Guys always had it so much easier. I doubted I could even swing my feet up onto the sofa in this dress.
I tried it anyway.
I did it.
Win.
“Tell me the story of Brett like you promised.” I grinned and sat back against the sofa.
Brett let out a sigh and ran his fingers through my hair, from my scalp right to the very ends. The touch, although not meant to be teasing, was so light and gentle that it sent a shiver across my skin.
“I don’t need to start at the beginning. You know most of that. I screwed up any football prospects in college with wild partying. I barely graduated because I spent too much time screwing around. I only didn’t get arrested and tossed in jail because my uncle is the sheriff. You don’t know the truth about the women.”
Did I want to know the truth?
My gut didn’t know the answer any more than I did.
That wasn’t good.
“It’s not as bad as people make it out to be.” He laughed once with a slight smile playing on his lips. “It wasn’t a different girl every night. Hell, even every week. I just happened to pick up the girls who were vocal about it. And one...” He blew out a long breath, stilling his hand. It was still buried in my hair, but his fingertips now rested against the back of my neck. “One was...visual.”
I froze. “Visual,” I said quietly.
He sighed heavily and grabbed our drinks. He handed me my wine and then sat right back. Despite the fact my eyes were fixed on him, he didn’t look at me. His focus was somewhere out beyond the palm trees and sand and sea foam.
“I can’t pretend I didn’t agree. I don’t actually know if I did or not. There’s no proof I did, and we were both drunk. I can’t remember, even though it was only a year ago.”
“Cut to the chase,” I whispered.
“She videoed it. We videoed it. I don’t know.” He put the glass right back down without drinking from it and leaned forward. His formerly slick, tidy hair was mussed when he scrubbed his hands through it. “I didn’t know the next day and came home. One week later, we got blackmail demands. I didn’t even know her fucking name, and she was asking us for seventy-five thousand dollars or she’d make it public.”
The lump in my throat was thick and almost painful, but I licked my lips and asked, “Why didn’t you go to the cops?”
“She said that if we did, she’d publish her story and the tape. She brought in a lawyer that we also had to pay for. It took us three weeks to come to an agreement.” He clasped his hands behind his neck. He was bent right over now, staring at the floor. “We’d pay for her lawyer and seventy-five thousand on the proviso she destroyed every copy of the tape she had. She refused, so we paid for her lawyer and gave her a hundred grand for the destruction of every copy and handing over the original tape.”
“So it still exists?” My mouth was dry. So were my lips. And my throat. Everything was dry.
“It still exists. One copy. I don’t know why, but my father refused to destroy it. He still won’t do it even now. He maintains it’s a good reminder for me of how the choices I’ve made have affected everyone around me. It’s locked away safe, but he said that the moment he destroys it is the moment I get comfortable again.”
“Did she delete them all?”
He nodded, dropping his hands. “We drew up a contract. If the tape was ever put out publicly and ours was safe, she would be liable for breach of our contract. Not that it matters—she got everything she wanted. Money.”
I didn’t want to ask my next question, but I had to know the answer. “So why didn’t you change?”
“I did.” He lifted his head and looked out at the ocean again. “I spent more time at Hope Building. I redecorated the little apartments and all kinds of stuff. When people thought I was out drinking because I didn’t come home, I was sleeping on Sali’s sofa. I went from going out every night to once a week.”
I looked down into my wine glass. The white liquid was still cold, but it was unappealing. I didn’t want to drink it, so I put it down on the table and sat back again.
I don’t know what I expected him to tell me what his secret was, but it wasn’t this. Then again, was I surprised? I didn’t know. I didn’t think so. With all the things he’d admitted to, it was only a matter of time before something really crazy happened in his life.
“That’s the thing you regret most?” My voice was quiet.
He nodded.
“Why?”
One of his shoulders rose and fell with his half-hearted shrug. “Because. It’s like the lowest point—the moment where I realized how out of control I’d gotten, and now that I know it was for the stupidest reason.” He sighed. “It’s real evidence of all the stupid things I’ve done, and while I couldn’t care less, it doesn’t stop the fact I embarrassed my entire family because of one stupid, drunken decision.”
“That’s what you regret? Not that you did it but that it affected everyone else?
“Mostly. Of course I regret doing it. If I could change it, I would.”
I swung my feet off the sofa and scooted forward. His shirt was warm against my palm as I laid my hand on his upper arm. “Your dad really paid her all that money?”
“No. I paid her. It was my mistake.” He was still staring forward. “Or I paid my dad back. Something like that. It was my responsibility to fix it.”
“Does it not bother you that your dad keeps the tape?”
“A little. I had to verify it was real once, but now, it’s never going to be watched and it’s probably never going to be removed from the safe unless it’s to be destroyed. There’s always the worry, but for the most part, it’s just something we live with.”
“Until it’s brought up kind of randomly.”
He shrugged again. “Aunt Bel does it to annoy me, because she can. Everyone else uses it to...I don’t know. Do their version of keeping me in line.”
I stretched my legs out in front of me. “So after this happened, you started to clean up your act, but nobody knew about it.”
“Pretty much.”
“Why the hell don’t you tell anyone anything? No wonder everyone has this monstrous idea of you being a giant, careless, heartless asshole. You really don’t show them anything else, do you?”
Brett slowly turned his face toward me and dragged his gaze up to meet mine. “That’s what you’re focusing on, not what I just told you?”
I rubbed one hand down the side of my face. “Yeah,” I said quietly. “Why don’t you just be who you are and be honest with people about the things you do?”
“Because,” he replied, his voice just as quiet as mine. “Nobody believes it’s real. If Sali hadn’t have told my family everything I do for the house, they probably wouldn’t believe me. They’d assume I do it just to look good.”
“Maybe you think they’d assume that because you won’t give them a chance to prove otherwise. Not everybody thinks you’re a lost cause. They just don’t know you.”