Page 127 of The Complete Truth Duet
“But you didn’t have to make me think you were dead,” she shot back. “Fine, you want the credit? Here you go. You were my knight in shining armor. I should be on my knees, thanking you right now. But you’ll have to excuse me. My knees are a little sore. I’ve spent the last few weeks on them, crying over you.”
“You think I wanted this? You think I wanted to let go of the woman who made me feel more alive in two months than I had in all thirty-seven years of my life combined? For fuck’s sake, the idea of you moving on, making a life with another man corrodes my veins. I know I hurt you, Cora. But I swear to God, I did the only thing I could think of to make your life better rather than making it worse.”
She closed her eyes, her entire face scrunching in pain. “Why didn’t you just tell me? I could have handled it.”
“I didn’t want to drag you into this hell.”
“I was already in it. Long before you were.”
“But I couldn’t watch you burn. You might not have been scared of the flames inside me”—I pounded the spot over my heart—“but I was. So that connection between me and you had to be severed, no matter how much it destroyed me.”
“You?” she accused. Her eyes popped open and the betrayal blazing within them tore me limb from limb. “So you decided to destroy me instead?”
“Destroyed is not dead.”
“Stop saying that,” she seethed. “It’s bullshit. All of it. This was never about me. The day you walked into my apartment and every single day after it, you were one big fucking lie. You swore to me that you weren’t looking for Catalina.”
“I wasn’t there to hurt her.”
“No. You saved that for me, right?”
“No,” I stated definitively.
Her lips quivered as she peered up at me. “You walked into my life, took one look around, and felt sorry for me? Was that it? You couldn’t save Lisa, so you decided to give it another try with me.”
Pressure mounted inside me. I wanted to yell at her that she was wrong. Shake her and make her understand. But I really just wanted this to stop. All of it.
“That’s not what happened at all.”
Her arms hung at her sides, and the emptiness in her eyes knocked the breath out of me. “You made love to me every night, stared right into my face, and lied with your body too.”
“Cora, baby. No. I never fucking lied to you like that.” I was losing her. She was standing there in my arms and I hadn’t even gotten her back yet. But I was losing her all over again. “Please. Just listen to me.”
“What else is there to say? The minute you got the answer about what happened to your precious wife, you threw some money at me like a whore and then left.”
My whole body tensed, the muscles in my neck painfully straining against my skin. Careful to control my tone, I gritted out, “It wasn’t like that. And you fucking know it.”
“I don’t know anything anymore! Nothing makes sense. Was any of it real, Shane?”
I hated the way she said my name. Like it was a curse all of its own. In a lot of ways, though, I supposed it was.
Because, no matter how much I wanted to deny it, Cora Guerrero had never been in love with Shane Pennington.
Not yet anyway.
I needed her to feel the honesty pounding in my chest, coursing through my veins, and flowing in my lungs.
Taking her hand, I lifted it to my chest, sealing it against me with both of my hands on top. “We are the truth, Cora. We are the only truth in this entire fucked-up situation.”
Her shoulders rounded forward in defeat. “I don’t even know what the truth is anymore.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Then what do you want me to say, Penn?” She flinched. “I mean…Shane.”
“Penn. Please, just call me Penn.”
“Why? So we can continue with the lie?”
My hand spasmed over hers. “It doesn’t feel like a lie when you say it. Cora, I’m sorry. For all of it. No, I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with you when this started. But you pretty much left me no choice. You’re an incredible woman. I knew that from the moment Lisa told me about you. But when I finally met you—”
She snatched her hand away like I’d electrocuted her. “What do you mean when Lisa told you about me?”
I swallowed hard and dug my phone out. “She came to Chicago after getting a tip about some girls getting into drugs and prostitution after answering online modeling ads. The cops weren’t doing anything about it, so she decided she would. Through that, she found the Guerreros.” I scrolled through my phone until I found a picture of her standing with Drew at a family Christmas party.
