Deception (Infidelity #3)(98)

Millie



What the hell?

I stared at the screen in disbelief. Not only had she had the audacity to think I wanted to be at her shower, but Chelsea was going to be there?

I did what I’d sworn not to do.

Being sure my location was turned off on my computer, I logged into Facebook.

First, I searched Chelsea Moore. The last posting she’d made was late August. It was a picture of her in the hospital bed with thumbs up and said that she was well.

With a feeling of impending dread, I searched Millie Ashmore. Her page was full of posts and pictures. There were wedding dresses and wedding cakes. The picture that caught my eye and turned my stomach was of Millie and several other women in a booth at a bar. I recognized the location as one of the bars on River Street. Most of the women were laughing and holding drinks. And on the end, looking scared and reserved—two adjectives I never thought I’d use for my best friend—was Chelsea.

I clicked the picture and made it bigger.

Chelsea’s hair, which over the years had been every color from fuchsia to green, was a rich amber, pulled back in a low twist. Her royal blue dress was formfitting yet modest. As I stared, I had a flashback of standing with her at a full-length mirror in Del Mar, talking about how we could be sisters. For the first time, I saw the resemblance.

She looked like me.

She could be me.

My good sense told me to exit out and forget what I saw.

I didn’t listen.

My hand had a mind of its own as I scrolled Millie’s page. The magnitude of information was a wealth of Savannah’s twenty-somethings’ social life, all compiled in one place. As I rolled my mouse, it all played out before my eyes: people with whom I’d attended academy living the high life in clubs and mansions, by pools as well as in rooms with chandeliers. It was the life where I was raised, and in picture after picture over the last month, Chelsea was present.

And then my breath caught in my chest, painfully stagnant, unable to flow in or out of my lungs. The screen blurred with tears as beside my best friend, with his arm draped over her shoulder, was Bryce.

I thought he’d given up on me, finally freeing me from his plans.

But that wasn’t what had happened. I wiped the warm, salty droplets away from my cheeks with the back of my hand. I wasn’t shedding tears for Bryce, but for Chelsea.

Sometime while I’d been preoccupied, she’d stepped into my life. Granted, it was the one I hadn’t wanted, the one I’d rejected, but that didn’t lessen the pain. My best friend had become me.

Time passed as my work on my paper was forgotten, and I searched the Internet for clues that could help me understand.

It was only a shred of self-control that stopped me from dialing Bryce’s number and asking to speak to Chelsea. Would she be with him? Why?

It was the photo in the news article that opened my eyes.

The picture showed Bryce and Chelsea walking into the courthouse in Evanston, Illinois, hand in hand. They were both named in the caption and following Chelsea’s name was the descriptor: longtime girlfriend. The article pertained to Bryce’s most recent depositions. Though the Evanston police were promising that they were close to issuing an arrest warrant for Edward Carmichael Spencer for his involvement in the disappearance of Melissa Summers, the defense claimed insufficient evidence. Supporting Bryce’s claim of innocence was his own testimony as well as Chelsea Moore’s. Mr. Spencer claimed to have been in California visiting Miss Moore at the time of Miss Summers’s disappearance. Miss Moore’s statement, as well as Mr. Spencer’s travel records, substantiated his claim.

Visiting her?

Do I feel jealous?

No.

Dazed and confused was more like it.

Bryce hadn’t been visiting Chelsea. Then I remembered that she’d said he’d been to her hospital room. She’d said that she barely knew who he was, certainly not that they were involved.

Had she lied to me? Had he been at the hospital to see her and not me?

My head ached as I tried to unweave truth from fiction. The two were twisted too tightly to unravel.

The sound of the front door knocked at my consciousness, the beeps of the alarm pulling me to the present. The clock on the corner of my screen read nearly five in the evening. I’d been sitting there since before noon and none of my work had been accomplished.

“Charli,” Nox’s deep voice resonated through the apartment.

Mindlessly, I realized that my hair had dried in unruly ringlets, and I was without makeup. I wiped my cheeks and nose with a Kleenex as I peered up to the doorway.

He instantly recognized my angst. I didn’t try to hide it. I couldn’t hide anything from Lennox Demetri even if I wanted to. He knew me better than I knew myself.

“Charli, what’s going on?”

I shook my head. “Y-you’re home?”

He came toward me, and I drank him in: his long legs covered in jeans, white v-neck t-shirt that hugged his chest, showing enough definition to make me want to reach out and touch it, and the wool suit coat that emanated the sexy aroma of his cologne.

Nox reached for my hand and pulled me to his muscular chest. “Is it your mother?”

He knew I’d been concerned about her.

I shook my head. “I-I don’t understand.”

I didn’t know how to explain what I’d learned. Would Nox misconstrue my feelings as jealousy? I wasn’t jealous. I had him. I didn’t want Bryce, but I didn’t understand how Chelsea was with him, living my life. Had she set me up all along? Had our friendship ever been real?