Page 79 of The Perfect Deception

“I have no need to talk to you about last night, or any­thing else for that mat­ter.”

Sweat dot­ted her fore­head. “Adam, I re­ally don’t un­der­stand what’s go­ing on.”

“Oh, for once the id­iot gets to play the smart guy and en­lighten the ge­nius!”

His words stung. “You’re not an id­iot, Adam.”

“I must be, if I fell for your trick.”

Her mind raced as she tried to fig­ure out what he was talk­ing about. “What trick?”

“You set me up.”

“What?”

“Last night. You had me think­ing this whole time you were dread­ing your re­union, that you’d never fit in with any of your class­mates, when this whole time you were in league with Ash­ley.”

“What? No! That’s not true!”

“Come on, Dina. You went to school with her. You think it’s just a co­in­ci­dence? How stupid do you think I am?”

Her mouth dropped and her heart raced. “Adam, I swear. Ev­ery­thing I told you was true. Those girls never knew me in high school. I didn’t even know Ash­ley worked with you.”

His voice lost all the “drunk Adam” tone and hard­ened. “For­get it, Dina. Don’t pre­tend any­more that you don’t know my fa­ther fired me. You even pre­tended to try to help me im­prove my rep­u­ta­tion, when all along you knew, and you helped Ash­ley make it pub­lic. Well, con­grat­u­la­tion. We’re done.”

Tears welled and over­flowed down her cheeks as she dropped the phone and sank to the ground.

His own fa­ther fired him and he thought it was her fault.

Chap­ter Twenty-One

For the third time af­ter hang­ing up with Dina that af­ter­noon, Adam vom­ited. He’d con­vinced Dina it was her fault. He’d bro­ken up with the one girl he loved. And he was a bas­tard. Be­cause none of it was true.

But at least he’d been the one to leave first.

His stom­ach gur­gled and flopped and once again, he hunched over the toi­let. The cold porce­lain did lit­tle to ease his tor­ment. This was worse than be­ing drunk. At least he knew he’d feel bet­ter once the al­co­hol was purged from his sys­tem. But this? There was no way to purge his vile be­hav­ior from his sys­tem.

When his phone buzzed, he groped blindly for it, skit­ter­ing his fin­gers across the tiled floor un­til they bumped against the vi­brat­ing phone.

“Hello,” he rasped.

“Adam, it’s Ja­cob. You sound aw­ful.”

Wip­ing his mouth, he sat back against the wall. “Yeah, I feel like crap.”

“Sorry. I was go­ing to see if you wanted to meet in the city for some pool. Aviva’s out with her mom tonight, but doesn’t sound like you’ll make it.”

Adam roused him­self and ran his hand over his face. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Next time.”

A weight sat on his shoul­ders as he put down his phone. He wasn’t sick. There was no phys­i­cal rea­son why he couldn’t spend the evening with Ja­cob. In fact, it would prob­a­bly be good to keep his mind off of things. Ex­cept Ja­cob would ask what was go­ing on and he’d have to ex­plain why he broke up with Dina.

He didn’t have a good pub­lic rea­son, be­cause Ja­cob would see through the ar­gu­ment he used—that Dina had set him up. And then he’d have to tell Ja­cob the real rea­son—he was afraid Dina would leave him if she knew the truth, so he made sure to leave first. Know­ing Ja­cob, and his sense of right and wrong, he’d back Dina, which meant he’d lose a girl­friend and a best friend. He couldn’t han­dle that. So he’d have to keep his dis­tance from Ja­cob un­til some time passed and he got a new girl­friend.

That thought al­most made him start heav­ing again, but he forced his stom­ach to calm. Keep­ing up ap­pear­ances and never let­ting any­one leave be­fore he did was get­ting old.

“Oh, sweet­heart!” Tracy pulled Dina close, squish­ing the baby be­tween them un­til she started to whim­per. Ca­ress­ing the child’s face, Dina pulled back, wiped her eyes and sat at Tracy’s kitchen ta­ble.

The same one she’d sat at with Adam when they’d babysat. She blinked, try­ing as much to ban­ish the im­age as the tears.