Page 98 of The Perfect Deception

Lead­ing her into the liv­ing room, he pointed to the couch he’d va­cated, imag­in­ing his wish of her sit­ting next to him com­ing true. But she sat across the cof­fee ta­ble from him, as if she needed the phys­i­cal bar­rier be­tween them. Bands of pres­sure tight­ened around his chest.

“Sit down,” he said. “Would you like some­thing to drink? Eat?”

She shook her head no, mak­ing her curls bounce, mak­ing Adam’s fin­gers itch to touch them. He sat on his couch on top of his hands and stared at her, drink­ing her in. There were so many things he wanted to say to her, and he didn’t know what to say first. It was as if all the words he wanted to say rushed from his brain to­ward his mouth at once, couldn’t all fit, and sat be­hind his lips, try­ing to jam for­ward and get­ting stuck.

“I heard what you said,” she said, grip­ping her fin­gers un­til her knuck­les turned white.

What he’d said? When? Where? He wracked his brain try­ing to fig­ure out what she meant. Oh, his phone calls.

“You mean the mes­sages I left on your voice mail.”

She bit her lip. “No. I deleted those.”

The bands around his chest grew tighter. He cleared his throat. “Oh. The texts?”

She shook her head. “No, I still have those, but I meant the video.”

Oh God, there’s a video?Im­ages of Kar­dashian sex tapes fil­tered through his mind. What the hell had he done? “What video?”

She pulled out her phone, tapped on the screen and held it out to him. His breath ex­pelled in a whoosh of re­lief, be­fore he in­haled sharply, mak­ing him­self choke. Dina half rose as if to help him, but he waved her away, rubbed his stream­ing eyes and sat back on the couch. “Where did this come from?”

She shrugged. “I found it on Red­dit.”

Only now did her ear­lier words sink in.I heard what you said.Never mind where the video had come from, she’d watched it.

In his head, he knew that ad­mit­ting he’d been wrong was the right thing to do. It was hon­or­able and hon­est and some might even say, brave. And al­though he’d cho­sen to do it in a room­ful of peo­ple he worked with, it had been eas­ier than one would think be­cause Dina wasn’t there. He’d only had to say his side of the story. She hadn’t been there to re­spond or re­ject him.

But she was here now. He should be thrilled be­cause he’d been try­ing to talk to her for weeks with­out suc­cess. Her show­ing up at his apart­ment was un­ex­pected, but meant she wanted to talk to him too. His heart pounded and his throat went dry. He reached for his soda and took a long swal­low. God, what he’d give for a beer right now. But he’d been over­do­ing it lately and the last thing he wanted was to blow this time with Dina. So he fo­cused on her and tried to calm the bounc­ing ball of fear in his chest.

“That was quite an apol­ogy you gave,” she said.

“I meant ev­ery word, and more.”

“Why did you tell them? They don’t know me.”

He leaned for­ward, rest­ing his el­bows on his knees. “My dad made this big speech about me. About how I was in­no­cent. And about how you were the one to prove it to him. He was hon­est, and I felt I needed to be too. In­clud­ing about how badly I’d treated you and how sorry I was. Be­cause I wanted a fresh start. And I couldn’t have one un­less I told them ev­ery­thing.”

She rose and he opened his mouth to stop her from leav­ing. But she was only pac­ing and he kept his gaze trained on her, ready to jump up and block the door if she left, or bet­ter yet, fall to his knees and beg her to stay.

“I don’t un­der­stand what hap­pened the night of my re­union. One mo­ment, those women were telling me ridicu­lous lies, the next mo­ment you shut down and then you ac­cused me of be­ing in col­lu­sion with them.”

Col­lu­sion. God, he loved her. Even if she didn’t love him back. “Those ‘ridicu­lous’ things were ac­cu­rate.” At her look of sur­prise, he held up his hand. “No, I didn’t lie about giv­ing her the ma­te­rial to file. I didn’t throw her un­der the bus. But the women were right about the per­sonal stuff. Be­fore you, I never com­mit­ted to any­one. ”

“I know.”

Now it was his turn to look shocked.

She laughed. “Come on, Adam, your per­son­al­ity, at first glance, screams player. I’m sure you’ve done plenty of things with plenty of women be­fore me. I don’t care about any of it, as long as it hap­penedbe­foreme.”

He swal­lowed, afraid if he spoke, he’d pop what­ever bub­ble there was sup­port­ing this fan­tasy and fall splat back into re­al­ity.

“What I do care about is ev­ery­thing else,” she said.

He ran a hand over his head. How could he pos­si­bly ex­plain this to her? He’d show all his in­se­cu­ri­ties at once. Tak­ing a deep breath, he took the plunge. “We were danc­ing and I told you I loved you and you didn’t re­ply.” A squeak made him look up and he held up a hand. “No, don’t. It’s fine. You didn’t have to say it then, or at all for that mat­ter. I didn’t tell you be­cause I wanted you to say any­thing. I told you be­cause it’s what was in my heart and I wanted you to know. But then the ac­cu­sa­tions started and I saw you with them and I didn’t know what they’d told you. And know­ing my rep­u­ta­tion, I was afraid you’d be­lieve them.”

“I never knew her, never liked any of her friends, and no re­union is go­ing to change that. I’d never be­lieve them over you. They mean noth­ing to me.”

“I know that now, but I pan­icked.”