Page 83 of On the Line

“You know what?” I tell Jameson as I hold back my tears. “I can’t talk about this right now. I have a few things to wrap up here for work, and then I’m leaving with Jackson and Sierra because I need a girls’ night. I’ll call you tomorrow and we can talk about this then.”

“Lauren, no.” I hate the pain that rips through his words, but he caused this—he could have told me the truth as soon as he learned it. And now I need some time to wrap my mind around all of this.

“I’ll call you tomorrow, Jameson.” My voice doesn’t leave room for argument, and neither does the fact that I turn and walk away from him. Away from the one person who swore up and down that he wouldn’t do anything to hurt me.

CHAPTER24

LAUREN

When Jackson, Sierra, and I walk into my house, we find Paige half asleep on the couch in the living room. The lights are off and the TV volume is very low, and she has the girls’ video monitor on the ottoman in front of her, like they might escape their bedroom if she doesn’t have it close by.

“What’s going on?” she asks, clearly surprised that I’m coming home with my best friends and not my boyfriend, as planned. Is “boyfriend” even the right word? We’ve been together for, what, not even a week? It feels like so much more.

Every good thing that’s happened to me since Josh died is inextricably linked to Jameson—and I don’t want to unlink him, I just want to figure out how we move forward from here.

“It’s been a rough night,” I say, motioning my head toward the kitchen. When I walk in, I set an entire box of liquor and mixers on my counter. It was supposed to be a quick pit stop to grab the supplies for Jackson’s famous margaritas, but instead we basically bought enough alcohol to stock a home bar.

“Tell me what happened,” Paige says as she helps take bottles out of the box and set them on the counter.

I use my sleeve to wipe the tears from my face. They started falling the minute we left the rink, and I haven’t even attempted to stop them. I was clinging to this notion that Josh was in the process of redeeming himself by buying me this house where he knew I wanted to move, and all along, it was for someone else.

“Josh was cheating on me, and he bought this house and was remodeling it with the other woman before he died.”

The bottle of tequila slips out of Paige’s hand, but luckily Sierra’s right next to her and has great reflexes. She hands the bottle to Jackson, who is across the island getting out a cutting board for the limes.

“What? How is that possible? And how did you find out?”

“I ...” I can’t finish the sentence. I look over at Jackson. “Can you explain?”

She nods, and Sierra puts her arm around my shoulders. “After the game, we were standing around talking to Jameson. And Lauren’s neighbor came up. She hadn’t met him yet, but apparently Jameson had the other morning. The neighbor let it slip that a couple owned the house before, and had started the remodel, but that they guy had died in a ski accident.”

Paige’s gasp is loud in the otherwise quiet house. “No.”

“Yes,” Jackson says. She gives me a sympathetic look, and says, “And apparently Jameson’s known for a few days and he didn’t tell Lauren.”

“He did say that he wanted to wait and tell her when he got more information, which he got last night,” Sierra adds. “And that he wanted to tell her in person.”

“Which would have been impossible to do until tonight,” Paige says. “Right? Because he was in LA?”

I can feel her prompting me to see this from his side.

“I know you wanted him to tell you right away,” Jackson says, stirring the ingredients for the margaritas in a large glass pitcher and sounding like she’s choosing her words carefully. “But would it have been better if you’d known a couple days ago? Especially finding out right before the biggest night of your new career?”

“Are you suggesting it’s okay that he lied to me about this?”

“Did he lie, though?” Paige asks.

“Oh my God.” I groan. “Not telling me is a lie of omission, and it’s wrong.”

“It sounds like he was going to tell you tonight, now that he had more information. He knew how important this event was to you, and he wanted to let you get through it before dumping this on you. It’s not like he wasn’t planning to tell you,” Sierra says.

I look around at my friends. “You have a point, but I still would have wanted him to tell me immediately. I mean, my husband was a fucking cheater, and the whole time he made me think I was imagining him becoming more distant, pulling away from our marriage. We had sexsoinfrequently after the kids were born. I chalked it up to being new parents and being exhausted. I blamed it on myself, thinking he just wasn’t attracted to me post-pregnancy. And all along”—I can hear my voice rising but can’t really stop it—“he was fucking someone else? And they were going to liveheretogether?”

I look around the space, wondering how I could possibly live here now that I know the truth about why I own this house. It was never meant to be mine, it was going to behers.

“That’s ...” Paige says hesitantly, “a lot of information.”

There’s a knock at the door. Two quick wraps—loud enough to be heard, but not loud enough to wake up the kids. Classic Jameson.

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