In Name Only (Pine Falls #2) - Jennifer Peel Page 0,14

off that plane and during the days we’d spent after holding on to one another, he’d never said he loved me. We talked about the future, sure, but those three words had never been spoken between us. Though I’d loved him since the day he sat next to me my sophomore year in college during our abnormal psychology class. He was a senior, and there was something about him that had drawn me in. I could tell he was different. He cared about school. He’d paid even more attention than me during class. We ended up being study partners. Even back then, we only ever flirted while I watched him date every beautiful woman who came calling his name. Yet it was me who helped him study for the MCAT. Me who had his best interests at heart. Even to the point of coming up with my “Dani test” to weed out the ridiculous women who clamored after him. Honestly, though, in the past year I had given up and gave any woman my stamp of approval. If Brock was stupid enough to consider them, I’d figured he deserved to date them.

Allison laughed at the situation, though there wasn’t anything funny about the lies we had both just told. “Sounds like there is a story there. Please elaborate. How did you know from the first moment she was the one?” she asked Brock.

Brock’s eyes stayed locked on my own. How he was going to get out of this I had no idea. That’s the problem with lies, they only lead to more lies. More misery. Hence my life.

My own eyes begged Brock to make the lie as painless as possible. I almost answered for him in that teasing wife way and said, “He’s not remembering it right. Let me tell you the real story.” I would ramble about how we had been friends and I had set him up with women. However, Brock beat me to the punch.

He turned from me and faced Allison. “To know Dani is to love her.” It was the biggest lie we had told yet.

~*~

I lay awake that night, which was something, considering I’d taken doxylamine—normally used as a sleeping aid—for the nausea before I went to bed. Tonight, though, my mind was racing. It was made worse by the fact I had to spend the night at Brock’s. By the time we’d done the interview and had dinner at his parents’, we’d gotten back late. I was too tired to drive the half hour back to Pine Falls. Besides, it was too suspicious. Not that Kinsley and Ariana didn’t have their suspicions that all wasn’t well in paradise. My excuses for sleeping at the loft had been that I had huge projects at work and I hated driving back so late in the dark through the mountains. And I was giving Brock time to heal and rest after his ordeal. They weren’t really buying it, but I’d begged them to drop it. I knew Jonah had even tried to talk to Brock about it, but Brock had basically told him the same thing I had told Ariana and Kinsley.

So there I was in a bed that wasn’t mine, in a plainly decorated room that wasn’t mine, feeling like I belonged nowhere, and thinking about that stupid interview. Brock’s lie hurt more than the truth. All I’d ever wanted was for him to love me. To see me as the woman for him. And to hear him lie about it had me tearing up in front of the cameras. Fortunately, I could play it off as being overcome by his sweet words. But as soon as the reporter was gone and the spotlight off us, he showed how he truly felt. We were back to the silence. I could feel his regret.

I closed my eyes, begging for a way out of it all. Silently praying, even though I felt so unworthy. I was a liar. I was allowing the man I loved to lie on my behalf. The night was so still I could hear the tears drip onto my pillow. First one by one, and then in pitter-patters like raindrops on the roof. Suddenly a bloodcurdling scream rent the air. I bolted straight up, pulling my knees up to my chest. Brock was having another nightmare. Even from two doors down I could tell it was bad. “Help!” he yelled over and over. If only I could, I would. I knew, though, I was