Page 87 of Playing A Risk
Once that was clear and we promised never to acknowledge the relationship, we were able to move forward. Our family is indebted to him now, but it’s all worth it. I can finally breathe.
Dorothy faces me. “I have to say, Hunter. You really made a mess out of your personal life before you met me.”
“You don’t say,” I say dryly. “Because of you, I’m trying to clean it up. I understand if it’s too much, but?—”
She presses her finger against my lips. “Shhh. Don’t say anything. I don’t need the excuses. All I’ve ever needed is the truth and someone to trust me to handle it all.
“All my life, people have treated me like I don’t deserve to know all that’s going on. They’ve left me to make sense of it on my own without communicating with me. Do you know how confusing that is?”
Where is she going with this?
My heart hangs on the edge. “I can only imagine.”
“It’s like I’ve always known in my gut there’s more to what I’m being told. It’s why I don’t always trust my feelings. I think I’m making things up in my head, but now I know I’m not. I’m picking up on hidden facts I should’ve been trusted with from the start.”
“Yes, you should’ve been. I should’ve trusted you from the start.”
She skims right over my statement. “Aiden knows so much more than I do about my parents. Do you know I recently found out my mom’s brother and dad were best friends before my mom married him? My dad and he have been at war ever since and I never knew why. Don’t you think that’s something I should’ve known?”
Half of me wants her to hurry her along so she gets to the point. The other half is screaming for me to calm the fuck down.
I go with the latter. “If Aiden knew, then you had a right to as well.”
“And I should’ve known this about you from the start.”
I nod. “Like I said, I should’ve told you. But Dorothy, you have to understand something.”
She tilts her head. “What’s that, Hunter?”
“I trust you with everything. That’s why I told you now. You know everything there is to know. Nothing I did was right and I’m sorry. But I vow to trust you from here on out. Ask me anything and I’ll tell you the truth.”
She pins me with a smoke-screen-covered stare. “That’s why you put the legal documents in place. Because you trust me not to sue. If I trust you to take my contract to the boardand things go against me, I’m set up for life. Any way it shakes out, I’m taken care of. Isn’t that right?”
I can’t read her, so I stand frozen.
What does she want me to say?
Listen to her, Hunter. She’s told you everything she needs to hear.
“Yes. The truth is, I don’t know for sure if things will go in your favor, but I think they will. If they don’t, I want you to get what you deserve, so that’s why I filed the documents.
“Loving me shouldn’t put you at risk. It’s my selfishness that wants you to do it, so it falls back on me. The risk is mine to take, but only if that’s what you want.”
A smile slowly spreads across her face. “The truth is all I want, for someone to believe in me and trust me enough to put me first. That they’ll come and talk to me about anything and everything. That’s the closeness I’ve always wanted. And do you want to know what’s crazy about this?”
I slide my hands in my pockets. “I guess so.”
“It took you less than a year to figure it out. Everyone else in my life still thinks I don’t deserve that. Not until I have to know because there’s no other way around it.”
“Even Melanie?”
Dorothy laughs like I should know better. “Don’t you see? That’s why she’s my best friend and I love her so much. She gives it to me front and center. Sometimes she even smears the goddamn truth pie in my face and I wouldn’t ask for it to be any different.”
I run my hand over the back of my neck. Just like so many times before, Dorothy’s confusing the fuck out of me. I can’t tell if she’s upset, relieved, or what.
“Beauty, what are you trying to tell me?”
“I’m trying to tell you that this—” She whirls her finger in a circle above her. “—is what you think is the grand gesture to prove you love me when all you needed to do was sit me down and share your life with me. All I want is for someone to loveme enough that they trust me, are honest with me, put me first, and believe in me—in us.”
