, he came back to her, and now he’s dead again and she’s the one who had to do it.”

Brady stopped walking suddenly, and Garrett took a few steps before he realized his friend wasn’t right next to him anymore. He turned around to see Brady standing in the middle of the garage with his mouth hanging open.

“What’s wrong?” Garrett asked.

“You have got to be the dumbest f*ck in the entire world,” Brady muttered as he pulled his cell phone out of his jacket pocket and started tapping keys furiously.

“What are you talking about?” Garrett questioned as he walked back to where Brady stood.

“You honestly think Parker is going pretend like nothing happened? That she could even if she wanted to? How are you so intelligent when it comes to your job and a complete moron when it comes to that woman?”

Garrett stood next to Brady staring at him in confusion until he pressed one final key and then held his cell phone up in the air closer to Garrett.

“Remember the day we bugged you two when Parker’s dad came knocking? How she never took the bug off and it continued to record? This, my friend, is from right after your jealous ass stomped away like a two-year-old.”

Within seconds Parker’s voice rang out, echoing through the parking garage.



“Milo, stop. Just because you’re here, and you’re claiming to be one of the good guys, it doesn’t mean that we can all just go back to the way everything was. It’s not the same anymore.”

“But it can be.”

Milo’s voice argued.

“We were going to get married and have a life together. I still love you. Not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought about you or wished I could be with you. If you can just forgive me, we can go back to that.”



The pleading in Milo’s voice made Garrett sick.



“No, we can’t. Milo, we’re in the middle of trying to take down the leader of this country, someone who has been exploiting teenage girls for his own gain for God knows how many years. And even if that wasn’t the case, even if we were home and you suddenly showed up out of the blue, it still wouldn’t change anything.”



Garrett could hear Milo’s shuffled footsteps and knew he was pacing back and forth near Parker. He remembered the video he’d seen of Milo drugging Parker and clenched his fists in anger, wishing for the thousandth time that he would have stuck around to protect her.



“Okay, I get it. You need time. You need to let things calm down and then we can talk and work things out.”