Page 69 of The Perfect Deception

“It’s true,” she said. “Kind of like the an­tic­i­pa­tion of some­thing is worse than the ac­tual event. Bring­ing it out in the open makes the bur­den lighter.”

“Or it con­vinces you of the mer­its of what you wor­ried about in the first place.”

Some­how, she didn’t think he was talk­ing about the grand­fa­ther he’d never met. “But isn’t it bet­ter to just get it over with?”

His mouth whitened around the edge of his lips and he stiff­ened. “No.” He rose and stalked to­ward the DVR, kneel­ing be­fore it. He tried to look busy, but Dina could read him. He was fid­dling.

“What’s the worst that can hap­pen?” she asked.

He kept his back to her, his mus­cles strain­ing against his shirt.

At any other time, Dina’s throat would have gone dry at the sight. How­ever, know­ing he was, in ef­fect, strain­ing against her at­tempts to know him bet­ter, made his mus­cles de­cid­edly less at­trac­tive.

Adam rose and turned to­ward her, but kept his gaze fo­cused some­where be­hind her and to her left. He opened and closed his mouth sev­eral times be­fore clench­ing his fist and fo­cus­ing on her. He thrust his hand through his hair. “I know what you’re try­ing to do. I know I need to talk to you, and I will, but I need time. Please, I need you to trust me. Can you do that?”

Her stom­ach twisted and she swal­lowed. He hadn’t done any­thing to abuse her trust, but how much time did he ex­pect her to give? And what was so im­por­tant that he needed time to pre­pare? With a nod, she gave in. For now.

Chap­ter Eigh­teen

Adam called her on Mon­day, act­ing as if noth­ing had hap­pened. Act­ing, ac­tu­ally, like his Mr. Flashy­pants self. It was like he’d erected a wall around him­self and be­hind that wall, noth­ing had hap­pened. He kept his con­ver­sa­tions light and avoided the painful topic.

Dina spent the week stuck in a fog. Her re­union was next week­end, and Adam was sup­posed to go with her, but if he thought she was go­ing to bring it up, he had no idea who she was.

Dina didn’t know what to do.

“Did you tell him how mad you are at him?” Tracy asked on Wednes­day. They were tak­ing a lunch break at a sand­wich shop down the street from the li­brary.

“No, be­cause ev­ery time I fig­ure out what I want to say, he changes the sub­ject or teases me and makes me laugh, or has to run.”

“That’s ridicu­lous, Deen. He should know how you feel.”

“Yeah, but I also have a pretty good idea how I made him feel.”

“So what, you’re his girl­friend. If he won’t be hon­est with you now, there’s no fu­ture for you.”

Dina stirred her soda with the straw. “I know you’re right, but there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to mess with this. For the first time, I’m dat­ing some­one who likes me. Me. What if I screw it up?”

Tracy reached across the ta­ble and cov­ered Dina’s hand with her own. “If he’s truly worth it, he’ll un­der­stand.”

“Okay, af­ter the re­union. De­spite what I said in the be­gin­ning, I’m re­ally look­ing for­ward to hav­ing him go with me, and I don’t want things to be tense there. It’s al­ready go­ing to be nerve-wrack­ing.”

Adam shut off his com­puter and rubbed his face. He had a list of New York City law firms that looked promis­ing. He’d done a search of Ash­ley’s name in re­la­tion to the firms and couldn’t find any con­nec­tions. If he couldn’t use Ja­cob’s con­nec­tions, that didn’t mean he couldn’t find a job. The tricky part was go­ing to be the ref­er­ences, but maybe with some bar­gain­ing, his dad would con­sent to giv­ing him a good one, if only to get his son off his back.

His son.The words were bit­ter on his tongue. What kind of a man treated his son this way? Adam thought he’d given up car­ing long ago, but his fa­ther’s ac­tions cre­ated a dull ache in his breast­bone, and he couldn’t get rid of it no mat­ter how hard he tried.

Screw it. Lots of peo­ple didn’t get along with their fam­ily and they sur­vived. He would too. He had a plan—sub­mit ré­sumés, take Dina to the re­union, get a job of­fer, tell her he loved her and come clean to her about be­ing fired. In that or­der. Be­cause he’d look a lot less piti­ful if he had a great job to prove his worth to her. She’d see him as a man who’d over­come ad­ver­sity, not some­one who’d been beaten down by it.

He’d con­vinced her to go out with him through sheer force of will. Once his fu­ture was set, he’d con­vince her she loved him the same way. And her re­union would be the place to show her how in­dis­pens­able he was. He just had to hold ev­ery­thing to­gether for a few more days.

Dina’s nerves were crack­ling by the day of the re­union. Not only was she stressed about Adam and his se­crets, but on top of that, the thought of will­ingly putting her­self in the same room as her high school class­mates had been look­ing less and less ap­peal­ing as the re­union ap­proached. And now it was here. She was too nau­se­ated to eat a real break­fast, but her stom­ach needed some­thing in it to pre­vent the flip-flops it was do­ing. Set­tling for dry toast and tea, she curled up on her win­dow seat and looked out­side.

This early on a spring morn­ing, the only peo­ple out were the jog­gers and the dog walk­ers. Her toe tap­ping jos­tled her tea and she squeezed her eyes shut. Ex­er­cise was just what she needed to work through her anx­i­ety.

Af­ter chang­ing into leg­gings and a long-sleeved Smash­ing Pump­kins T-shirt, she plugged her ear buds into her phone, laced her bright or­ange run­ning shoes, and left her apart­ment. Was she re­ally ready to face the girls she’d gone to high school with? Rather than head­ing to­ward the main street, she headed deeper into the res­i­den­tial part of town, ad­mir­ing the con­verted Vic­to­rian man­sions and tak­ing in the newly sprout­ing elm trees that lined the side­walks. Shouldn’t she be over her dis­like of them by now? A few had leaves just start­ing to emerge and the light bright green added hints of color to an oth­er­wise grey morn­ing. She nod­ded at pass­ing jog­gers and smiled at pass­ing dogs, and their own­ers, and by the time she re­turned to her apart­ment, she had calmed down some.

Af­ter show­er­ing, she put­tered around her apart­ment. Feel­ing a bit like a squir­rel who hops from tree to tree and acorn to acorn, she tried to fo­cus on her clean­ing, but kept be­ing pulled away and dis­tracted by as lit­tle as a back­ground hum­ming noise from the air con­di­tioner or a pass­ing con­ver­sa­tion in the hall­way. De­cid­ing she needed some­thing to take her mind off things, she called Tracy and asked her to come over, mak­ing tea in the mean­time.

“What’s wrong?” her friend asked when she ar­rived, baby in tow.