Avoiding Responsibility (Avoiding #2)(141)
"It wasn't intentional for me to lie to you about it," he groaned miserably.
"Unintentional lying?" Lexi asked rolling her eyes. "That's rich."
"No, come on. I told you that Parker and I don't discuss this stuff with people. Well usually not," he said sliding his eyes towards Parker. She had broken that trend. It had been an unspoken truce between them that neither would divulge information about it anymore. It hurt them both too much to discuss it, and she had done it anyway. "Anyone who knew we were together knows better than to bring it up and the details were suppressed. Tell her Parker," he barked demanding her assistance in convincing his girlfriend that he cared about her that he wasn't a complete liar. Parker was the one who had broken their rules. Ramsey hadn't even seen it coming.
Parker sighed and sank into one of his cushioned chairs as if resolved that she had to remain for the remainder of this conversation. She knew what he had said was true and that she had more or less gone behind his back to tell Lexi the truth. She still felt justified in it. Even if she had told Ramsey that they should tell her about what happened, he wouldn't have listened. Once he got an idea in his head about how things were going to be that was it, but she did have to agree with him. "We really don't tell people."
"You told me," she said defiantly.
"I thought you deserved the truth. I could see where Ramsey's head was with you and couldn't hold it in. I didn't want your world to come crashing down around you…like mine did." Parker bit her lip anxiously before continuing. She knew Ramsey wouldn't be pleased with her statements, but at least it confirmed his story that they didn't talk about these things. "But honestly, I haven't told the whole story to anyone in a very long time and Ramsey I doubt has ever told anyone."
"Well fine you don't normally tell people about it, but did you have to lie?" Lexi questioned him. "Couldn't you have just told me that she existed so I wouldn't be blindsided? Why did I have to hear her side first?"
"Lexi I told you I don't have an excuse. This is what Parker and I always did. We didn't tell people what happened. Parker was the only one who ever told and she always seems to get there first with her distorted version of reality," Ramsey grumbled. Lexi could tell just by the reactions of both parties that they had argued about this before and rather often.
"My reality isn't distorted," Parker sputtered looking up from where she was seated. "I was there. I actually know what happened. You weren't even there for everything…"
"Because you left! We argued and you left. How could I talk to you about it?"
"Ancient history," Parker said with a sad shoulder shrug.
"And you told her you miscarried," he spat at her his anger bubbling up again.
"Ramsey I did," she moaned a tear rolling down her cheek at the mention of her lost pregnancy. She sounded as if she had said this same thing many times. Lexi wondered how many times she had tried to convince Ramsey that she had miscarried. She wondered if Parker actually had. She just didn't know.
He shook his head in disbelief. "And you believe her?" Ramsey asked turning on Lexi.
Lexi didn't know if she truly believed Parker's side, but she was even more uncertain about Ramsey. "She's not the one who's been lying to me from the beginning. I don't see why I should believe you?" she told him. "Does an abortion that sent you over the edge sound any more plausible in your story?" Lexi asked crossing her arms over her chest.
"Can't anyone else see the truth but me?" he demanded turning around in a quick circle his arms out before him as if pleading with an unseen audience.
"What's the truth?" Lexi asked harshly. "It's hard to when you've lied about so much else."
"Did she skim over the parts about Bekah's involvement?" he asked taking the argument back to day one. He had never been able to put the pieces together properly at first. He realized suddenly one day quite some time ago that it was because he had been missing a piece. Bekah's involvement was the trigger, and he knew that Parker hadn't told Lexi that.
Lexi looked at Parker whose face had gone as white as a sheet. "She told me she would save me the details," Lexi said knowing for some reason that it was the answer Ramsey had been expecting.
Ramsey gritted his teeth in an attempt to keep his anger in check. Of course, she had skimmed over the details. Parker still refused to see what she had actually done. She held herself together behind a wall that he had never been able to break through. "Did you ever wonder why she wanted to save you the details?"
"No, I just thought it was personal. I didn't really know there was a connection."
"I understand why you didn't see it to begin with," he growled a man possessed. She could see it all over him that he had been obsessed with this very issue at one point. The look of figuring out what had happened that week had taken him over, and he hadn't been content until he had figured everything out. "It took me a long time to finally realize what had happened in that week."
"Ramsey," Parker pleaded her voice shaking with every syllable. "You put the pieces together wrong. They didn't happen that way." By now Parker's body was trembling just at the very thought that he was going to bring up his idea of what had happened between them. That had been the most traumatic experience of her life, and him treating it so cavalierly in front of her made her nauseous.