The Devil You Know (The Devils #3)(68)

He’s still inside me, still pulsing softly. Once, twice, three times. In a minute he’s every bit as hard as he was. He sits up, still inside me, and his gaze holds mine.

“Are we clear now?” he asks. “You’ve got to stop assuming the worst of me all the time, Gemma.”

“Yes,” I whisper. I want it to be true, but I’m not sure it is.

Because the problem with telling yourself to ignore that voice in your head—the one that sees danger everywhere—is that sometimes that voice is absolutely right.





40





My graduation from law school was full of smiling faces, but none of them were there for me. I didn’t invite my father, and my mother couldn’t afford to fly out. All my friends were at Stadler, and I’d seen little of them since I started dating Kyle, who was in the middle of a trial back in New York.

I’ve never felt more alone than I did on that stage, knowing not a single person was there to see me or knew who I was.

Kyle sent roses, and though he hated to text, that night he sent a picture of him and his daughter with ice cream cones in hand. Kyle: Me and Izzy are celebrating your graduation. We’re proud of you.

I was already thinking of my reply when I noticed something. I stared at the photo for a long moment. Blinked. And then I zoomed in on the background of the image, right over his shoulder and stared again, my stomach sinking.

In the mirror to their left was the reflection of the woman taking the photo. It was Josie, smiling and happy. And she was very, very pregnant.





I struggled to find any alternate explanation, but nothing worked. I wanted to believe she was pregnant with someone else’s kid, but if she were, he’d have told me. And surely it would have come up during one of his stories about her drinking.

His stories. My God. When I began to put together the size and depth of all his lies, it made me physically ill. I’d made so many excuses for him: for his insistence on keeping it a secret, all the canceled visits, the way he muted his phone when we were together. I’d actually admired him for calling from the sidelines of Oliver’s soccer games or while waiting for a children’s birthday party to end…when he was probably just capitalizing on some time free of his wife. And when I got upset about the situation, he’d persuaded me he was ready to go public because he knew I’d back down if my job was at risk.

He'd been lying to me—and he’d lied so very, very well—but I’d been lying to myself too. That suspicious voice in my head, the one both he and my therapist had long been telling me not to trust, had been right all along.

Had he ever planned to leave? Had they ever been separated at all? Was he happy with her? I knew he wouldn’t tell me the truth, and even if he did, I wouldn’t believe it. I had to see for myself.

I friended Josie on social media under a fake name. The first thing I saw was a picture of them, taken on my birthday weekend. They were smiling behind a big blue cake. The banner overhead reading It’s a boy!

She’d posted pictures of them at various places: a Christmas party, a baseball game he’d called me from, a family trip to Florida he’d told me had just been him and the kids.

And I had no one to discuss it with because who was ever going to believe I really hadn’t known he was married? Who was going to believe that I, of all people, had been that naïve?

I ignored his calls until evening.

“Where the hell were you all day?” he demanded when I finally answered.

“Just sitting here,” I replied, “trying to figure out when your wife is due.”

There was the longest silence, and my breath held. There was still a part of me hoping he had an explanation.

“I was going to tell you,” he said.

And it was then that I knew, without a doubt, he would lie. And had been lying all along.





41





Ben leaves the following weekend for a trial in DC. He expects it to go quickly, and I hope he’s right: depositions for Lawson are set to begin in two weeks, and I want him by my side when they occur.

I’ve never felt quite as apathetic about work as I do on Monday. There are no strawberries at the morning meeting. Fields is civil to me, nothing more, still holding a grudge over Webber.

I meet Walter for lunch to go over the mountain of work he needs FMG to handle. I can rope in a few of the junior associates to help while I’m dealing with Lawson, but he shouldn’t be giving us all this work in the first place.

“I’ve said this before,” I tell him with a smile, “but you really ought to just hire someone in-house. You easily have more than enough work to keep a full-time attorney busy.”

He cuts into his steak and spears a bite with his fork. “You trying to get rid of me?” he asks with a grin.

“Of course not. You’re still my favorite client. I just don’t like to see you wasting your money.”

He points his fork at me. “And that’s why I like you, Gemma. Because you tell me the truth even when it does you a disservice. I want to introduce you to my oldest boy, one of these days.”

I blush, remembering Ben above me, growling, “no more dates” in my ear. “I’m, uh, seeing someone,” I reply. “And even he’d tell you I’m no one you’d want to set up with your son.”