Rill closed his eyes.
“Yeah . . . yeah, it is. Unfair,” he mused after a moment. “It was wrong for me to assume it was you.”
Neither of them spoke in the charged silence that followed. Rill wouldn’t have been surprised if Everett left in an offended huff, or punched him, or did just about anything, really. He didn’t have the energy to try to explain to him his confusion and his regret and his anger. It wasn’t Everett’s problem; it was his—Rill’s.
Everett sighed heavily. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he mumbled. “I wish you would have just asked me a year and a half ago.”
“Then I would have been right here a hell of a lot sooner. Maybe I didn’t want to have to think about who she was sleeping with if it wasn’t you.”
Everett started to speak, seemed to see Rill’s point, and cursed under his breath.
“I can’t believe Eden did that,” Everett said.
“Yeah . . . well, she did,” Rill replied quietly. “And I’ll probably never know what her life was like during the months before she died. I was off doing my own thing. Maybe she had a right to find happiness somewhere else . . . somewhere close by, where she needed it.”
“It sucks. No matter what your problems were, she shouldn’t have done that. She should have been honest with you, at the very least. There’s no justification for it. And what a fucking way to find out. You must have been plowed under,” Everett mumbled.
Rill found himself assessing how he really did feel at that moment. What he experienced was no longer the lancing pain of betrayal, just the fading ache of regret. He hadn’t realized until recently how much fantasy had gone into his speculations about Eden’s last days. He’d likely never know the truth, never know whom her lover had been, whether or not she’d been happy or miserable. Now that he’d confronted Everett, he understood that never knowing the identity of Eden’s lover was nowhere near as bad as discovering his suspicions about Everett had been correct. He’d lost Eden as a wife long ago. Her death had been another blow.
Losing his best friend, as well, would have really sucked.
Everett dug his fingers into his eye sockets and shook his head, as though he was trying to clear it. “Damn. I could use a drink.”
Everett blinked open his eyes in time to notice Rill’s wry glance. He started to laugh.
“I guess you’ve had a similar desire for the past eighteen months,” Everett said between jags of laughter.
“You might say that.” Rill chuckled mirthlessly. It felt good to laugh with Everett again. Really good. “Only my need for a drink was about a thousand times stronger.”
“Well, Katie’s pretty much declared prohibition around here, so—”
Rill sobered when he saw Everett’s amusement abruptly fade midsentence.
“Jesus,” Everett said.
“What?” He was surprised to see anger reenter Everett’s face.
“Damn it, Rill, you’d better not be fucking around with Katie to get back at me because you thought I slept with your wife.”
“What?” Rill snapped, offended by the unexpected accusation.
Everett pointed at him, eyes blazing. “You just told me you thought I’d been sleeping with your wife . . . that I got her pregnant, for fuck’s sake. I have every right to ask you if you’ve been sleeping with Katie out of some kind of twisted bid for revenge.”
He just stared for a second, dumbstruck. “That’s ridiculous,” he boomed finally. “Katie doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Yeah?” Everett challenged. Rill hadn’t even realized they’d both stood until Everett took an aggressive step toward him. Rill didn’t want to fight with Everett—not anymore—but he held his ground. “Well, you’d better make damn sure of that. Katie’s fallen for you.”
“She thinks she has. But—”
“She’s fallen for you, Rill. Hard. She’s vulnerable right now. If you’re taking advantage of her, if you hurt her, you’re going to be dealing with me. Not just me. Stanley and Meg, too.”
Rill frowned, thinking Everett was fighting dirty by bringing up his parents. He stopped himself from retaliating when he remembered how he’d flattened Everett in the backyard earlier.
Everett’s eyes flashed a dire warning before he stalked off the front porch toward the woods.
Rill just stood there, replaying the past few minutes in his mind. How could it have gone from bad to good to shit again so fast? Everett had a lot of fucking nerve, accusing him of sleeping with Katie for such a mercenary, cold-blooded reason. Sure, he’d suspected Everett of something nearly as bad, but at least he’d never believed that Everett was fucking with Eden to shaft Rill behind his back.
Where did he get off?