Authors: Bethany Kane
“Hey,” Everett called out when he walked into the dim living room. “We’re down by seven points.”
“Great,” Rill murmured distractedly. “Do you think I could talk to you?”
“Sure,” Everett said, looking surprised and a little wary. He wondered if Everett was recalling Rill tackling him in the yard, but he didn’t apologize. Everett hit the remote control and the beer commercial winked off.
“Not in here. Can we go out on the porch?”
“Yeah, no problem.”
Everett strode ahead of him. “What’s up?” he asked Rill once they’d both sat down on the wrought-iron chairs.
Rill opened his mouth to start, but couldn’t get the words out. He stared out at the golden fall day moodily.
“Just go ahead and spit it out, Rill. I know you’re pissed at me. If my bruised hip isn’t proof enough, the fact that you haven’t been able to look me straight in the eye for a year and a half now has clued me in. I assumed you were mad at the world, but now I get it. It’s me in particular, right?”
Rill didn’t deny it, even though what Everett said was only partially true. He wasn’t too thrilled with the world in general at the present time, but he’d reserved a special place of distrust for Everett.
For the first time in more than a year, he stared at Everett . . . really tried to
see
him. Everett met his stare steadily, without a trace of guilt. Everett was a good actor, though. One of the best on the planet. Suddenly, the question was there in his throat, burning him. There was no turning back.
“Were you sleeping with Eden?” burst out of his mouth.
For a surreal moment, he wasn’t sure he’d actually spoken the words. The question had rolled around in his mind so long now, perhaps he couldn’t tell the difference between the real question and the imagined one. Everett’s blank expression only increased the sense of unreality.
Finally, Everett blinked his bluish-green eyes as though he tried to bring Rill into focus. “What did you say?”
“You heard me,” Rill rasped. “Were you sleeping with Eden? Before she died?”
Everett gave a disbelieving bark of laughter. Rill should have been glad to have seen his sheer incredulity, and he did feel
some
relief. Everett may be a great actor, but he wasn’t sure that even Everett Hughes could pull off that genuine of an expression of utter and complete shock.
His friend hadn’t betrayed him. Rill’s anger and confusion only mounted, though. The idea of Everett sleeping with Eden had been a bitter pill, but at least it was an understandable scenario . . . something he could wrap his mind around.
“
That’s
what this is about?” Everett asked. “Jesus, Rill
. No.
The answer is no. Why the hell did you even
ask
me that?”
Rill stared at Katie’s Maserati parked in the drive, but he didn’t really see it. His mind was filled with the image of the coroner who’d told him the truth a year and a half ago, the day after Eden had been killed.
“She was pregnant. When she died. Eden, I mean,” Rill said hoarsely.
The words just hung there; even the crisp, pristine forest air couldn’t seem to dissipate the toxicity of them. He didn’t look at Everett, but he sensed his deepening incredulity.
“And . . . and . . . from what you just said, I gather it wasn’t yours?” Everett asked.
Rill shook his head. “I had told you we’d been fighting.”
“Yeah, I remember you mentioning that she was feeling neglected,” Everett said after a moment, sounding disoriented. “I knew she wasn’t thrilled about you being out of the country again to film
An Elegant Heist.
You always asked her to come and stay with you on location, but she never wanted to. I didn’t know things had gotten that bad between you two, though.”
Rill’s glance flickered over Everett’s face. He looked like he’d just been clobbered. Rill sighed heavily and collapsed back in the chair. “That makes two of us who didn’t know. I thought things were bad, but nowhere near as bad as Eden must have thought.”
Neither of them spoke for a minute. Rill sensed Everett waiting patiently for him to continue.
“We hadn’t slept together for close to half a year before she died. She never wanted to. Still, I hadn’t given up hope. Not completely. Still hadn’t, up to the point I got the phone call about the car wreck.”
“Jesus,” Everett whispered.
“The coroner told me she was three months pregnant when she died,” Rill stated flatly. “When he mentioned it to me, he had all this sadness and compassion in his eyes. He’d assumed it was my child.”
They both sat in silence for a moment. Rill suddenly felt exhausted, like he could sleep for a week.
“Why did you think it was me?” Everett asked.
Rill shrugged. “You knew Eden. She was reserved. Shy. She hardly was a social butterfly. If she wasn’t at the museum, she was at home in her garden. Her only good friends were you and Katie.” He glanced over at Everett. On this side of having asked the question, Rill realized the full impact for the first time of wrongfully suspecting his friend. “I’m sorry,” he said truthfully. “The fact of the matter is, I’m glad it wasn’t you, but—”
“But
what
?” Everett asked. Rill heard the trace of anger in his voice and, deep down, was glad for it. He deserved Everett’s animosity for having judged him all these months without offering him a chance to proclaim his innocence.
“At least if it was you, I could have understood,” he said gruffly. “Things were falling apart for Eden and me. If she’d turned to you for comfort, at least it would have made sense to me. She loved you as a friend. You would have treated her decently, at the very least. Better than I did.”
“You treated Eden like a queen.”
“Apparently she didn’t think so. But that’s not the point. I hated the idea of you two being together, but like I said, it made sense. I left a hole in her life, and you could have filled it. It’s not like every damned woman in the country wouldn’t want to be with Everett Hughes.”
“That’s bullshit, Rill. It’s not fair, and you know it. Eden cared about that crap about as much as I do,” Everett said bitterly.
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?
There wasn’t an ounce of truth in his accusation. Rill would never do something to intentionally hurt Katie.
Would he?
He stood there on the porch alone, playing devil’s advocate with himself.
No.
You’d never
intentionally
hurt her, but chances are, you’ll hurt her in the end.
He thought of her sitting on that rock and looking up at him with that sublime smile. He recalled—in graphic detail—how she’d given him so much pleasure so unselfishly . . . how she’d met all his demands, even surpassed them . . . how he’d let her . . .
. . . how he’d loved it.
“Jaysus,” he muttered gruffly under his breath. He walked back into the house. The sound of the shower running penetrated his volatile thoughts.
He didn’t know why he did it, for sure. He walked down the hallway in a daze and opened the bathroom door. Warm, humid air struck his face. He could see the shapely shadow of Katie’s body behind the ivory shower curtain. She started when he whipped back the curtain. She blinked in surprise.
Rivulets of water ran down smooth planes and curves that Rill knew fit his palms perfectly. He itched to touch her. Her nipples were relaxed and pink, large and succulent from the heat.
“Rill?”
He unglued his eyes from Katie’s beautiful breasts and glanced up to her face. He felt like everything had gone into slow motion.
“Do you want to get in with me?” she asked breathlessly.
Hell
yes
, he wanted to get in with her.
“No,” he said.
She looked confused, but smiled. “Then what are you doing?”
Good question,
Rill thought. What the hell was he doing? Why had he subjected Katie, of all people, to his chaotic state of mind and volatile libido? Better he’d chosen a stranger to work through this—or even a prostitute—than Katie Hughes.
He just stood there on a knife-edge, because despite his thoughts, he experienced a nearly overwhelming desire to put his hands all over her wet, naked body. He longed to carry her out of that bathroom, lay her on his bed and lick every drop of water off her skin. The need to bury himself in her and lose himself in a nirvana of pleasure was so strong, so sharp, it felt like it’d choke him.
“Rill?”
“I just wanted to look at you,” he said stupidly. He caught a brief image of her bewildered expression before he flicked the shower curtain shut, depriving himself of the sight of her.
He went into his bedroom and shut the door. His cock tingled. He lay on his back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, willing his arousal to cool. His cock only stiffened and swelled, though. He couldn’t erase the image of Katie from his mind. What the hell was wrong with him? He’d had two thunderous climaxes barely an hour ago, and here he was, chubbed up and horny for her
again
?
He felt a little desperate when he went over to his desk and jiggled his computer mouse. The screenplay he’d started came up on the screen.
At least he knew now why he’d walked into that bathroom. It’d been a personal challenge. He’d needed to stand in the presence of pure temptation and walk away.
He thought of what Everett had accused him of out on the porch. He saw Katie standing in the shower, warm and supple and naked.
Do you want to get in with me?