More Than Lies (More Than #1)(118)

I hang up the phone and lay it on the bed beside me. Beast jumps down and walks toward Shawn. He steps over him as he nears the bed where I’m sitting. Shawn’s eyes have this cautioned look about them like he’s expecting me to evaporate. If only I were so lucky.

He falls to his knees and I watch him slowly break down right in front of me.

“I don’t know what to say, Tara and I don’t know what not to say. I don’t want to push you and push you away, but I don’t want to sit back and give you space and the same thing happen. I love you, and I want to fix us.” He stretches his arms out on the mattress, pushing them along my sides as his head falls into my lap.

I run my hand through his hair. The silky strands are soft as I glide my fingers back and forth. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want him to experience some of the hurt he caused me, but I can also look at him and see he may have experienced something far worse.

If I’d thought for only a minute that he was gone and I’d never see him again, I can’t begin to imagine the hurt that I would have been feeling. Losing my brother was hard enough. Losing the man I’m in love with . . . I don’t want to even go there in my head.

I can’t just forgive him either, not fully at this moment anyhow. But I also know that making him pay by distancing myself from him will hurt me the same as it’ll hurt him. I don’t want any more pain. I want the pain to start healing. How can I begin that if I keep us in limbo, or even worse let him think we’re over?

“I want that more than you know, but fixing us can’t happen overnight. I have to be able to trust you again. I want to trust you again. How do I know you won’t do it again when you so easily threw us down the drain, Shawn?”

“I can’t promise that I won’t make mistakes, Tara. I know I will, but there’s no way in hell I’d put us through that again.” My heart believes him, but my head is telling me to take this slow. “Do you still love me?”

“You aren’t a switch, Shawn. I can’t just turn you off when I want to. Yes, I love you. That’s real and it’s not going away.” I take a big breath. “We can’t fix what was broken, but I’d be willing to take things slow and start over.”

His shoulders sag in relief.

“Okay. I can work with that, baby.”

“Then can we go to sleep, please?”

“Yeah, I just need to call Natalie and have all my appointments canceled. I couldn’t go in today if I wanted to. I’m in no condition to work.”





Epilogue





TARALYNN EVANS





8 months later





A new year; a new beginning, but when so much has happened, when your life, your heart, and your mind have all been through a blender, how do you mend them? One day at a time, that is how. You wake up each morning and tell yourself, you got this. When you want something, you go for it until you’ve exhausted every possibility of trying to obtain it. If you don’t end up with it, then it wasn’t meant to be yours.

That has become my life’s motto.

Shawn and I have worked hard to get to where we are today. We aren’t perfect, but I don’t expect us to ever meet perfection. Relationships are hard work, but what we do have is beautiful. It took him months to earn my trust, but he did. I know he’s still waiting for the other shoe to drop, though, and that scares me—it’s like he doesn’t trust himself. He’s going to mess up. I’m going to mess up. But if we do this together and we have each other’s back, I know we’ll be fine. He has to believe that somewhere inside himself first.

My relationship with my dad has taken a one-eighty, and for that, I’m happy. I hate that he’s going through a nasty divorce with Katherine, but you wouldn’t know that talking to him. He’s happy now, too. He moved out of the house I grew up in. That saddens me a little because I have so many memories of Trent there that I’ll never get to see again. He’s living in a high-class apartment in downtown Tupelo, close to his office. He seems to like it. We have lunch once a week.

Through my dad and Pam, I’m learning a lot about my real mom. I get sad when I think about her, though. I hate that she really was so weak that she did that to herself. Pam loved her. Every time she talks about my mom, I can tell it in her voice and I know she misses her. It was strange at first when I realized how much I looked like her. I’ve seen more pictures, and I look a lot like her.

I haven’t forgiven my dad completely for keeping something that huge from me, but I’m getting there. I know I will forgive and forget. I have to, if I want to move past it—and I do.

I continue to worry about Jared. He woke up a few days after his motorcycle accident. Physically, he wasn’t injured too bad and only stayed in the hospital a couple of days after waking. He didn’t attend our college graduation a few weeks later, and no one, not even Cole, has seen him in months. I think the fact that the woman involved in the wreck died is hitting him hard. I wish he would talk to someone about it and deal with the tragedy. I’ve tried calling him, but last month his number was disconnected.

Kylie ended up moving to Orlando much sooner than she originally planned. She submitted a letter to the director of the residency programs there, telling him about her situation and asking to transfer. She was approved, and Mason tells me she’s doing okay. I’m not sure if I buy that. Kylie won’t talk to anyone about my brother at all. She’s closed herself off to it and that can’t be good. Not only that, but there is a noticeable change in her. She used to be so outgoing, an extravert, but now she might as well be the opposite.