The Dirty Truth

“And are you visiting that little world, or are you just passing through?”

His hands settle at my straddling hips.

“I hope to be here a very long time,” he teases with a playful sniff in his tone. “Until I outstay my welcome.”

Glancing at the magazine on his side table, I say, “Just so you know, I don’t do open relationships.”

“Good.” He presses my hips into his. “I wouldn’t dream of sharing you with anyone else.”

“Glad we’re on the same page.” I roll my eyes at my silly pun. “By the way, you still haven’t told me why you didn’t like my last article.”

I cross my fingers that his jovial mood means he’ll finally answer my plaguing question.

“You won’t let it go, will you?” he asks, once again deflecting the question and turning it around.

“It’s important to me,” I say.

“The article coincided with the thirteenth anniversary of my brother’s death.”

“I don’t understand the connection?”

“It’s complicated.”

I lift my hands and let them clap on my sides. “So explain it. I’ve got nothing but time on my hands, seeing how I’m currently unemployed . . .”

“Another time.”

Just like that, the man who’s been opening up to me for the past week withdraws, tightening up like a crocus in the night.

I climb off him, the lightheartedness of the evening withering on the vine.

“Where are you going?” he asks.

“You say you want to be with me, West. And I want to be with you. I’m giving you all of me, but you’re still picking and choosing which parts of you I get,” I say. “Your brother is a sore subject for you, and I get that. But that sore subject is a huge part of what makes you . . . you. If you keep that locked up, you’re keeping the biggest part of you locked up as well.”

“I’m trying.” His shoulders are rigid, and he stares off to the side. “I’m giving you more than I’ve given anyone before . . .”

“And yet sometimes I look at you, and it’s like looking at a stranger,” I say. “Like, who is this man? You want me to let you into my heart, but you can’t even tell me why you rejected my column.”

“Does it matter at this point?”

“Of course not,” I say. “The reason doesn’t matter. But the fact that you won’t tell me why? That’s what matters. Every time I ask, you sideline the question or change the subject or come up with some clever way to not have to answer it.”

He drags in a breath that lifts his tight chest. “I’ll tell you someday, Elle.”

“When? When it’s convenient for you?” I throw my hands in the air. “Everything can’t be your way or the highway all of the time. That’s not how relationships work. If there’s no foundation of trust and transparency, we have nothing to build on.”

“So you don’t trust me?”

“I want to trust that if I ask you a question, I’m going to get a straight answer.” I continue, “I want to trust that the West Maxwell I’m getting is the real West Maxwell—not the one from the glossy pages of some bullshit magazine.”

I clasp my hands over my mouth when I realize I’ve taken it too far. I should’ve chosen my words better instead of flinging them out in the heat of the moment without thinking of how they’d land.

Before I have a chance to apologize, West shoves himself up from his chair, storms out of the room, and disappears into the darkened hall.

His silence is deafening—but it speaks volumes.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

WEST

Blazing through the doors of my home office, I march toward my desk and yank the bottom left drawer so hard it nearly comes off its hinges. Buried beneath a mountain of miscellany is Will’s tenth-grade woodshop box. Tracing my fingers along his crooked, soldered monogram, I think back to the day he brought it home from school. At the time, it was nothing but a class project he’d turned in for a solid B-minus, and the teak-oil stain has long since faded, but the pride on his face when he showed me what he’d made is something that has stuck with me twenty years later.

Flipping the lid, I take visual inventory of the contents before sorting through them. A stack of baseball cards. A wallet-size senior portrait. His beloved Saint Louis Cardinals key chain. A matchbox version of his dream car: a Gotham-black McLaren Elva. A copy of his death certificate tucked into its original envelope.

Digging into the bottom of the box, I retrieve the first letter he sent me after being stationed overseas.

I haven’t read it in years.

And I’ve never shared it with another human being before.

But if Elle wants to know the real me . . . the parts that I keep locked and hidden . . . if she wants to know all my whys . . .