Dirty Little Secrets (Dirty Little #1)(42)

So, I’ve got that going for me, I guess.

“Everything’s okay,” I tell Caleb. My voice is shaky, though, and I know he’ll catch the lie. Sometimes the man can read me like a book.

He walks up behind me, and I jump when he touches my shoulder. “Mia?”

“It’s noth-”

“Don’t tell me this is nothing,” he says. The panic in his voice earlier is being overtaken by anger. It’s burning around the edges, just waiting to catch fire. “Tell me the truth.”

I walk over to the floor-to-ceiling windows, and look out at the park. For so long, being in this apartment let me forget about the outside world. Right now, I’d love to be out in it. I’d love to be anywhere but here. This is the moment that I let myself believe would never come.

This is the moment that proves I’m a fool.


“God damn it, Mia,” Caleb says, walking up behind me. “Your computer’s going off like crazy, you dropped your coffee all over yourself and barely even noticed it. You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Tell me what the f*ck is going on. Now.”

Caleb’s patience has run out, and I don’t blame him for not wanting to wait anymore. Honestly, I don’t want to keep this secret anymore. So, here goes.

“It’s true what I told you, that I left Chicago because I needed a new start. But needing a new start, it wasn’t a voluntary thing,” I say, turning my head to the side. I can’t bear to look at him, settling instead for seeing him out of the corner of my eye. “I was running away from something there.”

“Running away from what?” He walks closer, and I turn my head to look out the window again. Talking is easier this way, because I don’t have to see the anger and disappointment on his face. “What are you hiding from me?”

I swallow, not quite sure how I’m going to phrase the next part of the story.

“Look at me,” Caleb says roughly.

I do as he asks, I at least owe him that. When my eyes finally meet his, there’s anger there, yes…but there’s also fear.

“I’ve been patient, and I never want to push you, Mia. But if there was ever a time to push, it seems like it’s now. I’ve opened my home to you, and helped you when you didn’t have anyone, and you owe me the goddamn truth.”

“I know,” I say, feeling my eyes water. “I know I do. I wanted to tell you sooner-”

“Bullshit,” he says. “If you wanted to tell me sooner, you would’ve told me sooner.”

“I was scared,” I admit. My voice sounds smaller than it ever has before, and something in it makes Caleb’s expression soften.

He takes a step toward me. “You don’t have to be scared with me.”

“I do,” I say, nodding. The tears are flowing freely now, and I’m not even going to try to stop them. “Once I tell you, you’re not going to look at me the way that you do, and I didn’t want to lose that. You make me…you make me forget all of this shit, and…”

“I can help you,” he says. “But I can’t do that if you won’t tell me what’s wrong.”

“You can’t help me with this.”

Caleb runs his fingers through his hair frustratedly. “You can at least let me try!”

“Can we sit down?”

“I’m fine where I am. Stop trying to stall, Mia.”

“Can we please sit down? I’d feel better if we were sitting down.”

Caleb lets out a long, shaky breath, and makes his way over to the couch, and sits down. His legs are wide open, his elbows resting on his knees. His foot bounces up and down nervously, like he just can’t sit still. He looks as on edge as I feel.

I take a seat on the coffee table across from him. I figure it’ll be good to keep some distance between us. I’d feel better if I was wearing something other than Caleb’s shirt to have this conversation, but there’s no turning back now.

“I don’t know where to start,” I admit. Do I start by telling him about the money I stole? Do I start at the point when I left Chicago? How far back should I go?

“What were you running away from?” Caleb asks.

“It’s complicated.”

He sighs, and shrugs his shoulders. “I’ve got all day, Mia.”

I take a deep breath. Here goes.

“I told you the other night about the woman—Amelia—who treated me like one of her own after my mom died.”

Caleb nods, acknowledging that he remembers.

“After my mom died, my dad, he was really depressed. He did the best that he could with me, but he didn’t really know how to be a single father at first. I guess most people don’t, when it comes unexpectedly like that. He was out of work for a while…well, a long while, and we didn’t really have that much money to begin with. We had been renting this house in the suburbs—white picket fence and all that—but he couldn’t bare to live there anymore with my mom gone, and we couldn’t afford the rent, anyway.

“We moved to a…a not-so-nice area of town. My mom was always worried about my education; she wanted me to have the best. So, we lived in this shitty, hole-in-the-wall apartment, and every penny my dad had to spare went to private school tuition. When I’d get home from school in the afternoon, Amelia would invite me over, and she’d make sure I had dinner, because my dad was always working nights. She had a son, Marcus. He and I have been best friends ever since.”