Page 44 of Seized by Love at Seaside
She rolled her eyes and scoffed. “Oh, yes, it does. You’ve never looked into your future and wondered how you were going to make ends meet, or stared at a paper that said you owed fifty-seven thousand dollars for an education you got only to please your family.”
“Okay. I understandwhatyou’re saying, why you needed money. But why this particular thing? I’m sure your friend’s brother didn’t wear nearly nothing on his videos. Whythis? Why not just baking, or flower stuff, fully dressed?”
“Like that would earn any money? Come on, Blue. You’re not stupid. You know why.”
He blew out a frustrated breath. What did he want? To hear that it was all made up? That she didn’t do it? She couldn’t take it back. He didn’t know exactly what he wanted, or what he needed, but he knew he needed Lizzie.
“Am I the only one in the dark about this? I trusted you, Lizzie. I thought you were being honest with me. Honesty is all I ever asked for. What I can’t figure out is how you got Sky to keep it from me.” He crossed his arms over his chest, a barrier between him and the awful feeling of being made a fool of.
She leaned against the counter and her shoulders rounded forward. “I didn’t.”
“Right. You expect me to believe that Sky kept it from me on her own? You know perfectly well she would never do that. She tells me everything. Everything, Lizzie. I knew about Sawyer before you did.” He closed his eyes for a beat, absorbing the sting of his words. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
She held up her hand to silence him. “No. You’re right. You are closer to Sky than I am, and I’m sure she would have told you if she’d known.”
“She doesn’t know?” He watched her eyes, looking for the truth, and it was staring right back at him.
Without a word, she shook her head.
“What do your parents think about it?”
She lifted damp eyes to him. “They don’t know either. They’re the reason, well, one of the reasons, that no one knows. You’re the only one I’ve told.”
He felt like he’d been punched in the gut. “You lied to everyone? For all these years? Your sister? Your parents? Your best friend?” Anger simmered inside him again.
“I couldn’t tell my sister or Sky. It might have slipped out around my parents.”
He stepped in closer, unable to quell the anger and disappointment bubbling up and spewing out of his mouth. “You lied to everyone you knew? Don’t you feel any sense of loyalty? An ounce of trust? No,” he said as he paced. “I guess you wouldn’t. You cared about paying off your school loans and opening your business, and the heck with everyone who trusts you.”
Her eyes blazed as she closed the distance between them. “How dare you judge me so unfairly. Don’t you think I’m ashamed of what I’ve done? Do you think I’m proud? Wait—maybe I am a little, for finding a way out of debt, but how dare you think I take this lightly or that I don’t care about my family and friends. I care about everyone, which iswhyI didn’t tell them. This would kill my parents! And if Sky knew, or Maddy knew, and it slipped out around my parents, then my parents would be as angry with them as they would be with me.”
“And what about your self-respect, Lizzie? Didn’t that come into play at all during these years of half-naked baking for strange men who probably jerked off a zillion times to you?” He couldn’t stop the anger from tumbling from his lips, despite the tears rolling down her cheeks and the acidic burn in his gut.
Her voice lowered to an icy calm, and her gaze followed. “Idon’t matter. How can you not understand that? Maddy matters. I might have started doing this for myself, but now? Now I’m doing it so Maddy doesn’t have to. And you know what, Blue? I’d do it all over again. I’m an adult. I’ve made my bed. I’ve made my mistakes. And I’ll live with them for the rest of my life, but Maddy won’t have to. She’ll get the education she deserves and she can be proud of, and she’ll come out without loans looming over her head. She needed a shot at having a future that included more than a minimum-wage job, and I gave her that opportunity.”
Shaking his head was all Blue could do as her rationalization ricocheted in his mind. “You’ve got this all figured out, don’t you? No matter what the cost?”
She crossed trembling arms over her chest and thrust her chin out. “This is what I have to do.”
“No, Lizzie. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. There are other ways to make money.”
“Not for me there aren’t. Not for Maddy, either. Don’t you think if I earned enough from my shop, I would stop doing the videos in a heartbeat?”
“I don’t know. Would you? Will you ever walk away from it? Will anything ever mean enough to you to leave it all behind? Or will money always be your driving factor?”
“That’s unfair.” She held his gaze. “It’s not like I want millions of dollars or like I live an extravagant lifestyle. If I hadn’t had a flood and insurance hadn’t paid for the repairs, I would never have renovated my kitchen. And…” She turned away, and when she finally turned back, she blew out a long breath and fell silent, as if she had no fight left in her.
“You know what, Blue? Obviously my judgment is off. I was falling in love with you. I thought we had a real connection, but you don’t know me at all. Not really. Not the parts of me that matter, because if you did, this wouldn’t mean a thing.”
He reached out to her, but she pulled away.
“How can you say that, Lizzie? You’re hiding behind all of this. Is it sexy? Yes, it would be if you were acting it out for me—for us—in the privacy of our own home. But you’re rationalizing your way in and out of this whole mess.”
She drew in a deep breath, shoulders shaking so badly she reached for the counter. “I’m proud of finding a way out of debt. And I’m proud of what I’ve done for Maddy.”
It was hard not to admire her determination, almost as hard as it was to deal with the betrayal.
“How can you put yourself out there the way you do and say you’re falling in love with me? If you loved me, then you wouldn’t be able to fathom stripping down twice a week and seducing a bunch of strangers for money.”
