The Truest Thing - Hart's Boardwalk

“You smell so good.” He tried to bury his nose against my neck as I grunted beneath his weight. The man was huge! “You feel fucking good too.” His hand slipped down to my ass and I yelped as he squeezed it. “You have the greatest ass in the world. I’ve fantasized a million times about your ass.”

Flushing hot, I neared my sectional and pushed him to it.

He flopped heavily onto it and stared up at the ceiling. A few seconds later, he asked, “How did I get on the floor?”

“You’re on the couch,” I snipped. “I’m going to get you some water.”

“Don’t leave, Em.”

He sounded so forlorn, I felt more than a prick of sympathy. Damn him! “I’ll be right back.”

When I returned, he hadn’t moved and his eyes were still glued to my ceiling. “Jack, take this.” I sat near his head and held out the glass of water.

He didn’t take it.

“You hate me,” he said instead, sounding distraught and not at all like the self-possessed, thirty-seven-year-old man I knew. He sounded young. And lost. “You’re supposed to hate me. It’s for the best. But I hate that you hate me.”

Tears brightened my eyes. “I don’t hate you, Jack.”

“The real Emery does. She hates me.”

“The real Emery?”

He turned, pushing himself up just enough to lay his head in my lap. I studied his handsome face, the length of his lashes that cast shadows over the crest of his cheeks. And I ached for him. Hours after finally telling him off, and here he was, and here I was.

Right back at square one.

Goddamn him.

“Jack.”

“You’re not the real Em. You’re Dream Em.”

I frowned. “Jack, you’re drunk and you’re really here at—”

“I’m just trying to protect you.”

I stopped, biting my lip. He was drunk. And I shouldn’t take advantage of that. I shouldn’t. “Protect me from what?” I winced. This was so unfair of me.

“You know what,” he said, as if exasperated with me. “Rebecca. The murder. The same reason I pushed Coop away.”

The murder?

He was joking, right?

This was drunken silly talk.

Right?

Trepidation crawled through me and all thought of playing fair dissipated. “Tell me about it again. It’ll help.”

He took a deep breath. “I’m tired, Em.”

“It’ll help to talk to me about it … since you can’t talk to me in real life.” I was going to hell.

Head still on my lap, he looked up at me now. His pupils were dilated. I stroked the hair back from his face, hoping he didn’t feel the tremble in my hand.

“It was the night we made the date. Do you remember?”

How could I forget? “I remember.”

“Ian called right after.” His drunken words were slow, languorous, and I itched with impatience for him to reveal the truth. “I’d been on my way to tell Cooper that Dana came onto me.” His gaze moved to the ceiling as he remembered. “Rebecca had brought a tourist back to the pool house. Some guy she barely knew. And he attacked her. Tried to rape her.”

The words ricocheted around my living room and finally clipped me in the heart. “Oh my God,” I breathed, shocked to my core. “Poor Rebecca.”

Anger shrouded Jack’s words. “She fought back. She hit him with a dumbbell a few times and she accidentally … she killed the guy.”

Of all the things I expected Jack to reveal, this was not among the possibilities.

“Stu and Ian covered it up. But they pulled me into it. Used it against me. Rebecca isn’t Ian’s, you see. My mom had an affair.”

It was like an air raid of bombs of explosive information.

“He doesn’t give a shit what happens to Rebecca. He sent her away and covered up the murder, but he’s got it rigged for her to go down for it if I don’t play my part in the family. I had to sell the business, go work for him. Sometimes I just drive around Hartwell, wondering where they buried the body. Knowing it’s out there somewhere. It fucks with my head. It’s fucked with my head for years.

“Cooper knew something was up. Something big. Knew I was haunted, just didn’t know by what. He kept trying to figure out the truth. He couldn’t know the truth. I couldn’t make him party to murder. Couldn’t have him wondering every time he drives on the outskirts if the body’s in a particular spot he rests his eyes on. I couldn’t have this sickness touching his life, just to protect my sister. To protect me. And Dana … she was a disloyal piece of shit, and I …”

Understanding dawned. “You deliberately set it up for Cooper to find you with her.”

“Yeah.”

“Two birds. One stone,” I whispered.

“Exactly. He deserved better.”

Tears spilled down my cheeks as I realized how much Jack had sacrificed for his sister. The depth of his father’s evil was shocking. All this time I’d thought Devlin was a ruthless son of a bitch. But he was more. He was worse.