Page 78 of The Perfect Deception

Dina frowned at her phone. She’d texted Adam twice—once in the morn­ing and once this af­ter­noon, and he hadn’t re­sponded to ei­ther text. Af­ter last night, she was con­cerned about him. Maybe he was sleep­ing it off? But it was four o’clock. Even a drunk would be up by now.

And Adam hadn’t seemed drunk.

When it rang, she tossed it up in the air, be­fore an­swer­ing it. “H…Hello?”

“Dina, it’s me. What’s wrong?”

Tracy’s voice usu­ally made her happy, and she tried to swal­low her dis­ap­point­ment when it wasn’t whom she was hop­ing to talk to.

“Sorry, Trace, I was wait­ing for a phone call.”

“So was I. You didn’t call to let me know how the re­union was.”

Dina gripped the phone. “I’m sorry. It was…event­ful.” She scrunched into the couch, drew a green afghan her mom had knit over her knees and told Tracy about last night. “I’m not sure what sur­prised me more—the way the pop­u­lar girls acted like we’d been best friends for years, or the way Adam just shut down. He didn’t even give me a chance to de­fend him. Adam is many things, Tracy, be­lieve me, I know. But he’s never in­di­cated he wasn’t in­ter­ested in pur­su­ing a re­la­tion­ship with me. He’s never sug­gested he’d up and leave if we got se­ri­ous. That’s not his style. But he won’t let me talk to him or ask him what’s go­ing on.”

“Wow. My tenth wasn’t nearly so event­ful, un­less you count the drunken pos­tur­ing go­ing on by the home­com­ing king and queen. As for Adam, are you sure he’s as into you as you think?”

Blood rushed to her head at Tracy’s lack of loy­alty. “Ab­so­lutely, Tracy. He’s big on im­age, but be­hind that, he’s car­ing and loyal and de­cent. There’s no way he’d go to all the trou­ble of tak­ing me to my re­union just to break up with me!”

“Hey, easy. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to up­set you. I just don’t like see­ing you hurt.”

Dina took a deep breath. “Okay, sorry, didn’t mean to jump on you. Yes, I’m pos­i­tive. No mat­ter what im­age he projects to oth­ers, he’s se­ri­ous about me. And I’d feel it or sense that vibe, even if I didn’t see it di­rectly.”

“You’re right. He doesn’t give off that vibe at all. It’s some co­in­ci­dence though that you went to high school with his para­le­gal.”

“I know. It re­ally is a small world. Now if only he’d call me so we could talk this through. I have no idea what’s go­ing through his head.”

“Din, don’t wait around. If he’s not an­swer­ing you, call him.”

She glanced at the clock. “You’re right. I will as soon as I get off the phone with you.”

When Dina di­aled Adam, she ex­pected her call to go to voice­mail, but he picked up af­ter three rings.

“Di­naaaa!”

Oh brother. Her hands trem­bled as she held the phone to her ear. “Adam. Are you okay?”

“Su­u­u­u­ure.”

She cringed at the way he was speak­ing. “You don’t sound it.” His voice was off. And he was giv­ing her the at­ti­tude she hated.

“Like you’d ex­pect any­thing else?”

Her skin tin­gled and her stom­ach felt heavy. “Adam, what are you talk­ing about?”

“Come on, Dina, you’re too smart to act this stupid.”

Her throat tight­ened and the room tilted. Reach­ing for some­thing to grab onto, her hand found the arm of the sofa and she sank into it. “You’re not mak­ing any sense. Do you want me to come over?”

“No, I don’t want you to come over.”

Al­though they hadn’t been on the phone long, it was as if time dragged, with each ques­tion and re­sponse elon­gat­ing and dis­tort­ing. She swal­lowed and gripped the phone tighter.

“Then why are you call­ing me?”

Adam’s hu­mor­less laugh echoed in her ear. “You’re the one that’s been tex­ting me all day.”

So he’d got­ten her texts and ig­nored them. “Be­cause I wanted to talk to you about last night.”