Crossing Lines: A gripping psychological thriller (Behind Closed Doors Book 3) (9 page)

I sigh, and that’s what makes this whole situation harder. She might be doing this the wrong way, ruffling too many feathers by insisting it has to be done like this, but she’s jeopardizing her personal happiness with Dex, as well as her safety with Rylan. And all for her best friend.

“I know, and I'm here, risking being decked by Rylan, and Dexter. I’m guessing the opposition from Julia's annoying and overprotective big brother has more to do with your past, rather than the present situation?” She shrugs. “C'mon, Krystal, its likely three guys want to beat my ass because of your irrational planning. There has to be another way.”

“Darryl …” She hesitates. “I wouldn't ask you to do this if I hadn't already exhausted all other options.”

“True love is a very rare and precious gift,” I offer, with the wisdom of an unhealed heart. “Trust me on that. So, you can't do this to Dex. The fact you're willing to, though, tells me an awful lot about how you feel about him.”

“Honestly, Dex and Callie are the best things that happened to me in a long time. Jeopardizing that isn't an option. I meant what I said about telling him the truth.”

“That's a pretty little statement.” I know I’m being condescending again. But this is Krystal, and something in her voice warns me she won’t. She doesn’t love Dex, and if she does then it’s not enough to make her happy. "But you're lying.”

“Stop psychoanalyzing everything I say.” She rolls her eyes. “Yes, you're right, I omitted the part where I'm supposed to say 'but' …
But
, that's my issue and it has no bearing on this situation.”

So, she wants a husband and a family. Even though she shows no sign of it, the desire is there. She’s just yet to realize that Dex and Callie aren’t what she’s looking for.

“All right,” I agree. She sends a skeptical glance my way. “I said okay. You’re not ready to share it with me.”

The tension around her eases and she walks toward me. “Okay, D, here it is!” She stops and leans back against the car, mimicking my posture almost perfectly. “They mean the world to me,
but
I've seen myself having a different kind of future, and with someone else, for a really long time. After the vile choices I’ve had to make, I don't deserve that kind of happiness. But that doesn't stop me from wanting it. Accepting Dex, and his daughter Callie, as my future, means giving up.” Her voice drifts as she casts her eyes over the second-floor windows again. “What Rylan forgets is his brother was cheating then and …” She looks down, poking at the gravel with her toe. “I’m pretty sure he’ll jump the second someone better comes along.”

“So why are you with a guy who makes you feel second best?” Her gaze lifts up to the second-floor window, but this time she’s looking at a particular one. “Because … he’s a second-best for you?” I pause. “One day, you’ll have to trust him again.”

Her gaze snaps to mine.

“To achieve the kind of love you’re talking about, you’re going to have to believe enough in Dex, or whoever, to hand over the power to hurt you and then have the faith he won't.”

“I don’t trust anyone,” she snorts.

“But you do.” I consider her sulky reply for a moment.
It’s true. True enough for her to believe, and yet the very fact I’m here belies her confession.
“You trust me.” I watch her carefully. The fraction of surprise turns to thorough consideration. “You trust me enough with your privacy to do something you've never let any other guy do. You believe I can help you. You have enough faith in me that you turned to me in a time of need, and you've shared your deepest secrets and biggest fears with me. Ergo, you trust me.”

“I'm not sleeping with you, though, am I?” she whispers, shaking her head. “And I don’t.”
There’s a kick in the gut.
"Because you don't even know my name.”

“What are you talking about? Your name is Krystal.”

She shakes her head and the floor of my stomach drops. She takes a deep breath in through her nose and lets it go out her mouth. The foundation of our five-year friendship crumbles as she reaches into her purse and withdraws an envelope. “But if I’m going to tell you that, you'll have to sign these.”

Chapter Seven

“YOU’RE NOT SERIOUS!”
I shout the moment I’m aware she’s reentered the kitchen. I toss the documents she’s asked me to sign onto the kitchen counter, as I spin around and climb from my chair. My gaze locks onto a refreshed Krystal. “This is bullshit!”

She isn't serious. She can't be. She's been my patient for five years and has never requested anything as extreme as this.
I glare at the contract she dropped on me before she left to take a shower, after advising me never to sign anything without reading it thoroughly first. The words "Non-Disclosure Agreement” jump up at me.

“I could give you CliffsNotes, but if you want me to answer your questions without omitting anything, Darryl … you'll have to sign it.”

“Damn it!” I draw in a deep breath. The CliffsNotes version will not work in this situation, and she knows it. But putting me under a legal obligation to keep her secrets, gives me a really bad feeling about what she’s going to tell me. “You know there's such a thing as patient-doctor confidence,” I say as I scrawl on the dotted line. “You didn't have to do this.”

She shrugs as she reaches for the coffee pot and then refills our cups. “Maybe I didn’t. And maybe you didn’t have to sign it." She returns the coffee pot to its seat, then sits down opposite me at the kitchen's breakfast bar. “But I did. And so did you.”

“Before you start messing with my head, remember that I’m here to help you, Krystal. I can still walk away, and I will. If I think you’re not being straight with me, I'm out of here.”

Her gaze meets with mine. She stares at me for what feels like an age, but I don’t back down. She draws in a long, heavy breath and blows it out again before nodding. “After I spent months in New York preparing for my role as Faith, I knew exactly what was going on between Julia and Wayne. Saw it, heard it, all the signs are there. But Julia denies it.”

“Skip to the part where you changed your name; we can come back to Julia and Wayne later.”

“Just …” She sighs in a way that lifts the hairs on my arms. Suddenly, I’m aware of how uncomfortable she is discussing this. “… listen. I promise I'll get there.” When I don't reply, she pushes on. “Ten years ago, Wayne and I were dating. We’d been together for six months before I caught him with Julia. Now, he's holding what she did to me, sleeping with him when he was my boyfriend, against her. But at the same time, he’s made her, and everyone else we know, think that I’m the one with the problem. I swear to you, Darryl, if he truly made her happy I'd back off. But …”

I examine her expression with an intensity I don’t think I’ve given anything else for a long time; everything I thought I knew about this woman is a lie. She’s had me fooled for years. But I’m also certain, she really doesn't care about her best friend's betrayal, and she’s trying hard to prove she didn't care about the ex-boyfriend at all—maybe a little too hard. Her eyes drift to the coffee cup wrapped within both her hands. “But what happened a month ago, the attack on my sister and the shooting, it's my fault.”

“You weren't even there.” I know that much from what she said last night. I watch her unconsciously touching the bruising on her eyes. “Has he done this before?”

Her gaze jumps and locks with mine. The rage fuels her denial. “Do you think I’d let him get away with it twice?” It’s a denial that’s a little too quick for my liking, and doesn’t that mean she’s not telling me the whole truth? “Things just got a little heated last night.”

“He's never hit you before now?” Slowly, she shakes her head, but doesn’t voice a denial. “I don’t believe you.”

“Once,” she admits. “Ten years ago. We lived in New York at the time. And we were arguing—over Julia’s brother, in fact—and he hit me.”

“What did you do?” I ask, and her attention return to her coffee. The shame rolls off her. “Krystal?”

“I … I broke his arm!” she admits. “I didn't mean to hurt him, D. It was a reflex. I’m not proud of it. In fact, I felt so guilty for hurting him, and so ashamed at myself for slipping back into my childhood behavior, I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. I knew the only way I could make it up to him was to sleep with him.”

“You were together six months and you’d never slept with him?” Her head twists from side to side. “
Never
?”

“You have to understand, Darryl, the act of sex comes with a whole load of insecurities. Insecurities you have to let go of. And for sex to be good, and I mean really good, you have surrender to the moment. That kind of intimacy does not come easily to me. Not even back then, because I feared then, as much as I do today, that someone would figure out Ashleigh Jordan is Krystal Valentina in disguise.”

“Ashleigh?” I repeat. “Your name is
actually
Ashleigh?"
Why does Caleb know this, and I don’t?
But as I await her reply, I realize the guy she was willing to sleep with didn’t know who she was either. “And Wayne didn’t know that Ashleigh is Krystal?”

“It was years before it was eventually spelled out to him.” She shakes her head. “But after I hurt him, I thought sex was the path to redemption; I called him and told him I was ready, and he had to meet me at my apartment before I lost my nerve. I came home to hear him tell Julia he was going to marry her.” She closes her eyes, “I didn’t go to the dojo for almost three months. Too ashamed to face anyone there, because I hadn’t lived the value of Judo, I kept thinking that if I hadn't hurt him, he wouldn’t have run off with my best friend.”

“You don’t think he set you up? He knew you were coming home.” She shrugs. “Do you still think you were to blame?”

“Absolutely.” She still hasn’t lifted her gaze from the coffee cup. “He did look elsewhere, after all. And I believed for a long time that I was undateable, unlovable, second-rate at best, and deserved it. I refused to date anyone in the three years between Wayne and Dex. Lucky for me, I had a childhood best-friend, Tristan, who was happy to be a convenient plus-one … until he met his wife—even at my sister’s disastrous non-wedding, where Dex and I met.

“But none of that matters. It’s nothing more than a background, so you understand why this whole mess is my fault. Maybe because I’d been in Julia's place—as Wayne’s girlfriend, I mean. And with the added advantage of seeing inside Faith’s life, I saw the way he chipped away at her, I don’t know. But I squirmed every time he said something out of line, or when he did something that made me feel uncomfortable. I’ve deliberately put myself in a position where they have to rely on me. They can’t afford the life they now have, without Julia’s salary. Things would have been better if I hadn’t, because whenever I upset him, he takes it out on her.

“And I don’t have to do anything specific to upset him, except breathe.” As she lifts her eyes to look at me, they’re glistening with unshed tears. “No one else thinks there's anything wrong. He's told everyone I'm jealous, and trying to break them up. He even has my sister convinced we're … we …” She physically shudders. “Well, she’s telling everyone we're having an affair.”

“Affair?” I repeat. I almost fall off my seat in shock. “Who? You and Wayne?”

Oh boy, do I really want to get any deeper into this soap opera?
I take a slow breath and sigh, then pause to take in all the information. I’m only left with more questions. “Tell me the truth,”
this is something I have to know
, “did you bring me here to get you off the hook?”

She shakes her head vehemently and I laugh out loud. I laugh, because if I don't, I’ll shout, and waking up the entire house will not do me any favors. “You have. You’ve brought me here to clear your name.” When she doesn't reply, I stand. “Forget it, Krystal. I have enough of my own bullshit to deal with.”

“No! Darryl, wait. This isn't about me.” Her reflexes are lightning fast. Her hand wraps around my arm as I walk away. Even though I resist, she holds me in place. "Listen, please, for Julia's sake!”

I lift my brow and cast a disapproving look at her hand. She doesn't heed the warning. Instead, she blinks and her tears cut a path down her cheeks.
Damn it! Who knew my weakness would be her damned tears?
But I’m not just going to lie down and play along. “I want the whole truth, and nothing less.”

“All right.” She lets go, reaches for a sheet of paper on the countertop and begins tearing and folding it.

For a moment, I realize that she’s absent-mindedly destroying the contract between us with origami. But then it registers that she’s folding paper again, and had done the same in my office when nervous. I hate that her simple submission intrigues me. When she did the same thing in my office she had morphed into someone else entirely.

So I watch her fingers shake as she makes the careful creases. I recognize the change in her again. “If you didn’t trust me, you should have said so,” I declare.

“I thought we’d covered this already,” she replies quietly. “I don't trust anyone, Darryl.”

“But you do trust me?”

Slowly, she nods. “Please.” She turns her gaze up from the paper. “Don’t make me regret it.”

“All right.” Instead of returning to my seat, I pull out the stool beside her and sit down. “Spill it!”