NO SECRETS NO LIES (SIN CITY HEAT SERIES Book 3) (22 page)

    
Jerra licked her lips, which were suddenly bone dry. "I don't know where
to start."

    
"Really? Let me help you out and give you a few suggestions. How about why
you never told me you had a child who you'd given it up for adoption. Or maybe
start at why you lied to me and told me you were goin’ to be with Keisha all
day when in reality you were meeting your daughter and her father. Oh. Wait.
There's another starting point:
Rob.
"

    
Darrell scooted up to the edge of the chair and leaned his elbows on his knees,
wrapping his hands around the glass. The intensity of the stare he directed
towards Jerra was intimidating and nerve wracking but Jerra was determined not
to look away as he continued in a slightly elevated tone. 

    
"Maybe you wanna explain to me just what the hell you were doing in the
back of a restaurant sittin' up under this dude, lettin' him hug and touch all
over you. Yeah. Maybe
that
would be a
great
place for you to
start, Jerra!"

Chapter
29

    
By now, Jerra was ready to jump out of her own skin, but outwardly, she was
cool and collected. She'd been one of the best, if not
the
best defense
attorney at her firm in Atlanta and had been on the verge of making partner
when she met and married Darrell. When she turned in her resignation, the firm
tried everything they could to entice her to stay. They'd been desperate not to
lose her. The salary hike and luxurious perks they offered far exceeded that of
what they'd originally intended to give her once she made partner. As much as
she hated to walk away from a career she loved, she loved Darrell more. The
decision had been easy.

    
Seeing the air of calmness surrounding her, Darrell picked up on the imaginary
armor she erected like an impenetrable wall. He immediately recognized it as
her defense mechanism and it drove him as crazy now as it always did because
when she retreated inside that shell, she shut him out. He tightened his lips
and glanced down, rapidly shaking his head from side to side. Now was not the
time for that shit.

    
"Jerra, what the  –" Darrell paused and cleared his throat
gruffly, forcing himself to calm down before raising his eyes to meet hers.
"Jerra, what's goin' on."

    
Jerra squeezed her interlocked fingers which rested on her lap. To think the
words came to her so effortlessly when she was in a courtroom, at this moment,
she was at a loss as to how to articulate what she was feeling and why she'd
made the decision to keep such an important part of her past from him.

    
Finally, she started from the beginning and told Darrell how she discovered she
was pregnant months after she made it to Atlanta. He listened quietly as she
explained the events that led up to today.

    
"So after Rob met with me and was comfortable, he broke the news to
Giselle. He told me upfront it would be her decision whether or not she wanted
to meet with me, and when she told him she did..." Jerra's wiped her eyes
with trembling fingers. "I've never been so scared in all my life, but I'm
so thankful things turned out the way they did with her."

  
She sniffed and looked up at Darrell, waiting for him to say something.
Anything.
Surely he couldn’t be upset with her after hearing the entire story. Surely
he'd understand why she'd made the decision she did. When he stared at her in
silence, she grasped onto the first thought that crossed her mind.

    
"I know what you experienced with your mother has given you a different
outlook on some things." When Darrell's body stiffened, Jerra hurried to
make her point. "But I don't want you to feel like her abandoning you at
the orphanage and me giving my baby up for adoption are the same. It’s
not."

    
Darrell squinted as he watched her with a closed expression. Jerra's heart
dropped. This was just what she'd been afraid of. He hated her now.

    
"Darrell? Please. Say something. Say that you understand."

    
"Let me get this straight. You lied to me about something this important
because you thought I would put you in the same category as Tina?"

    
Jerra frowned. "I didn’t lie to you."

    
Darrell laughed chillingly and made a slicing motion under his throat with his
hand. "Waiiittt a minute. Before you make this even worse, don’t try and
justify this by saying you didn’t lie to me. No matter what kind of polished
spin you try to put on the outcome, an omission of facts is still a lie,
counselor."

    
"I was fifteen years old. You, better than anyone, know what I went
through with Earl."

    
Darrell shook his head. "Don't do that."

    
"Don't do what?!"

    
"Don’t try and turn this around to manipulate the situation so that it'll
fit all nice and neat into the box you tryin' to shove it into, that's what.
You didn’t tell me you'd gotten pregnant as a result of being raped. I can
understand that. You didn’t tell me you'd given the baby up for adoption
afterwards. On some level, I can understand that, too.  But this is where
shit starts to fall apart and get a li'l cloudy for me. You compound those
secrets even more when you hire a private investigator to find her and
still
don't come to me. You not fifteen years old now, Jerra. You deliberately
kept me in the dark."

    
"You know what? I'm laying my heart and soul on the line to you
now.
You
have no idea what I've gone through! None!"

    
"And I suppose what I saw in the restaurant was
Rob
showing you
just how much he
did
understand??"

    
"As a matter of fact, yes! But that's
all
it was."

    
Darrell's tilted his head to the side, disbelief mixed with hurt written over
every inch of his handsome face. "Damn. Guess that tells me exactly where
I stand in this entire thing, huh."

    
"Darrell, you know I didn’t mean it that way." Jerra had been
determined to keep control of the conversation but that control was quickly
slipping through her fingers like grains of sand.

    
"I think you did, but since you wanna pretend like you can't figure out
why I'm upset, let me spell it out for you. I don’t take a back seat to
no
muthafucka.
You got that?"

    
Jerra sat up and wildly shook her head. "That's not what I was doing. It's
just that –"

    
"It's
exactly
what you were doin'. I was sittin’ across the table
from some other man while you filled me in on somethin’ he already knew
everything about. Then, you tryin' to sit there and tell me that after all
we've been through together, you think I would blame you for something that
came about from what that sick son of a bitch did to you when you were a child?
Don't try to spoon feed me a heap of bullshit, Jerra, 'cause I ain't swallowin'
it."

    
Twin lines of tears ran down each of her cheeks. "Please. I need you to be
there for me right now. Can't you see that?"

    
Darrell's eyebrows shot up. "You need me
now
? After you've talked over
shit with Valentine when you should’ve come to me about in the first got damn
place? If you think I'm okay with that, I'm beginning to realize you don’t know
me as well as I thought you did."

    
"What?"

    
"I've trusted you with every ugly detail of my life - and I mean
everything.
 I've opened up to you in ways I've never done with anyone else, from
the crap with Tina to the shit I went through when Roni was killed.  I
shared all of that with you but the fact that you feel as if you can't come to me
about something so serious means we have a grave problem."

    
Darrell finished off the rest of his 'nac then leaned over to place the glass
on the table beside him, but before he set it down on the coaster, he paused.
"Wait a minute." He slowly turned and fixed Jerra with a look full of
suspicion as a thought suddenly occurred to him. "You said you met with
Valentine before today. When?"

    
For the first time since they began talking, Jerra's eyes fell away from his.
"It was a couple of months ago." Her answer was deliberately vague,
hoping he'd leave it at that.

    
She should've known better.

    
The silence crept into the room and covered it like a thick, dense fog setting
the stage for the real drama that was about to follow.

    
"Here? In Vegas?"

    
Jerra slowly shook her head.

    
"Look at me." After Jerra did so, Darrel read the answer in the guilt
displayed on her face, but asked the question anyway. "Where?"

    
"Darrell..." Jerra's voice was barely a whisper.

    
"Where did you see him?"

    
Jerra swallowed as she realized how this was going to look, but the only thing
she'd been focused on was making contact with her daughter. "Lake Tahoe. I
flew there a couple of times and met with him. Afterwards, I took a flight
straight back."

    
The fog hovering in the room suddenly turned into a gritty, dusty cloud because
the more the facts of the story came out, the dirtier the entire mess started
to get. In fact, it was so grimey Darrell began to wonder if the woman sitting
in front of him was actually the same woman he married.

    
Couldn’t be.

    
"Darrell, I don't know how else to explain it other than to say I felt
this was just something I had to do alone."

     
Darrell ignored Jerra's feeble attempts at reasoning. "That's why
Valentine looked at you the way he did when I mentioned you'd never been to
Tahoe before. He knew you'd been there because you'd been there to see him.
Ain't this some shit."

    
Darrell swiped his hand over his face as he felt the last bit of self-control
he'd been holding onto disappear. He stood up and dug in the pocket of his
jeans for his keys. He had to get the fuck out of there. 

    
"Where are you going? Darrell!"

    
Darrell paused in the doorway with his back to Jerra for several long seconds.
When he finally answered her, his voice sounded tightly wound as if he were at
his breaking point. "Jerra, I just told you I don't think you ever really
knew me. If you wanna prove me wrong, you gonna let me walk out of this house
right now because if I stay, things will be said, and once they're said they
can’t be taken back." Darrell squeezed his keys until they dug into his
palm. "We'll talk, but right now I need some time." He turned until
he was able to see her out of the corner of his eye. "And I suggest you
gimme that time."

    
"We need to talk about this now." Jerra walked up behind him and
touched his arm. She felt the muscle in his tricep jump and bunch up into a
hard knot. "Baby, I love you. I know you're angry with me. If you have
something to say, I'd rather you get it out now."

    
Darrell swung around, towering over her. "So you wanna hear what I have to
say..."

    
Jerra took a deep breath and steeled herself. The only way they were going to
get past this was to talk it out. "Yes."

    
"Okay. First and foremost, since it seems as if I have to spell it out for
you, make this the very last time you involve my son in anything - and I mean
anything
like this
-
without telling me. You understand?” She blinked at the
hostility she saw in his face but slowly nodded. "Secondly, know what Carl
and I were talking about minutes before I saw you? We were saying how lucky I
was to have a woman
I could trust implicitly. Ironic,
isn’t it?"

    
Jerra tried not to flinch at the heavy sarcasm in his voice.

    
"That shit with Yvette fucked him up. He felt like a fool when he found
out how she messed around on him. I mean, I just couldn’t understand how a man
wasn’t aware his woman was doin' some devious, underhanded shit like that."
Darrell's gaze swept over her, up and down. "Guess you caught me sleepin'
because damn if I didn’t just find out how easily that happens."

    
Jerra felt the beginnings of anger slowly rouse and struggle to make itself
known.  "That's not fair. You can't compare Carl and Yvette's
situation to this."

    
"You made a fool out of me, Jerra!” he shouted. ”I'm sittin' there
braggin' to my boy about what a great marriage I have to the perfect woman and
we look over there and see you all hugged all up in a corner somewhere with
another muthafucka!"

    
"We weren't-"

    
"You know exactly what I mean, got dammit!
Then
I turn around and
see my son with some young lady I don’t even know who looks exactly like you
and she tells me she's your
daughter
?! That's some bullshit! I shoulda
found all of this out from you before now! Oh, and let's not leave out the
grand finale in this li'l production of yours. You done took a whole actual
flight, no two! You flew out twice to meet some man without me even knowin’
about it. Makes me wonder what else you’ve snuck around and done without me
knowin’ since I’m so easy to fool. What's even more fucked up is that
he
knows I ain't know a mu'fuckin' thang about it!" Darrell was seething at
the mere thought. He hadn’t been this furious in a long time. "You know
what? Fuck that mu'fucka and –"