Lacey sighed. “There was a guy in high school. But I wasn’t in love with him. I probably could have been if it had lasted longer, but it didn’t.”
“What happened?”
Lacey picked up her fork and dug it into an attempt at mashed potato. “His parents didn’t like me.”
“Why not?”
Fine. If she was in this, she had might as well get some points for it. She reached for the easiest answer. “He was the only son of the local pastor. My parents are happy heathens who worship at the altar of football. It would be fair to say they didn’t think we were a good match.”
She’d gone to their church and joined the youth group and even begun to think all the things Damon’s dad preached from the pulpit might be true. Worse, she’d let herself dream that maybe she had a future in their family.
Never mind that they were only seventeen. Never mind that she’d already determined to get out of Small Harbor as soon as she graduated. Never mind that she had a 3.8 GPA and would graduate valedictorian. She’d been ready to trade all of that in because for the first time in her life she’d felt like she belonged somewhere.
Then Damon’s cousin had gone and gotten her sister pregnant.
Her friends thought she didn’t believe in God. The truth was she’d found out a long time ago that God didn’t believe in her. And, quite frankly, she had enough of that in her life without Him weighing in.
“His loss.” The defensive words came from Cassie, but when she looked up, it was Victor studying her. As if knowing there was more to the story than she had admitted to. But wasn’t there always?
She squirmed under his gaze as if she needed to escape her own skin.
“Victor, biggest regret.”
It was unfair her asking that, given she knew a whole lot about him while he had no clue who she was. But she wanted to know what he would say in a group of people he thought knew hardly anything about him. What would he admit to?
“It’s a pretty long list.”
At that, everyone’s gaze zoomed in on him.
Victor rubbed his hand through his hair, the light of the fire making his scar appear even more ominous. “Um, but just one. Okay, right. Five years ago, I was based in LA. My cousin lived there too. We were out together one night. Her fiancé had just broken up with her, and she was upset. She wanted me to get her some coke. I refused, but she got some from someone else. So I cut a line for her. I made it the smallest I could. Well, I tried, but truth is I wasn’t exactly sober either. And then I got a cab and took her home. I offered to stay, but she said she was fine. So I left. A few hours later, she was dead.”
His gaze flickered up, caught hers for a second, then darted away. No one said a word.
“The coroner recorded it as an open verdict because he couldn’t decide if it was a suicide, or an accidental overdose because she was too wasted to form the required intent.”
It was a story Lacey knew, yet didn’t. She knew her cousin’s side of the story. The one that had almost ruined Emelia. She knew the story that cast Victor as the feckless, selfish addict who cared about no one other than himself.
“So my greatest regret is that if I had insisted on sleeping on Anita’s couch that night, she might still be alive.”
CHAPTER TEN
The sun was cresting over the horizon when Lacey crawled out of her tent in the morning, Jen still softly snoring on the bedroll beside hers.
Everyone had gone to bed tired and subdued, the questions adding a mental weight onto the physical exhaustion.
Her tent mate had fallen into a coma-like sleep as soon as she’d hit the sleeping mat, giving in to the exhaustion of a brutal twenty-hour day. But Lacey had stared into the darkness for a couple of hours, her brain struggling with the dissonance between the Victor she knew about secondhand and the man who had sat opposite the fire from her, his face weathered with grief and regret.
Part of her wished he knew who she was. Then she could believe it had been a story spun for her consumption, an attempt at manipulating her into believing he was a better person than he really was. But he didn’t, and it wasn’t. She