Page 104 of Truthfinder’s Promise

“Of course.” Meredith silenced the porch area and waited.

Serenity drew her legs up, tucking her bare feet beneath her and staring off at the gardens. She looked effortlessly pretty and vulnerable, the kind of woman a man would instinctively feel the need to protect. Meredith kept waiting for Jensen to come to his senses and realize he did want to marry Serenity and give her three children and a white picket fence.

“They like you,” Serenity finally said. “They never even bothered to test me. I was with him for two years, and no one ever asked me for so much as my opinion on pizza toppings.” She picked at her fingernails. “They knew he’d never marry me. I was the only one who didn’t.”

Her words were laced with a raw hurt that went farther back than a failed relationship. Suddenly, Meredith wasn’t looking at Jensen’s ex anymore. She was looking at a woman who had wanted to matter—to be respected by the people she belonged to—and felt like she didn’t. Maybe that was why Serenity had spoken up for Hel when the younger woman had wanted to be trusted for the reconnaissance mission.

“I just keep thinking, why couldn’t it have been me, you know? What is so wrong with me that no one wants me? I’m pretty enough to fuck but not good enough to marry, because I never behaved quite right. I knew what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to grow up, smile, and keep my thoughts to myself so someone would marry me to keep as his pretty little arm candy.

“But I always managed to sabotage it somehow. I didn’t want to be a trophy wife, but I wasn’t smart enough to be respected for my intellect. Just opinionated enough to make men tire of me in a few months and too pretty for women to want me around their men.” She laughed, soft and bitter. “I’ll be a pariah in the King enclave by the time word of you gets around. Why do you get to be strong and beautiful and everyone loves you for it, but I’m just difficult cheat-bait?”

“Because people are stupid.”

Serenity’s head snapped up. Tears shimmered in her eyes, ones she refused to let fall.

“People are stupid,” Meredith repeated. “They form opinions of us when we’re young, based on what we’re taught to show them, and they never allow for the fact that what they see might not be the real us. They never allow for the fact that people grow.

“Most people in Aspect Society think I’m a clueless nitwit. Even my friends, who love me, still think of me as the flighty socialite I had to act like to survive. You heard them—they were shocked I could do math.” She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “Do you want to know why your people like me? It’s not because I’m so great. It’s because they like Jensen, and Jensen, who has been vocal about his desire to never marry, married me.

“I am unknown and mysterious, and they think I attained the unattainable. Therefore, one of two things must be true. Either I am special and brilliant and one in a million, and therefore worthy of their respect, or I’m a great lay and Jensen’s head has been so turned by my magical orgasmic powers that there’s no use reasoning with him.”

Serenity snorted.

“The people predisposed to be reasonable toward a random new addition to their lives need very little convincing to decide to like and respect me. The people who are going to look at me and see a blonde with boobs are never going to be convinced I’m anything but a bunny in the sack. And you know what? Fuck all of them.

“None of this is about me, or you. It’s all about Jensen. Do I still want them to like me? Of course I do. It’s human nature. No one wants to be disliked. And I will feel bad when all of this is over and it comes out that our marriage is a joke, because so many of them welcomed me when they didn’t have to.

“It would be easy to just stay married to him. Given the givens, he probably wouldn’t fight me on it. But the only power I’ve ever had in my life has been based on what other people have deigned to give me, and I’m not going down that route again. I don’t want people to like me because I’m Jensen King’s wife. I want them to like me—or not—because of who I am. And I’m still figuring out who I am.”

Silence followed for long enough that Meredith wondered if she’d been an idiot to say everything she had. Serenity had been raw and honest with her, and she’d wanted to be the same in return. Maybe they didn’t like each other. Maybe they never would. But Meredith couldn’t stand seeing her look so broken.

“Maybe I need to figure out who I am, somewhere no one knows me.” Serenity sounded more like she was talking to herself than to Meredith. Louder, she said, “You’ve never been anything but honest with me, so I’ll try to return that. You may think he married you to protect you. It might even be true. But he wouldn’t have cared enough to do that for another woman, and the only people in this house confused about what that means are you and him. Get a divorce, if it will make you both happy. But in every way that functionally matters, you’ll still be the wife of the King enclave’s next protector.”

Meredith’s heart squeezed. She wanted that to be true. But the truth was, she’d hardly seen Jensen since the protectors from the other enclaves had arrived. He sat next to her during the official meetings. Outside of official meetings…well, he had responsibilities. He had Natalie to take care of, he had his life to put back together. She understood it, which was why she’d told him, after that first night he hadn’t come up to her room when he’d said he would, that she didn’t expect him to.

She figured he needed time and space to regroup and process, so she’d given it to him before he could feel like she was an obligation. She just hadn’t expected him to take quite so much space. He’d hardly spoken to her in the last four days. He wasn’t rude or hostile, he was just…distant.

He’d never promised her anything. She hadn’t promised him anything. And this, right here, was exactly why. Because some part of her had guessed that at the end of all of this he’d come to his senses and realize she’d been a crutch. Someone to lean on when he hadn’t had anyone else, and now that he had his friends and family back, he didn’t need her anymore.

She wouldn’t blame him, if it were true. It would hurt, but she wouldn’t blame him. Either way, she deserved to hear it from his lips. They needed to talk, but she wasn’t going to force the issue until Aspect and Shifter had reached an official agreement one way or the other.

Across from her, Serenity nodded to herself, as if she’d come to a decision. She stood. “Could you drop the silencing spell?”

Wary, Meredith did.

Serenity smiled at her, the first genuine one Meredith thought she’d given her. “Your home has the loveliest gardens, Meredith.” The compliment—and her support—given, she rose and disappeared inside the house.

Something that felt suspiciously like warm fuzzy feelings sprouted in Meredith’s chest. It annoyed her. Her heart was supposed to be a cold, dead thing, and the chest it resided in was therefore supposed to be a barren landscape in which warm fuzzies were incapable of flourishing.

She looked at the time. Two minutes left.