The Private Serials Box Set (27 page)

   “It’s a long story, Lena.  I promise I’ll tell you everything.  I just need you to promise you’re going to hear us out.  That you’re going to listen to us before you make any rash decisions about what we tell you.”  Becky was looking at me with pleading eyes as she spoke.

   “What is this about?”  I whispered.

   “Lena, you have to promise,” Becky urged.

   “Fine, I promise I’ll listen.”

   Becky’s eyes moved to Ryan and she nodded at him slightly, then leaned back against the couch.

   “Lena,” Ryan started, “we were sent here to protect you.”  He paused and looked at me as if he expected me to bolt at his words.  I looked at him blankly, waiting for him to continue.  “She’s been here longer than I have and sought you out, made sure you roomed with her so she could keep an eye on you.  I came a few weeks later, just to make sure I could cover you when she couldn’t.”  He looked over at Becky and she nodded slightly again, seeming to corroborate what he was saying.

   “And you’re brother and sister?”  They both nodded at my question.

   “Only,” Becky said hesitantly, “my name’s not Becky and he’s not Ryan.”

   “Wait, what?”  My eyebrows scrunched up and my forehead wrinkled in confusion.  “Why would you lie about your names?  And who sent you here?”

   “We knew if we told you our names, you’d know who we were and not want anything to do with us,” the man whose name I no longer knew answered.

   “So, what’s your name then?”  I asked him.

   “I’m Parker.”

   “And I’m Piper.”

   My stomach bottomed out at their admissions and my heart nearly flew from my chest.

   “You’re Preston’s brother and sister,” I said quietly.  Much quieter, in fact, than I wanted to say it.  I wanted to scream at them.  “Why are you here?  Why did he send you?”  Surely Preston was behind this, but I couldn’t fathom why.

   “He wanted me here with you until he could be the one with you,” Piper said softly.

   “And I came a few weeks ago because, even though he was trying to make his way back to you, it was taking him longer than he anticipated.”  Parker exhaled loudly.  “He just wanted to make sure you were safe.”

   “Why?” 

   “Well, that’s really his story to tell.”

   I looked down at my lap to where my hands were laying.  I was wringing my fingers together so hard my knuckles were white.  I flattened my palms on my thighs and rubbed them on the fabric of my pants down to my knees, trying to calm the nerves that had come over me.

   “He’s here, isn’t he?”

   Parker nodded.  “He’s next door in my apartment.”

   “Your apartment?” I exclaimed.  My body tensed immediately, warring with itself.  My nerves came alive, knowing he was so close, but my body fought the urge to run to him, to be with him again.

   “He moved into the apartment we first looked at,” Piper said.

   “Are you serious?”  I couldn’t believe what she was saying.  “Why the hell would the two of you uproot your lives to do this?  To be my roommate,” I said, gesturing at Piper, “and to go running with me?”  I said, looking to Parker.

   “Again, we can’t tell you the whole story,” Piper started, “but it’s my fault we’re all in this mess.”

   “And he’s our brother.  Once he told me what you mean to him, I couldn’t
not
help him.”

   “What I
mean
to him?  He lied to me!  He ruined everything!  He thinks he can send his little sister and big brother in to clean up his mess?  What an asshole.”  I stood and started pacing around the living room.  How dare he?  How
dare
he!  I let out a frustrated breath.

   “He’s not asking us to clean up after him. He wanted us to make sure you were all right until he could make it to you himself.”  Parker’s voice was soft and I knew he was trying to calm me down while also trying to protect his brother.

   “This is all one big farce,” I whispered.  “If he wanted me, or wanted anything that you’ve said in the last five minutes, then why didn’t he just come for me himself?”  My heart ached at my own words.  Even though he’d ruined everything, it still hurt that he never came for me.  Each day that passed without contact, without hearing his voice or feeling his touch, it was just as painful as hearing that he’d been involved with Derrek from the beginning.

   “That’s his story to tell, Lena,” Piper said, her voice equally as soft as Parker’s.

   “So what now?”  I said as I unconsciously wiped an errant tear that had streamed down my face.  I didn’t want to cry.  I hadn’t cried in so long.  And even though I knew eventually the dam would burst, all the tears I’d held back would eventually seep through the cracks in my walls and the flood of emotions would crash through me, I didn’t want this to happen because of Preston.  I didn’t want to be surrounded by strangers, because that’s who Piper and Parker were to me: strangers.  They weren’t the people, the friends, I thought I’d gained since being here; they were people, pawns, placed in my life to manipulate me.

   “Well,” Piper said, the word drawn out slowly, “if you’d like to speak with him, he’s waiting next door to talk to you.”

   I scoffed at her words.  “I have to go to him?  After all he’d put me through, I have to go to him?”

   “He doesn’t want to force you to do anything you’re not comfortable with,” Parker said cautiously.  Obviously, they could tell I was dangling precariously from a ledge, about ready to drop into a chasm of all kinds of crazy.

   “Oh, he doesn’t want me to be
uncomfortable
?”  I asked with snark dripping from my voice.  No sooner had the words left my mouth than I turned and yanked the front door open, my strides long and hard as I made my way next door, heading for the apartment I had been in a month previously.

   Without pausing, or even thinking anything through fully, I grabbed the door handle and forced the door open.  Luckily, it was unlocked, so my dramatic entrance was just as I imagined it, doorknob crashing against the wall and all.  I was breathing hard, shoulders rising and falling with my angry breaths, when my eyes fell upon Preston’s face for the first time in nearly two months.

   He was sitting on a couch, his elbows propped on his knees, his head bowed, resting in his hands.  The first thing I noticed was his dark hair and how messy it was, pointing in every which way.  When he heard me explode through the door, his face snapped up and I was immediately drowning in the darkness of his eyes.  He looked surprised, bewildered almost.  As if he was seeing something he hadn’t dared to believe existed before.

   His face was pale, his eyes tired, and there were dark bags under them.  He looked as if he hadn’t slept since possibly the last time I saw him.  He had a light beard, which was not something I was used to.  If he didn’t look like he’d been hit by a truck, I might have admired the way the beard magnified everything manly about him.

   I tried to fight the urge I had to run to him and try and fix him. I reined in the need to hold him, reminding myself how his affection for me was simply an act, something he was paid to fabricate.  The battle inside me was deadly and I still wasn’t clear which side would end up winning.  But, to his credit, I saw a battle going on inside of him too. 

   He stood, almost immediately, and started to make his way toward me, but I held up my hand.

   “No,” I said, more forcefully than I knew I had the capacity for.  He halted in the middle of the living room, looking at me with eyes that begged for something.

   “Lena,” he pleaded. His voice, caressing my name, crashed through my veins, igniting the spark inside of me that had been smothered for so long.  He looked as though only I had the ability to save him from drowning; he was waiting for me to throw him a lifeline.

   “You don’t get to say my name.  You don’t get to talk to me.  You
ruined
me, Preston.  You took the trust you
begged
me for and you threw it away like it was garbage.  I don’t know why you’re here, or why you sent your family after me, but I want you to leave, now.  Leave now and never contact me again.  I may have been desperate enough to end my marriage to fall for your lies once, but I am not stupid enough to subject myself to you a second time.”  I took in a deep breath.  “Find some other poor housewife to manipulate.”

   I turned to leave, but before I even made it one step, his hand wrapped around my arm, and then I was spinning back toward him.  My black hair swung around, my mouth gaped open in surprise, and my shriek caught in my throat when I saw his face up close.

   He looked absolutely tortured.  Broken.  Fractured.

   “Please don’t leave before I get a chance to tell you everything.”

   “You don’t deserve anything from me, and I’m not going to listen to your lies anymore.”

   “I never lied to you,” he growled.

   “Oh, really?  So all those times you let me believe you worked for me, that you were helping me, those weren’t lies, Preston?  That wasn’t you
lying
to me?”

   “I worked for Derrek until the very moment I saw you walk from your car into that bar.  The instant I saw you, the moment my eyes found you, all my loyalty was to you, not him.  Christ, Lena,” he paused and ran his free hand over his jaw, his other hand still clamped around my upper arm, “I saw you and my world changed color.”  He moved infinitesimally closer to me, just a tiny step, and my damned breath stuck in my throat, my heart skipped a beat.  Traitors.

   “You can’t sweet talk your way out of this.  You still lied.  You still gave him what he wanted.”  I closed my eyes and turned my head away from him, knowing that soon all the sobbing I’d kept at bay for months would break through my walls.  If he kept talking, if he kept standing so close to me, I wouldn’t last much longer.

   “I had nothing to do with those photos, Lena.  I swear.”  His voice had turned angry, but only his voice.  His hand was still firm around me, but not painful. 

   “For some reason, I don’t believe you,” I said icily.  I pointed my chin up and opened my eyes, meeting his straight on, feigning strength.

   “Every reason you have to be angry with me is valid.  You’re right to be upset.  But every wrong you think I committed was done in an effort to help you.  Everything I did, I did for you, sweetheart.”

   My last string to sanity snapped at his endearment.  My arms wrapped around my belly and I folded in half, crying.  He let go of my arm only to crumple to the ground with me as I cried.  He tried to comfort me, tried to wrap his arms around me, but I wouldn’t let him, crying out “No,” and pushing him away.  I sat on the floor, crying into my arms, and he sat next to me.  I could feel his need to touch me, could feel his desire to hold me, but I wouldn’t let him.

   We stayed like that for a while.  Perhaps a half hour.  And I cried until I didn’t feel like I had any energy left in me to put out.  In the end, I was just a puddle of a woman, hiccupping and trying to breathe normally, in the middle of his floor. 

   Finally, he moved to get up and I heard him enter the kitchen, then the faucet turn on, and a few seconds later, he was kneeling next to me with a glass of water and some pills.

   “Ibuprofen,” he said.

   I sat up slightly and took what he was offering.  The cold water felt blissful as it ran down my throat and spread throughout my belly.

   “Please, come sit on the couch.”  I looked up to him and noticed his eyes were rimmed with red and I realized he’d been crying too.  Not sobbing, like I had been, but crying quietly beside me.  He held a hand out to me, a hand to help me up from the floor, but it felt like so much more.  I reached for it and sighed when our skin met. 

   He pulled me from the ground in one fast movement. Gasping a little at his strength, I was reminded of how powerful he was, and had to tamp down the wave of lust that rode through me.  It was hard enough to not be turned on simply by the memory of him, but the sight of him in front of me, the feel of him against my skin, to be handled by him again, was too much.  I pulled away from him and moved to sit down on the couch.  I took another sip of water and closed my eyes.

   “Please let me explain,” he whispered from the other side of the couch.  “If it’s the last thing I ever say to you, I want you to know the truth.”

   I couldn’t really argue with him.  I wanted the truth just as much as he seemed to want to share it.  I just didn’t know if I was ready to hear it.  Listening to him tell the story of how he lied to me over and over again would surely break me open even more so than I was already.

   “It hurts too much.”

   “I’m so sorry, Lena.”

   I let a pause linger between us, my eyes still trained on the glass in my hands.

   “That helps,” I said sincerely.  And it did.

   “Let me help more.  Let me explain.”

   “I don’t know if I can hear that tonight.  I think I need to go home and go to bed.”

   He didn’t say anything right away, but I could feel him tense.  He didn’t want me to go without explaining himself.

   “I’ve been fighting for you for the past two months, Lena.  I know it doesn’t seem like it.  I know how it must look to you, but every day I’ve fought for you.  I’m not going anywhere.  You need to hear the truth and if it’s not tonight, it’ll be soon.”

   I lifted my eyes to meet his and said with as much strength as I could muster, “You can’t tell me anything I don’t want to listen to, Preston.  You lost your chance to explain anything to me when you lied.” I paused and took in a deep breath.  “If I feel like listening to your excuses, I’ll let you know.  But until then, leave me alone.”

   I put the glass on the table and then left the apartment without another word, surprised he didn’t try to stop me or ply me with more words.  I opened the door to my apartment and saw Piper and Parker sitting right where I’d left them.

   “Oh, look,” I said with snark, “more liars.”  I walked past them, not waiting to listen if they tried to argue with my assessment.  Even though it was more than obvious I’d been lied to by both of them for the duration of my time knowing them, I didn’t think they were dangerous.  I was sure they did everything out of love for their brother, so I didn’t bother making them leave.  It wasn’t worth the energy.