With Every Heartbeat (Forbidden Men, #4)(133)

I nodded, but Ten still had his hand in the air. “I swear, I’m not trying to talk you out of going after the whore, but, uh…there’s something you might need to know about Cora before going over there.”

Of course there was. Cora was layered with secret after secret. She probably had so many she didn’t even know who the real Cora Wilder was.

“She’s kind of sick.” Ten winced again and shrugged. “Kind of really sick. Like...she’s dying.”

I kept staring at him, waiting for the punch line, but when he said nothing else, I blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Okay, so...” He lifted his hands, letting me know he had an entire story to explain. “I never really trusted her, right? Right. So, after we f*cked that one time and I found out you were still hooking up with her, she told me she hadn’t known then that you wanted to see her again, but I wasn’t sure I could believe her. And I couldn’t go and ask you about it, or you’d get suspicious and figure out the truth, so I started kind of, I don’t know, following her, hoping I could catch her with some other dude. Then I could tell you about her being unfaithful with him, but she was always too crafty to get caught. She wasn’t as sneaky about the treatment center she went to three times a week, though.”

“Treatment center?” I shook my head, utterly confused.

“What? Like, she’s a drug addict?” Noel asked, just as boggled as I was.

Ten glanced at both of us. “She has kidney failure.”

I backed up a step, not expecting to hear that at all. Actually, it was probably one of the very last things I was imagining. I had known something was going on with her health-wise, but I’d been thinking more along the same lines as Noel, that she’d been doing something to herself to provoke an illness.

“But...she can’t...what?” I backed up a couple more steps.

With a solemn nod, Ten kept talking. “She’s bad enough along that she needs dialysis three times a week to keep going.”

“End stage,” I murmured. Shaking my head, I sank down until I was sitting on the sofa. “That’s just... That’s not even possible. I would know. How could I not know something like that? And w-w-why would she...”

But I had known something was going on with her, that she was keeping things from me. Covering my mouth with my hand, I looked up at my roommate.

“Why wouldn’t she say anything?” I think the fact that she’d kept this from me was more of an insult than realizing she’d cheated on me.

Ten sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “I guess it takes a really selfish person to understand why she’d want to keep that silent, but I get it.”

“Then, please,” I barked, “Explain it to me.” Because I didn’t get it at all. I didn’t get any of this. The Cora Wilder I had started dating months ago was nothing at all like the Cora Wilder I was learning truly existed. How had she been able to hide this side of herself for so long? And why?

Sociopath, I reminded myself. But a sociopath with kidney failure?

I gripped my head with both hands, because oh yeah, my temples were throbbing like crazy.

“Sickness and disease is gross,” Ten said. “Stupid, careless people like me, like Whora, look at people with cancer and terminal illness with revulsion. They’re weak and repugnant and should be hidden away from society. To learn she’s one of them...” He laughed and shook his head, “She’s in denial, man. She doesn’t want people to know she’s not perfect. She wants to stay the f*cking queen bee. She can’t have a flaw, or no one will follow her. So she hides it.”

“Even from me?” I had to ask. I felt sick to my stomach. Ten might’ve classified himself in that same category with her, but I knew he didn’t belong. He didn’t really see others that way, no matter how much he wanted us to think he did.

Sympathy filled his eyes, letting me know just how right I was. Cora wouldn’t have been sympathetic right then. But Ten was. “Especially from you,” he said.

I nodded and blew out a breath. “And Zoey?” I asked, my voice going hoarse because thinking about her keeping this from me hurt worse than knowing Cora had. And I knew she had to have known about it.

“She’s going to donate one of her kidneys for the transplant,” Ten answered quietly.

Closing my eyes, I bowed my head. “Of course she is.” I wouldn’t have expected anything less from her. And wow, now that I thought of it, that was why Cora had brought her here. I was sure Zoey had willingly volunteered the transplant; she probably thought it’d been her idea entirely. But Cora had orchestrated the whole thing because she knew Zoey, and she knew what Zoey would offer.

How had Cora phrased it? Zoey will do anything for me, because I’m like, I don’t know, her god, I guess.

Everything made so much sense now. All the times Zoey had been so guilty around me, unable to divulge Cora’s secret, knowing it would probably impact my relationship with her, because let’s face it...if I’d known Cora was going through what she was going through, I never would’ve dumped her, faithless whore or not. It just wasn’t in my chemical makeup to be that cruel. And Zoey had known that, because she would’ve done the same exact thing if she’d been in my shoes.

Cora had been right; Zoey and I were the same.