Don't Speak (A Modern Fairytale, #5)(102)

“Hills? Yeah. It’s me. No, no. Listen, I need you to do somethin’ for me. I’m goin’ to put someone on the phone. She’s goin’ to ask you some questions. Just answer them honestly, okay? It doesn’t matter who it is. I need you to do this for me. Honest answers. No matter what. Okay?” He pulled the phone from his ear and held it out to Laire. “This is my sister. She’s my closest friend in the world. Ask her anythin’.”

“No, Erik. I don’t need to—”

“Yeah, Laire,” he said, still holding the phone out to her. “You do.”

Gulping, she reached for the phone, taking it in her hands, feeling the warmth from his body stored in the metal. Staring at him desperately, she held the phone up to her ear. “Hello?”

“Hi. This is Hillary. Who’s this?” Her voice was cultured but warm, and a little concerned.

“L-Laire,” she said. “My name is Laire.”

There was a sharp gasp and then a long pause before she heard Hillary say, “Oh, my God.”

She reached up and covered the speaker with her hand. “She knows me?”

Erik nodded. “She was the only one I ever told.”

“You have, uh, some questions for me?” asked Hillary in her posh Southern accent.

Removing her hand, Laire asked, “Was Erik ever engaged to Vanessa Osborn?”

“What? To Van?” asked Hillary. “No! Never! Oh, my God, no.”

“I heard . . . I mean, I heard that they were—”

“Oh, honey,” said Hillary, “it certainly hasn’t been for lack of Van tryin’. But no. She never got her hooks into Erik. Not like that.”

“You . . .,” she started, then stopped. “You know who I am?”

“Yeah,” said Hillary. “He told me about you. You’re the girl from the island who he was in love with.”

Was.

Her eyes fluttered closed.

Was. What a horrible word.

“Um,” she said, her voice breaking a little. “Was he . . . was he with anyone else the summer he was with me?”

“Honey,” said Hillary, “he’s barely been with anyone since you.”

“But—”

“No,” said Erik’s sister definitively. “He was only with you.”

Oh, God. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. What have I done? What a mess. What a terrible mess.

“Okay,” she sobbed. “Thanks, Hillary.”

“Laire!”

She hadn’t handed the phone back to Erik yet, so she put it back against her ear. “Mm-hm?”

“You gutted him.”

“S-sorry?”

“You should be,” said Hillary softly, her voice level and even, direct without being threatening. “Don’t hurt him again. I mean it.”

“I won’t,” she managed to promise, handing the phone back to Erik and dropping her forehead to her knees as she wept.

***

Erik took the phone from her hands, pressing it to his ear. “Hills?”

“What the hell is goin’ on down there, Erik?”

“I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Erik! She is not good for you!”

“Hillary, thank you for talkin’ to her, but I need to go. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

His sister started to say something else, but he pulled the phone from his ear and pressed End, then placed it on the couch between himself and Laire.

He could tell, from the way Laire’s shoulders were shaking, that she was crying, and it hurt him to see her so undone, but his mind was racing with the knowledge he’d gained tonight. She’d felt responsible for her father’s heart attack and held him responsible too. And then, probably just after he’d left for college, she’d found that picture of him and Vanessa online. That’s why she hadn’t shown up for Thanksgiving—she thought he’d been cheating on her. No wonder she’d been so angry from the moment he’d seen her last night. No wonder she’d treated him with such disdain.

He sighed. “You thought I cheated on you.”

“Mm-hm,” she sobbed, sniffling softly as she raised her head. “It really looked that way.”

He nodded. “I can see that. But didn’t you trust me at all, darlin’?”

“I don’t . . . I don’t know,” she said. “I was so young. You were my first . . . everything. We were from such different worlds, and you were going back to college. And then I found out about you and Vanessa . . . and . . .”

“And you assumed the worst.”

“You let me think Van was a guy, Erik. On purpose.”

“I did. Because, if I recall, you had a jealous streak. I didn’t want my friendship with Van to complicate things between us when I didn’t feel anythin’ for her.”

“Well, it did,” she said softly, “complicate things.”

“You must have thought I was a total piece of shit,” he said, rubbing his face, looking over at her, curled into a ball in the corner of the couch, her face tear streaked and shattered.

She sighed, loosening one of her arms from around her knees and reaching out her hand. He took it, of course, because, no matter what he’d believed all these years, the sort of love that Erik Rexford had had for Laire Cornish wasn’t the type that died. It was still there, living inside him, dormant but safe, waiting for her all these years, for the opportunity to bloom again.