Page 18 of Exposed

“Did it work?” His voice was icy.

I didn’t know how to answer that. “Yes. No. Kind of. I mourned you like I mourned my mom. And my uncle.”

“But I wasn’t dead, Brooklyn.”

“I know that. But you thought I was and I thought that it was best…”

“You don’t get to decide what’s best for me! You don’t get to walk away without saying anything for 16 years and dictate my whole life. Not when you promised not to run away from conversations with me. You looked me in the fucking eye on the steps of Empire High and promised me we’d always talk everything out.”

Each word twisted my stomach more and more. “But, Matt…you walked away from me on Thanksgiving. You walked out the door and left me with my father. So you don’t get to lecture me on walking away.” I moved to climb off his lap.

But he gripped my waist, keeping me in place.

Chapter 9

Saturday

Matt

What the fuck?

She thought it was for the best that I believed she was actually dead? So it was her decision to stay away from me? She wasn’t locked up? She could have been with me this whole time?

But she believed her dad’s lies. And she saw me screwing Jen. So, what? I’d thought she was dead. I hadn’t broken a single promise to her. And me walking away for a few hours wasn’t the same as her walking away for half a lifetime.

Seriously, what the fuck?

“We both walked away,” she said. “We both broke our promise…”

“No, Brooklyn. No, it’s not the same. I called you the very next day after our fight. You ran away from me for 16 fucking years!”

She tried to move off my lap again, but I dug my fingers into her hips.

“No,” I said. “You don’t get to run away from this conversation too.”

“That’s not fair. You don’t understand what it was like holding out hope that you still loved me.”

“Yes I do, Brooklyn. Because I still loved you even though you were dead. And you were in California fucking other men to get over me? How does that make what I did any different?”

“I wasn’t whoring around California. I didn’t hook up with anyone. I’m not you.”

I pressed my lips together. How could she sit here judging me? “You thought I stopped loving you. But you were wrong. And I was drowning, Brooklyn. I was actually mourning you. Not pretending to mourn like you were doing in California. Because you were actually dead as far as I knew. You were pretending I was. You were mourning the living. Getting over me when I was still loving you. Missing you.” I shook my head.

She just stared at me.

And I recognized that look. That was the look she gave when she was lying about something. Like when she’d lied to me about talking to the Hunters behind my back, trying to get us to be friends again. What had she done?

I looked out the window for a moment. I already knew what she’d done. She’d married someone else. “So you met someone in California?” I asked, staring at her grave in the distance.

“No.”

I turned back to her.

“I took the time I needed to mourn losing you.”

I just stared at her. She already knew my feelings on that.

“And it made me realize that I shouldn’t have kept Miller at arm’s length. That I’d fallen for him, but had been fighting off my feelings.”

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