Hold Me Close - Talia Hibbert Page 0,48

if I waited until he was older, until he was established in the world, things would change.

“I was wrong. Obviously, I was wrong. But somehow, seven years passed. Can you believe that?” She shrugged. “How does that even happen? You know, he bought me a house.”

Burne jolted, his shock a tangible thing, floating in the air between them.

Ruth nodded. “Oh, yes. He bought me a house, and a car. I wouldn’t take the house because my sister would ask questions. I took the car. I started writing a web comic, pretended it was my job to explain away all the money I had. My mother didn’t understand the concept and my sister wasn’t interested, so it worked.” Ruth felt herself smile. “It’s funny, really. I ended up publishing the comic. Now it is my job.

“I loved him the way people do in films. You know, when you’re watching and you think, ‘That girl’s ridiculous. How could she do something so foolish? For love?’ You laugh at her. You think, correctly, that she threw her life away for nothing. Well, I was that girl.

“But Daniel’s hard to love. He’s not so good at it. I figured that out the day he told me about his engagement to Laura.”

For the first time, Burne spoke. He said, his voice wooden, “I don’t understand.”

“Well, Mr. Burne, it’s quite simple.” When she’d explained this, years ago, to Hannah, the words had burned her throat. The shame had burned her throat.

Now she felt only detachment as she explained.

“On Thursday night he came over. He told me all about your latest transgressions. We watched Modern Family, and then he took me to bed. The next morning, he kissed me goodbye and went to work. On his lunch break, he called to say that he wasn’t coming home, because it was he and Laura’s engagement party that night. But he’d be back Sunday at the latest, he said. He’d see me then, he said.”

Ruth almost found the story amusing. It was funny, how unsuspecting she’d been, how sure. How he’d caught her unaware and given her the information so blithely.

She gave Burne a smile. “You know the rest, I suppose. Up until a few weeks ago, when I bumped into Daniel and his new friend. I liked the friend, and Daniel didn’t like that. He was very rude, as he always is, and then he felt guilty, as he always does. Usually he saves the flowers for my birthday, saves the gifts for Christmas. But he appears to be throwing some kind of protracted, jealous tantrum.”

Burne stood on shaky legs. The usually robust man was pale, almost fragile-seeming. “My son is many things,” he said softly, “but he is not… he is not deranged. You are missing out crucial parts of the story, I am sure.”

Ruth shook her head. “If you think I’d give Daniel the time of day after what he did, you’re as delusional as your son. I’m sick of him, I’m sick of you, and I’m sick of every stuck-up gossip in this town who thinks Burne shit doesn’t stink. Now get the fuck out of my house.”

Mr. Burne stared at her for a moment, his face blank. Something about him seemed vacant, his jaw slightly slack, his eyes unfocused. He looked, for an instant, like a man who’d found hell at the end of a rainbow.

Then he visibly pulled himself together, clearing his throat, straightening his clothes. “I…” His voice was hoarse. “I wish you’d said all this earlier. I wish you’d explained this to me.”

“When?” Ruth asked. “When I was eighteen years old and in love with a man who told me you were the devil incarnate? When I was twenty-two and you called me a gold-digging slut? When I was twenty-five and you gave your police statement?”

He winced. “I believed… that is, Daniel led me to believe—”

“I don’t care.” She really didn’t. Ruth looked at Mr. Burne’s bewildered face and felt nothing but exhaustion.

He nodded wearily. Despite his still-handsome face, his still-powerful body, he looked like a confused old man. Like the sort of person Evan would swoop in and rescue.

Evan, who was on his way home right now. Christ.

“I really need you to go,” Ruth said.

“Of—of course.” Her jaw nearly dropped at the hesitance in those words. And then he said, “I’m sorry.”

Her jaw did drop.

Mr. Burne’s did too, as if someone else had said that. His eyes widened. He wandered from the room as if in a dream, and she