Deceive (Declan Reede: The Untold Story #2) (10 page)

The bartender slapped the drink down in front of me and I tossed him a twenty. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath, trying to clear the images of
him
and
her
from my head.

I reached for the glass and raised it to my lips, ready to wipe it all away.

As I did, a new picture entered my mind.

Phoebe.

Phoebe and Alyssa, smiling and waving.

The look of disappointment in Alyssa’s eyes as I’d told her about driving while I was under the influence.

I can’t do this!

The glass slipped from between my fingers before I could comprehend what was happening. I opened my eyes just in time to see it hit the ground—crashing against the metal footrest that ran the length of the bar and spilling amber liquid everywhere.

“Fuck!” I jumped backwards, but it was too late. The splashing liquid went as high as my knees and soaked into my pants.

“You all right, mate?” the bartender asked.

“Um, yeah . . . um . . . no . . . I—I’m sorry. I’ve . . .” I turned and fled without a second glance.

I COULDN’T say exactly how I’d ended up at Alyssa’s. I had no recollection of reaching the car or climbing in. Neither was there a memory of driving out of the car park and onto the freeway.

I didn’t even know how I managed to get out of the car and into the house. All I knew was that when I’d left the city, I’d had a burning need to be in Alyssa’s embrace. It was a new, healthier way to find the oblivion I sought.

Sometime after I’d stumbled through the door, my anger long burned away and tears flooding my eyes instead, I found myself coming back to reality. My chest still heaved from the weight of the sobs that had started while I was driving back from the city. I had no recollection of how long we’d been in our position, with me lying on the couch with my head in her lap, before I finally rolled onto my back and stared up at my personal angel.

She brushed the hair from my eyes, and ran her fingers along my cheeks to brush away the remnants of my tears.

“Hey, you,” I said.

“Hey, yourself.” She smiled softly at me and brushed her fingers through my hair again. “What’s wrong?”

I shook my head. I’d finally composed myself enough to talk—I couldn’t tell her that my entire world had crumbled. Again.

Everything that I’d known to be true, no longer was.

Everything kept piling up on top of me, forcing me to shoulder one burden after another. Dad’s affair was one burden too many.

“You scared me before,” she said matter-of-factly, “barging in here like that.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I just didn’t know where else to go.”

It was true; I had no idea how I was going to go home or face Mum. She’d known about Dad’s affair
.
She’d known about all the disgusting things my father did while at work—probably more than I ever would.

My heart plummeted as my memory started to work and reminded me of the phone calls between Mum and Alyssa. The whispers and secrets. Had Alyssa known too?

She must have, it was the only thing that made sense.

“You . . .” I rolled off her lap and was across the room an instant later, staring at her accusingly. “How could you, Alyssa? How the fuck could you keep that from me?” Without thinking about why I was doing it, I shouted at her. My voice was wild and hysterical.

Standing to follow me, she looked back at the hallway, as if seeking an escape path, before turning back to me. She held her arms in front of her, palms upturned. I took it as a silent plea for understanding.

“How could you!” I screamed again.

“Declan,” her voice was low and calm, “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“About him. About fucking Dad and his little whore! You knew, didn’t you? You knew and you never fucking told me.”

She looked down the hall again. When she turned back, her face was full of anger.

“Watch your language!” she hissed.

“Fuck that! Why didn’t you tell me my own fucking father was sleeping with Hayley fucking Bliss!”

Alyssa’s jaw fell open and she gasped loudly. “What?”

I froze. Her expression of surprise looked genuine, but could I trust it?

“You didn’t know?” My voice was full of the disbelief I felt.

She shook her head. “I really didn’t,” she whispered. “How long?”

I took a step away from her, until my back pressed against the wall. As soon as I felt the support behind me, my legs gave beneath me and I slid down to the floor. I wrapped my arms around my legs and laid my head on my knees.

“How could he do that to Mum?” I sobbed. “How could he say he loves that little slut?”

Kneeling in front of me, Alyssa’s hand enclosed my own, and she enticed me to raise my head just a little. She put her hand on my cheek. “Why don’t you have a lie down? It sounds like you’ve had a bad day.”

I wanted to laugh at the understatement, but I just didn’t have it in me. There wasn’t a single thing about my life that was the same as it had been a few weeks ago.

Just a few short weeks and everything was different.

I was hit with a paralysing fear of how short life really was. How quickly things could change. I climbed forward onto my knees and clutched at Alyssa. I placed one hand on either side of her face, and pushed my fingers into her hair. I caught her eyes with mine. A last sob escaped my throat before I managed to stifle them.

One of her hands shifted to the back of my neck and the other held my waist. She pulled me against her, and cradled me to her body and moved to help me stand. I resisted the pull though, instead taking a moment to relish her embrace. Taking a few deep breaths to calm my breathing, and never breaking eye contact, I pressed my lips to hers in a gentle, chaste kiss.

“I love you, Lys,” I whispered as I pulled away. My gaze was still locked with hers, and I knew she’d heard every word. “You were right when I said I loved who you used to be. But you were wrong about one thing; I do love who you are now too.”

“Come on,” she said, apparently ignoring my statement. “Let’s get you into bed. Things will look better in the morning.”

I shook my head and nuzzled into her neck. “This won’t. I don’t know if this will ever be better. How am I supposed to deal with this shit?”

“We deal with things because we have to,” she said, the pain in her voice evident.

I felt like an arse because as bad as the revelation over Dad’s affairs was, it wasn’t half as bad as the things she’d had to face.

“It’s called life, Declan.” A sad sigh left her as we stood and she led me to the hallway. “At some point you just have to learn how to deal with it,” she added quietly, her voice almost sarcastic.

There was no way for me to answer her that wouldn’t make everything worse. So I didn’t. Instead, I let her guide me to wherever she wanted me to go. I was a little surprised when she walked past the spare room door. Sounds that seemed far too bright and cheery for the day issued from behind that door. I knew it was still only early—far too early to be going to bed—but I couldn’t care less. I wanted to cocoon myself in there, preferably with Alyssa, and block out the rest of the world. The rest of the world hurt like fucking hell and it was easier to block out that pain with Alyssa beside me.

After I’d climbed out of my still bourbon-soaked pants, I slid between Alyssa’s sheets and curled in on myself. She helped and supported me as best as she was able, muttering something incoherent as she worked. When I was in bed, she grabbed my pants and headed out the door.

Once again, I found it hard to breathe. By the time she returned, I was seconds away from another panic attack. As if she sensed my rising angst, she ruffled her fingers though my hair and curled around me. I grabbed her hand and held it around my body. Right then, I needed her to survive. It felt like she was the only thing tethering me to reality. Sooner than I would have expected, I felt myself drifting toward unconsciousness.

The last thing I heard was Alyssa’s soft voice whispering in my ear, no doubt assuming I was already asleep. Her voice was filled with sorrow as she said, “Why is it you can only tell me how you feel when you’re drunk?”

I wanted to argue, but I was too far gone. My protest came out as a garbled murmur.

CHAPTER TEN: INTERRUPTIONS

I FELT THE bed shift and opened my eyes to try work out where exactly I was. The night was too thick to allow my tired and sore eyes to see anything. Pulling myself up onto my elbows to try to get a better view, I heard a small voice call through the dark.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.” It was Alyssa.

“Hi,” I said, feeling that it was a completely inadequate statement considering what had happened earlier. “What time is it?”

“It’s just after eleven.”

“And you’re just getting to bed now?” I asked, my fuzzy brain trying to work out the events that led me to being in Alyssa’s bed. Slowly things started to come back. “Weren’t you with me before?”

She laughed a little as she climbed underneath the blankets. “Yeah. But it was too early for me to go to bed.”

A beat of silence fell between us.

“I didn’t have the same benefits as you when it came to falling asleep,” she added in a voice as bitter as it was muted.

“What benefits?” I asked, confused. By now Alyssa was lying in bed beside me and it was seriously clouding my ability to concentrate on anything but her, and how I really wanted to reach out and hold her. And how I really shouldn’t reach out and touch her.

“Like being drunk,” she whispered into her pillow, as if confessing her sins. I could hear the tears in her voice.

“I—I wasn’t drunk, Alyssa.”

She sighed, her exasperation clear. “I’ve heard that before. You ‘weren’t drunk’ but you’ve been drinking. Just like when you came to visit me at Josh’s.”

“No—”

“Dec, please,” she begged, cutting off my protest. “Don’t lie to me. What did I tell you when we had our talk? I want to trust you, but how can I if you’re just going to lie to me?”

I turned completely onto my side, ignoring the crushing ache it caused in my ribcage. The position allowed me to meet her eye, because I wanted her to know the truth. “Alyssa, listen to me. I wasn’t drunk. I didn’t drink today. At all. I wanted to. God knows how much I fucking wanted to, but I didn’t. I stopped.”

“And let me guess, you just happened to smell of alcohol because you spilled it on yourself. Do you think I came down in the last shower?”

With a sigh, I turned away. It would be harder to get her to accept the truth than it would be to apologise for the lie. Regardless, I wanted her to know the truth.

“Didn’t you just say you were going to try to trust me? Think about it, Lys, what reason do I have for lying now? You’re here in bed with me even though you think I was drunk. Why would I try to convince you that I wasn’t, if it’s not true? What more would I get from it?”

“I’m hardly in bed with you, Dec.” She sighed. “I mean, sure, I’m in bed with you, but I’m not
in
bed with you.”

“I’m glad you cleared that up.” I chuckled.

“I had nowhere else to sleep.”

“Not that I’m complaining, or want to leave, but I could always take your spare bed if you’d prefer.”

“No!” she said, a little too quickly. I smiled. She didn’t want me to get out of her bed. In fact, she sounded almost desperate for me to stay.

I moved a little closer to her, and her breath hitched. It was hard to tell in the darkness but I could have sworn her eyes closed for half a second before they fluttered open again.

“Just stay over on your side,” she said. I couldn’t tell what the emotion I heard in her voice was—it almost sounded like desire, or maybe need, but that didn’t marry up to her words.

“Really,” I said. “I don’t mind going to your spare room if you think it would be easier. I mean . . . I saw that the bed was made and everything when I was here yesterday.”

“It’s not really a spare room.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s . . . it’s Flynn’s room. For when he stays over to help me out and stuff. I guess it doubles as a spare room when he’s not here but no one’s ever really stayed in—” She’d started to babble and I held up a hand to cut her off.

“Flynn’s room?”

She nodded and cowered against the pillow.

“Flynn’s
room?
He’s got a whole fucking room at your house?”

“Declan, you need to understand the relationship I have with Flynn. He helps me out. Sometimes he’s the only thing that keeps me sane. And he’s always there for Phoebe. That’s just easier when he can stay over whenever he likes, especially if he’s looking after her late or in the morning.”

Then the other part of what she’d said hit home. It doubled as a spare room, “
when he’s not here
.” I lost it. “Fucking hell, Lys. You mean that fucker was here the whole time? I was fucking pouring out my heart and fucking soul to you and that fucker heard everything? I bet he was having a merry old fucking laugh.”

“No, Declan, it’s not like that at all. He was here anyway and then you came in and he took Phoebe into his room. I didn’t want you to scare her, not if we are going to tell her the truth soon.”

Alyssa’s words stilled me. “Tell her? You mean, who I am?”

“Yeah. I mean, if you’re serious about staying, I’ll have to. She’s so clever, she’s going to realise something soon and I don’t want her to find out from someone else. I just don’t know how to do it.”

“Do you think it’d be okay if we told her together?” I asked. She was trying to redirect me, I could tell. I wasn’t sure I wanted to drop the Flynn subject, but I was also reluctant to climb out of the bed if our argument spiralled any further.

“Maybe.”

It wasn’t quite the answer I’d hoped for but in the end, I allowed the subject to be dropped. I could always bring it up again in the morning. She turned away from me and settled into a comfortable position.

I waited a few minutes, trying to fall back to sleep, but it felt so wrong to be so close and yet so far away from her. When I moved a little closer to her, she settled back into me. Taking it as an invitation, I snuggled against her and pulled her close. Wrapping my arm around her waist, I guided her back so that I was spooning her properly without putting too much pressure on my ribs. It reminded me of times when we’d slept over at each other’s houses when we were teenagers. We’d always start in separate rooms, but sometime around midnight we would sneak across the hall for a few hours to spoon with each other before crossing back to our own separate rooms before our parents woke.

“This is just like when we were young,” she said, echoing my thoughts.

I chuckled against her, tickling the spot at the base of her neck and sending a small shiver rippling down her spine. I laughed at her reaction to my breath; it hadn’t changed over the years.

“Let’s play pretend then,” I whispered into her hair. “Just for tonight let’s pretend that we’re back there again, that none of the shit that’s gone down in the years since has happened. It’s just you and me against the world like it always was.”

“Instead of you and me against each other like it has been lately,” she said sadly.

“No, Alyssa, it’s not like that. I don’t ever want to fight you. You protect me. You and Phoebe are the reason I didn’t drink today. The only reason I stopped before I did.”

“You really didn’t drink this afternoon?” Her voice was still sceptical.

“I really didn’t.”

She rolled over in my arms and I was aware of just how close she was to me. Her breasts ended up pressed against my chest. Her thighs, which were uncovered, lay against the length of mine. I groaned as my body became hyperaware of her nearness. I tried to pull away from her a little to allow room for growth, but without making it seem like I was distancing myself from her.

In the darkness I saw her eyes searching my face, presumably trying to find evidence of the lie.

“What can I do to prove it to you?” I asked. “Try me. I guarantee I don’t smell or taste of alcohol,” I joked, puckering my lips.

“Well, if you are willing to subject yourself to that sort of test, you must be telling the truth,” she teased back.

“Oh yeah,” I said sarcastically. “Kissing you would be real torturous.”

“Really?” she asked. I could hear the smile in her voice. “Well, it’s a good thing you won’t be doing it for a long time.”

I picked up on the opening she had left. “But I will be doing it eventually?”

She mock-punched me.

“It’s funny,” I continued, “it didn’t feel that torturous yesterday.”

“Declan Reede, you’re an arse.” She laughed.

“Isn’t that why you love me?”

She froze, her entire demeanour shifting in an instant. I wondered what had caused the shift.

“You really weren’t drunk earlier?” she asked.

“No. I honestly didn’t drink anything today. I dropped the glass I was going to drink and ran from the pub. In fact, I can probably make some calls and get the footage if you want.”

“So everything you said earlier . . .”

“Was true. Induced by stress, maybe, but true. I meant every word.”

She chewed on her lip and her eyes found mine. I could see into the depths of the honey-gold irises, even through the gloom that shrouded the room. Raising my hand, I coaxed her lip from between her teeth with my thumb.

Understanding dawned on me, and I saw what it was she was asking. Her words earlier came back to haunt me. “
Why is it you can only tell me how you feel when you’re drunk?”
I wanted to prove her wrong and knew only one way.

“I, Declan Reede, world-class arse, love you, Alyssa Dawson, exquisite goddess, with all of my heart. I love who you were. I love who you are. And I have no doubt I will love whoever you grow to become.”

She watched me balefully for a few minutes and then spoke so quietly I almost didn’t hear. “Thank you.”

Leaning forward, she kissed my cheek gently and then pressed her head against my chest. She breathed deeply and I closed my arms more tightly around her. It hadn’t gone unnoticed that she hadn’t told me she loved me back. I was torn apart by that fact; part of me recognised it was still too early for her and understood, but part of me—mostly my ego—was bruised and damaged. After the day I’d had, I really needed something solid in my life to cling to. I wanted that something to be Alyssa and me.

“When will we tell Phoebe?” I asked.

Alyssa was quiet for a while and I wondered if she hadn’t heard or maybe she was ignoring me. I was just about to ask again when she answered with a sigh.

“Sunday?” she answered, but it almost sounded like a question.

“Sunday’s good.” I answered. I could see Sunday working. I wanted a family day on Sunday anyway—I would give Phoebe the best day of her life and then Alyssa and I would tell her that I was her father.

My breath caught in my throat just thinking about it. Terror gripped me—what if she rejected me? Or didn’t like me? Or hated me for leaving Alyssa? Logically I knew she was too young to feel those things now, but what about in years to come? Could I ever make it up to her? I wanted to try, but I wasn’t sure if I would be able to succeed.

I was lost in my own thoughts and fears for so long that Alyssa had fallen asleep and was snoring softly against me. I gently shifted her so she was facing away from me again and wrapped my arms around her, pressing my face into her hair and drawing comfort from our proximity. I stayed in that position, awake and planning out the various ways we could tell Phoebe for at least an hour before I finally succumbed to sleep myself.

MY FINGERTIPS brushed against something soft and delicate. I stroked back and forth a few times, trying to work out exactly what they were rubbing against. A soft moan sounded out nearby. Opening my eyes, I found that my hands were currently residing inside Alyssa’s pyjamas and my fingers were playing along the underside of her breasts. For a second, I worried what she must think. The moan had sounded like it was issued in pleasure, but I couldn’t be certain. I raised my head to look at Alyssa’s face but realised quickly she was fast asleep still, her lips parted but drawn into a small smile. Slowly, reluctantly, I drew my hand back from her skin and pushed myself up to a sitting position.

Swinging my legs out, I sat on the edge of the bed and rested my elbows on my knees. I cradled my head in my hands, and tried to process all the events of the last twenty-four hours. I knew I needed to go home eventually, but I had no idea what I would say to Mum. What could I say? I was disappointed in her, in Dad, in everyone who had known and not done a damn thing about it. But wasn’t that a bit fucking hypocritical, considering my own actions? Then again, nothing I had done with intent while sober was as bad as what
he’d knowingly chosen to do.

I wanted to wake Alyssa up and quiz her on why Mum didn’t have Phoebe on weekends if it wasn’t because she knew about Dad and Hayley. I believed her when she told me she didn’t know; the look on her face and her reactions were enough to convince me. But that still meant there were too many secrets and too much lying bullshit going on.

I wanted to get all our cards out in the open. To know about everything I’d done to hurt Alyssa during my darkest times, but I also wanted to know about the other secrets people were still hiding from me. Dragging my hand through my hair, I stood. I had nothing to get changed into but decided my shirt/boxer combo was modest enough not to scare Phoebe if she surprised me when I left the room.