Casanova(88)

I don’t know what I expected him to tell me what his secret was, but it wasn’t this. Then again, was I surprised? I didn’t know. I didn’t think so. With all the things he’d admitted to, it was only a matter of time before something really crazy happened in his life.

“That’s the thing you regret most?” My voice was quiet.

He nodded.

“Why?”

One of his shoulders rose and fell with his half-hearted shrug. “Because. It’s like the lowest point—the moment where I realized how out of control I’d gotten, and now that I know it was for the stupidest reason.” He sighed. “It’s real evidence of all the stupid things I’ve done, and while I couldn’t care less, it doesn’t stop the fact I embarrassed my entire family because of one stupid, drunken decision.”

“That’s what you regret? Not that you did it but that it affected everyone else?

“Mostly. Of course I regret doing it. If I could change it, I would.”

I swung my feet off the sofa and scooted forward. His shirt was warm against my palm as I laid my hand on his upper arm. “Your dad really paid her all that money?”

“No. I paid her. It was my mistake.” He was still staring forward. “Or I paid my dad back. Something like that. It was my responsibility to fix it.”

“Does it not bother you that your dad keeps the tape?”

“A little. I had to verify it was real once, but now, it’s never going to be watched and it’s probably never going to be removed from the safe unless it’s to be destroyed. There’s always the worry, but for the most part, it’s just something we live with.”

“Until it’s brought up kind of randomly.”

He shrugged again. “Aunt Bel does it to annoy me, because she can. Everyone else uses it to...I don’t know. Do their version of keeping me in line.”

I stretched my legs out in front of me. “So after this happened, you started to clean up your act, but nobody knew about it.”

“Pretty much.”

“Why the hell don’t you tell anyone anything? No wonder everyone has this monstrous idea of you being a giant, careless, heartless asshole. You really don’t show them anything else, do you?”

Brett slowly turned his face toward me and dragged his gaze up to meet mine. “That’s what you’re focusing on, not what I just told you?”

I rubbed one hand down the side of my face. “Yeah,” I said quietly. “Why don’t you just be who you are and be honest with people about the things you do?”

“Because,” he replied, his voice just as quiet as mine. “Nobody believes it’s real. If Sali hadn’t have told my family everything I do for the house, they probably wouldn’t believe me. They’d assume I do it just to look good.”

“Maybe you think they’d assume that because you won’t give them a chance to prove otherwise. Not everybody thinks you’re a lost cause. They just don’t know you.”

“Do you know me?”

“Better than you know yourself, I think.” I pushed his messy hair away from his eyes and cupped the side of his face. “You’re so locked up in the things you did that you won’t let yourself focus on the things you do. Trust me, I know all that. When I came back, I was so focused on who I thought you were that I didn’t really let myself see who you are. You’re so wrapped up in all that stuff that happened, god, over a year ago.”

“Why don’t you care about it?”

“I didn’t say I don’t care about it.” I let my hand fall from his face. “But you have to understand something, Brett. For all the things you’ve done wrong, you’ve done so many more right. Hope House wouldn’t be open without you. Those kids wouldn’t get the happiness of a birthday present without you. Christmas wouldn’t exist for them. There wouldn’t be any hope in Hope Building if you didn’t take it with you every time you walked through its doors.”

He didn’t move.

I moved our glasses to the back of the table and perched on the edge of it. I stretched my legs out to the side as best I could thanks to the restrictive dress, but sitting here meant I could be closer to Brett.

“Your mistakes don’t define you. What you do about them and how you right your wrongs does.” I touched my thumb to his jaw. “And anyone who decides to define who you are as a person based on the things you’ve done wrong isn’t somebody you want in your life.”

“But the tape...”

“You weren’t the bad person.” I took his face in my hands, gently stroking my thumbs across his cheeks. “She was. Whether you agreed or not. She probably had it planned from the start and there was nothing you could do about that.”

He looked into my eyes. I didn’t know if he was trying to line up what I was saying with what he’d made himself out to be inside his head or what, but if tonight had shown me anything, it was that the Brett Walker he portrayed was nothing at all like the man he really was.

More to it—he cared. He cared about what other people thought of him.

I leaned forward and kissed him. He rested his hands on my knees, slowly sliding them up my thighs as my hands dropped down to his bare chest.

“You don’t need to make me fall in love with you,” I whispered. “I’m already there. But it’s not because of what you do. It’s because of who you are. Who you really are.” I opened my eyes and looked right into his. “The person I know you are. Who cares and tries and helps everyone he can. Who does good things and hides them because what he’s doing is more than the recognition he’d get. You’re not a bad person. Not at all.”