Adore Me (Austin Singles 3)

The room instantly felt cold as that name settled between us.

Lance. Mike’s best friend from the army.

Her gaze met mine. “I didn’t know he would do it. He left and said he would fix everything. I thought he meant he would tell her the truth, then he would come back. I found out three days later he’d killed himself.”

I gasped and stood, taking a few steps back and covering my mouth with my hand.

“I didn’t know he would kill himself, Morgan. I thought he would tell you the truth. Mike told me he would tell you the truth.”

With every ounce of energy I had, I willed for the room not to go black. I forced air into my lungs, and I closed my eyes.

Mike. How could you do this?

“I DIDN’T TELL her because Mike asked me not to.”

I dropped back in my chair, stunned into silence. “What? You fucking knew before he died? You knew and didn’t tell Morgan?”

Nash rubbed his hand over his face. “No! Just give me a second, will you? Let me explain.”

Motioning with my hand, I said, “Please do. I’m really interested in the excuse you and Butch came up with.”

With a sigh, Nash looked up at me. “Af

ter Mike killed himself, you can imagine how upset Morgan was. She blamed herself for not being able to see how bad things were with him. She blamed herself for not being good enough for him, for not loving him enough. Morgan was beside herself.”

“I know all of this. She’s told me.”

Nash pulled his brows in tight, then relaxed his face. “She talks to you about Mike?”

“She has some, yes.”

He reached for the back of his neck and rubbed it. “Morgan told me what was in the note. Mike told her he couldn’t live with the guilt anymore. Naturally Morgan thought he meant about Lance. But when she kept reading and found out he had cheated on her, she thought he was saying it to make her angry at him. Take the sting away of him killing himself. Butch and I agreed to look into it. It didn’t take us long to find out through Mike’s credit cards that he’d been going up to Fort Bragg fairly often. You wouldn’t really think twice about it because he always told Morgan he was going to visit his army brothers. Well, Lance’s wife still lived in North Carolina. He was visiting his army brothers, and they would go visit Lance’s wife, Lynn. But Mike would go back and stay a few extra days with her.”

“How do you know this?”

“Butch asked one of the guys about Mike’s last trip. Butch thought Mike had stayed a week, but the buddy said Mike never stayed more than a couple days with the guys. He hinted that he was with Lynn the rest of the time, and we knew his plane tickets were always for weeklong trips. That meant he was staying with Lynn. After the funeral, when everything calmed down, I went through my mail, and there was a letter addressed to me from Mike. He had mailed it the day he died. He confessed to everything: his affair, the baby. He said he’d come back to Texas to break things off with Morgan but couldn’t do it. He said the guilt of letting his best friend die, sleeping with Lynn, and hurting Morgan was eating him alive, and he couldn’t take it anymore. He asked me to not tell Morgan about the baby. He begged me. Said it would devastate her if she knew the full truth of his deception. I took the letter to Butch, and we decided to honor his wish.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said, scrubbing my hands down my face. “You’ve seen how his death had affected her. You didn’t think to tell her? So she’d know it wasn’t her fault?”

“I didn’t know what to do, Blake! No matter what I did, my sister would be hurt even more. I thought I was doing the right thing.”

“Nash, you kept this from her. You kept the truth from her.”

His eyes filled with tears. “And there is not a goddamn day that goes by when I don’t feel guilty about that, Blake. At the time I thought I was doing the right thing.”

“Some of the worst things that have happened in life happened because people thought they were doing the right thing.”

Nash looked away.

“Tell her the truth. Before she and I can move forward, she needs closure. She needs the truth.”

It was then I saw Morgan. She rushed into the building and ran right into someone, knocking everything out of the guy’s hands.

“Morgan?” I asked, standing up and rushing out of Starbucks.

Nash was right beside me. We got to her at the same time.

“Morgan, what’s wrong?” Nash asked, grabbing his sister by the arms.