“What happened after that?”
Liam huffs out a breath through his nose. “He rang me. The stupid fucker would dare face me, so he rang me. He knew. He saw on his phone that the last message he’d sent to Kate had been finally delivered. Maybe he was just hoping her phone had died along with her. But he was smart enough to figure out I was the one who had seen his text message. He even tried to lie to me then. Said it hadn’t been going on for long. That they’d only slept together just before she went away to Switzerland.
“I told him that I knew everything. I’d seen the texts and pictures dating back a few months that she had on her phone. She hadn’t even felt the need to delete them in fear of me seeing them. She had known I was that fucking trusting and gullible. I told him that I found out it’d been going on the whole time she and I were together. I told him that she’d kept the emails they’d been sending all that time. Guess she was fucking sentimental in that respect. Shame she didn’t feel the same way about me.
“He cried. He actually cried. Begged me to forgive him. Said he was sorry. I told him that he was as dead to me as she was. Then, I hung up the phone, and I haven’t spoken to him since. Well, not until last week when I saw him at Cam’s.”
Liam’s reaction makes a whole lot more sense to me now. How he was so territorial and possessive over me while Jeremy was there.
“They were both fools. And I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead, but Kate was a bitch, and she never deserved a second of your time. You were too good for her, Liam.”
Just how I don’t deserve you. You’re too good for me, Liam Hunter.
I swear, if Kate is in heaven, when I get up there, I’m going to kick her ass all the way to hell.
I rest my palm against his cheek again. He takes my hand and presses a kiss to my palm.
Then, something occurs to me, making me frown. “But Cam and Eddie are still friends with Jeremy?”
Liam brings my hand down, holding it to his chest. I can feel his heart beating strong and well.
“They don’t know the truth. I didn’t tell them. The only person who knows is my grandpa.”
“Why didn’t you tell them?” My frown twists into confusion.
“Because…I guess a part of me was embarrassed that it had been happening under my nose for so long, and I didn’t know.”
“Do you think they knew?”
“No.” He vehemently shakes his head. “Jeremy was always a selfish fuck, so his behavior wasn’t completely surprising. But not Cam and Eddie. If they’d known, they would have told me.”
“I’m glad. But you still should’ve told them.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“I’m glad you had your grandpa to talk to about it.”
He gives me a half-smile but doesn’t say anything.
He lets go of my hand and strokes my face with his fingers, running my hair behind my ear. “I’m glad you’re here,” he says softly.
I flatten my palm on his chest, moving my fingers through the soft hair there. “I’m glad I’m here, too.”
But I don’t deserve to be.
I’m lying to him. Like Kate did. Maybe not in the same way or for the same reasons, but I am deceiving him.
And deceit in any form is just the same at the end of the day.
Lies. They cause the same horrific damage.
Liam doesn’t deserve to be lied to anymore. And he doesn’t deserve to be hurt—far from it. He deserves everything good that life has to offer.
But how can I tell him that I’m dying? That I want to die.
I can’t. Because I’m afraid.
I really am as selfish as I always believed myself to be.
If I were a better person, I would tell him. But I’m not a better person.
I’m Taylor Shaw, the coward. The selfish bitch.
The destroyer of lives.
But I don’t have to be that person anymore. I can leave him and clear my conscience, knowing that, while I was still breathing, I didn’t fail at the last thing I did here on earth.
I could tell him the truth.
Be worthy of the time and care he’s given to me.
But then I fear that he would try to talk me out of my decision.
He could only talk me out of it if I wanted to be talked out of it.
And I don’t. I can do this.
I can tell him.
The words are there. Right on the tip of my tongue.
It would be so easy to tell him…well, not easy, but right. And freeing, not having to lie to him anymore.
I can tell him the truth, tell him everything. About my family. What I did to them. How their deaths are on my hands. Tell him that the tumor is back. But that it’s okay. Because I want to die. I want to be with them.
That this tumor is setting me free, so I can be with them.
But then he moves closer to me, pressing his body to mine, and he kisses me.
I let him. And then I use that as the excuse to let the truth stay locked in my mind.