Total pages in book: 224
Estimated words: 215705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1079(@200wpm)___ 863(@250wpm)___ 719(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 215705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1079(@200wpm)___ 863(@250wpm)___ 719(@300wpm)
“You did?”
“Yes. I did. I know I’m off tonight. I know at one point I even pushed you too hard.” He cups my face. “I need to tell you why. I want to tell you why.” He catches the fingers of one of my hands and leads me to the chair where we sit down facing each other.
Chapter ninety
Carrie
Reid and I sit on the chair, side by side, and I wait for a bombshell confession, for something more than the night his ex-girlfriend died. “Right before I met you,” he says, “there was a woman that tried to blackmail Cat and Reese.”
I blanch at the answer that is nothing that I expect. “Blackmail how?”
“She was pregnant and said the baby was Reese’s, which was a lie. She just wanted a big payoff, and I was legal counsel to Cat and Reese.”
“Oh my God. Gabe asked Cat tonight if she knew she was pregnant when something was going on. I didn’t know what.”
“He was obviously talking about this and from what I pieced together tonight, and you just confirmed by what you overheard, Cat knew she was pregnant during all of this.”
“Do you think she feared he was guilty and didn’t want to tell Reese?”
“No,” Reid says firmly. “She didn’t think for a minute he was guilty. I was with her; I saw her reactions and I looked into his eyes. I knew he was innocent and she trusts him, but the idea that she might have any doubt gutted that man, as it would me if we were in that situation.”
“But she didn’t tell him about the pregnancy,” I say. “Are you sure?”
“He didn’t know when we were going through this. I’m certain of it, and knowing Cat, she was worried about the trial he was in the middle of and probably just didn’t want to have their news ruined by this woman. Of course, I wouldn’t know. I barely got her to let me help.” He gives a bitter laugh. “Ironically, I think it’s me being an asshole that won her over. The woman was threatening to go public. Her partner in this was following Cat around. Reese wanted to send Cat away, but she was afraid if the woman went public, that would make Reese look guiltier, like she left him. She was worried for her marriage and her husband’s reputation. Now, I know she was also worried for her child.”
“I can’t imagine how horrible that was for them. What happened? How did it end?”
“This is between you, me, and Gabe. Cat and Reese don’t know. I paid off the woman’s family, got her out of town, and then paid to have a DNA test done.”
“Why don’t you want her to know?” I take his hand. “That was an amazing thing to do.”
“Cat and Reese have money, but my sister has worked her butt off to build up her career. I heard her say she’d have to write another book to pay the woman off. It was a large sum of money that I negotiated down. I also demanded the DNA test.”
“Has it been done?”
“Not yet. Soon. The woman gives birth in a few weeks, and Cat and Reese are aware of this. They might not talk about it, but it’s on their minds. I know on some level they both need to know the other one has those results. I think it’s better that they don’t know the results are coming. The anticipation would weigh on them.”
“You get them first?”
“Yes. I get them first.”
“What if—”
“It’s not his baby,” Reid says. “The woman confessed to lying for money but the test is just peace of mind, which brings me to where my head is tonight. Reese would never have hurt Cat like that and yet that woman tried to make it seem as if he had.”
“You did a good thing helping and you didn’t even take credit.”
“She knows I helped. That’s when we started getting closer and then you came into the picture and made sure that it kept happening. The bottom line is this brought me back to us. I can’t fully protect you any more than Reese can Cat. That’s almost unbearable to me. I didn’t want to fall in love. I didn’t want to have someone that I could lose or hurt but I can’t imagine life without you.”
My heart squeezes and I lean forward and press my hand to his face. “Then don’t.”
“I can’t lose you, Carrie. I might have walked out of this bedroom tonight for five minutes, but that was me battling with the idea of wanting control that I’ll never have, that I can’t ever fully protect you.”
Suddenly his need to tie me up, to demand control, makes sense. I take his hand. “You can’t protect me from everything any more than I can you, but you can go to sleep every night knowing that if I die tomorrow, I’ll die loved and happy. I’ll die in love and happy with you.”