And here I am, grinning like some love struck teenager, letting the high school quarterback charm his way back into her life.
I wipe the smile, and any traces of it, clean off my face.
“It’s probably not a good idea,” I say.
“What are you talking about?” His expression hardens. He’s displeased with my refusal of his kindness, but what did he expect?
“With Brooks in the hospital, I can’t be spending my free time with an ex-boyfriend. Do you know how bad that looks? And if my parents found out—or Derek . . . no one would understand. Hell, I wouldn’t even understand.”
I shake my head.
“It’s too much. I can’t. I appreciate it, but I can’t accept your help right now.” I rise and walk to the door, the polite, Rosewood way of asking someone to leave. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
“He was cheating on you.”
Royal’s words suck all the oxygen from the air.
My knees wobble and my face numbs. I step back, losing my grip on the doorknob.
“Brooks had been seeing someone on the side.” He speaks slowly. “For quite a while. Well over a year.”
“No.”
Royal nods. “I confronted him last week. He had no clue who I was, but I told him I was an old friend of yours. Told him if he didn’t make a decision, I’d tell you everything. Said I’d make damn sure he’d live to regret ever hurting you.”
He rakes the back of his hand along his five o’clock shadow, his head cocked and eyes wincing.
“The night of his accident,” Royal says, “he was headed north on highway nine. Crashed a couple of miles outside Glidden, not far from her house. He was going to her, Demi.”
Chapter Twelve
Royal
“Demi, say something.”
Everything about her is frozen solid. Her stance. Her expression. Her stare.
“You okay?” I ask.
She snaps out of it without warning, her glistening eyes blinking like someone flipped a switch. Stomping down the hall, she yanks open a closet door and rifles through it.
“What are you doing?” I call out.
Demi won’t answer. Thirty seconds pass, and she comes back with a shiny nine iron gripped in her fist.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” My hands protest, and I back up against the door.
“This isn’t for you.” She marches past me, rips the door open, and flies outside in nothing more than jeans and a sweater. Her bare feet leave footprints in the light layer of snow that’s begun to fall in the last half hour.
I step into my boots and run after her. By the time I find her, she’s punching in the code to their three-car garage. An empty stall where his Mercedes once sat holds the spot between a gorgeous, vintage Porsche 911 painted in a glossy shade of Bahia Red and a black on black Range Rover with twenty-inch rims and custom tints.
“Demi.” I move toward her and quickly veer out of the way when I watch her lift the golf club above her head.
Whack.
One swing, and there’s a sizeable dent in the whale tail of the Porsche.
“Hey, hey . . .” I reach for her arm, but she pulls the club away, taking another swing. And another. And another. “Demi, okay. Enough.”
In no way am I about to defend Brooks Abbott’s behavior, but I kind of feel bad for that pretty little Porsche taking the brunt. She was innocent in all of this.
Demi drags the flat, steel club head along the driver door, leaving a deep scratch. I can’t help but mentally calculate the number of man-hours it would take to buff and repaint that kind of damage.
“Satisfied?” I smirk when she’s all finished.
Her shoulders rise and fall as she catches her breath.
“Let’s get you inside, Shoeless Joe Jackson.” I wrap my arm around her shivering shoulders. I’m sure her feet are ice blocks now, but I doubt she feels a damn thing.
Demi stops and looks down, dropping the golf club. And then she buries her face in her hands.
“What am I doing?”
“Come on, don’t worry about it. It’s over. Let’s go in.” My palm rubs circles into her tense shoulder. “I’d have done the same thing.”
I’m lying. I’d never take shit out on a pretty little car like that, but I’m not about to make Demi feel worse.
Once inside, I escort her to a sofa next to a fireplace and get the flames going. I wrap her in a blanket the color of clouds and the texture of cashmere, and her shivering begins to subside.
“You had the right to know,” I say. “You’re by that asshole’s side every day, hoping and praying for a miracle, and . . .”
“I know.” She pulls the blanket closer to her face, staring ahead at a photo of the two of them on a side table. They’re smiling, her hand on his chest and her engagement ring glinting in the sun.
“You doing okay?”
Her eyes move slowly to mine, then back to the engagement photo. She leans forward, slams it face down, then sits back in her seat.
“I never suspected it. Not once.” She clears her throat, jaw tensed. “That’s what gets me. I’m sitting here, blaming myself for his leaving, thinking if I would’ve fought harder, maybe he wouldn’t be fighting for his life. And that asshole . . . that asshole was screwing someone else all this time? How did I not know?”
“He clearly didn’t want you to find out.”
“How’d you find out?” She looks my way, brows furrowed.