The Best Goodbye (Rosemary Beach, #13)(23)

“Why does that upset you?” he asked. His voice was a low rumble as he moved closer to me and his thumb caressed my arm. “You’ve always talked to me before. Don’t stop now. I need you to tell me, Addy. Please. Talk to me.” The desperate plea in his voice was my undoing. I was hurting him, and he didn’t deserve it.

I turned my gaze to his, and my eyes held more unshed tears. “I’m sorry. I . . . I know we’re friends, and I know you would do anything for me. So this is unfair, and I don’t want to tell you, because I don’t want you to feel bad for me.”

River didn’t move. His eyes pleaded with me to continue, so I did.

“I was jealous. It was hard to see . . .” I swallowed against the lump in my throat. “I didn’t want . . . I don’t want . . .” I closed my eyes. I couldn’t say it and look at him. “I don’t want to hurt our friendship, but I’m in love with you.” There. I had said it.

Before I could think of anything else, River’s hands were once again cupping my face, but this time, it was different. There was an intimacy to it that didn’t come when he was checking me for bruises. “Look at me, Addy.”

Slowly, I opened my eyes and stared into his. There was so much emotion there. I wasn’t able to read him and know what he was feeling.

“I’ve been in love with you for a while now. I just didn’t think you felt that way about me.”

“What?” I said, confused.

He gave me a grin, then moved in closer. “I’m in love with you. You’re all I care about.”

Frowning, I looked down and tried to move my face away, but he held on to me with a firm yet gentle touch. “I saw you caring a lot about Delany.”

“No, what you saw was me being a guy. I didn’t think you felt more than friendship for me, so when Delany came on to me, I took the chance. I don’t love her. She loves herself enough. She was just a distraction.”

“What?” I repeated. “You . . . you touched her breasts and her thigh. I saw your tongue in her mouth.”

River winced as if that pained him. “I hate that you saw that. But I’ll never do it again. I swear to God. If you love me, Addy, then I’m yours. I’ve been yours for years.”





Captain


She wasn’t wearing her glasses, and without those large frames covering her face, I could see her eyes clearly. Eyes that had haunted me for years. She had changed her hair color, but that was Addy’s face. Just the grown-up version. How had I missed it?

Because I hadn’t believed she was alive. I’d never looked at her hoping to see Addy.

“Addy,” I said, simply needing her to assure me that I wasn’t hallucinating and this was real. She was real.

She stepped back from the door so I could come inside. “River,” she replied simply, and that was the only answer I needed.

All the questions I’d had on my way over here, when I was still afraid to believe that Rose was Addy, vanished. I couldn’t form words. The best thing I could manage was “How?”

Addy closed the door once I was inside and turned to look at me. “How what? How did I find you?”

Find me? She’d been looking for me? It had been ten years. I shook my head. Yes, I wanted that answer, too, but first . . . “How are you alive?”

She frowned and studied me a moment, as if my question made no sense.

Did she not think that would be the first thing I’d want to know? Fuck, I’d thought she was dead for ten years of hell. If I’d had any idea she was alive, I’d have come after her. Found her. I had that kind of power with DeCarlo. Finding her would have been easy, but I’d seen what my mother had done to her.

“I don’t understand the question. I left without a word because I was protecting you from your mother. From me and the fate you’d be handed if I stayed. I saved us both, really. Why would you think I was dead?”

“Why would you leave? You knew you didn’t have to save me. I kept you safe, Addy, not the other way around. And I thought you were dead because my mother came home with a gun in her hands and blood on her clothes. She admitted to killing you and throwing your body into a lake, but she wouldn’t disclose the exact location. You never came home. I hoped she was lying, but you never came back. You never contacted me. I went to the police, and Mom was arrested and sent to a mental hospital, where she eventually took her own life. Fuck, Addy, I had every damn body of water in a hundred-mile radius dragged as soon as I had the money and power to do it. I wanted you properly buried.” My heart was pounding in my chest as I let the memories and the pain wash over me. But seeing her standing here was almost too much.

“The blood was mine,” she said quietly. But I knew that already. The cops had confirmed it. “She checked me out of school that day. I had asked the office to please call you to the office, but she’d been on her best behavior and explained that she didn’t want you disturbed because of my doctor’s appointment. So I went, although I knew there was no doctor’s appointment.

“She took me out of town and parked at the back of a parking lot at a bus station. Then she asked me how many times we’d had sex. I didn’t want to tell her. That crazy look was in her eyes, and I knew if I told her, she’d lose it. So I said once. She hit me across the face and busted my lip. Then she asked me again, and I told her three times. She hit me again. Then she asked me again. This went on five times, even though my answer stayed the same. I was bleeding badly by this time, and she shoved money at me and told me to get on a bus and leave and never come back. That I could be pregnant with your brat, and I wasn’t going to taint her name and yours.