She leaned against the counter and her shoulders rounded forward. “I didn’t.”
“Right. You expect me to believe that Sky kept it from me on her own? You know damn well she would never do that. She tells me everything. Everything, Lizzie. I knew about Sawyer before you did.” He closed his eyes for a beat, absorbing the sting of his words. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
She held up her hand to silence him. “No. You’re right. You are closer to Sky than I am, and I’m sure she would have told you if she’d known.”
“She doesn’t know?” He watched her eyes, looking for the truth, and it was staring right back at him.
Without a word, she shook her head.
“What do your parents think about it?”
She lifted damp eyes to him. “They don’t know either. They’re the reason, well, one of the reasons, that no one knows. You’re the only one I’ve told.”
He felt like he’d been punched in the gut. “You lied to everyone? For all these years? Your sister? Your parents? Your best friend?” Anger simmered inside him again.
“I couldn’t tell my sister or Sky. It might have slipped out around my parents.”
He stepped in closer, unable to quell the anger and disappointment bubbling up and spewing out of his mouth. “You lied to everyone you knew? Don’t you feel any sense of loyalty? An ounce of trust? No,” he said as he paced. “I guess you wouldn’t. You cared about paying off your school loans and opening your business, and to hell with everyone who trusts you.”
Her eyes blazed as she closed the distance between them. “How dare you judge me so unfairly. Don’t you think I’m ashamed of what I’ve done? Do you think I’m proud? Wait—maybe I am a little, for finding a way out of debt, but how dare you think I take this lightly or that I don’t give a damn about my family and friends. I give a damn about everyone, which is why I didn’t tell them. This would kill my parents! And if Sky knew, or Maddy knew, and it slipped out around my parents, then all hell would break loose and my parents would be as angry with them as they would be with me.”
“And what about your self-respect, Lizzie? Didn’t that come into play at all during these years of half-naked baking for strange men who probably jerked off a zillion times to you?” He couldn’t stop the anger from tumbling from his lips, despite the tears rolling down her cheeks and the acidic burn in his gut.
Her voice lowered to an icy calm, and her gaze followed. “I don’t matter. How can you not understand that? Maddy matters. I might have started doing this for myself, but now? Now I’m doing it so Maddy doesn’t have to. And you know what, Blue? I’d do it all over again. I’m an adult. I’ve made my bed. I’ve made my mistakes. And I’ll live with them for the rest of my life, but Maddy won’t have to. She’ll get the education she deserves and she can be proud of, and she’ll come out without loans looming over her head. She needed a shot at having a future that included more than a minimum-wage job, and I gave her that opportunity.”
Shaking his head was all Blue could do as her rationalization ricocheted in his mind. “You’ve got this all figured out, don’t you? No matter what the cost?”
She crossed trembling arms over her chest and thrust her chin out. “This is what I have to do.”
“No, Lizzie. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. There are other ways to make money.”
“Not for me there aren’t. Not for Maddy, either. Don’t you think if I earned enough from my shop, I would stop doing the videos in a heartbeat?”
“I don’t know. Would you? Will you ever walk away from it? Will anything ever mean enough to you to leave it all behind? Or will money always be your driving factor?”
“That’s unfair.” She held his gaze. “It’s not like I want millions of dollars or like I live an extravagant lifestyle. If I hadn’t had a flood and insurance hadn’t paid for the repairs, I would never have renovated my kitchen. And…” She turned away, and when she finally turned back, she blew out a long breath and fell silent, as if she had no fight left in her.
“You know what, Blue? Obviously my judgment is off. I was falling in love with you. I thought we had a real connection, but you don’t know me at all. Not really. Not the parts of me that matter, because if you did, this wouldn’t mean a damn thing.”
He reached out to her, but she pulled away.
“How can you say that, Lizzie? You’re hiding behind all of this shit. Is it sexy? Hell, yes, it would be if you were acting it out for me—for us—in the privacy of our own home. But you’re rationalizing your way in and out of this whole mess.”
She drew in a deep breath, shoulders shaking so badly she reached for the counter. “I’m proud of finding a way out of debt. And I’m proud of what I’ve done for Maddy.”