The Best Lie (Damaged Book 2) Read online

  I sucked in a sharp breath. “No, I wasn’t.”

  “I know fear.”

  I knew he did. But I knew it, too…knew it in ways a man of L.T.’s size and training never could. “That guy wasn’t going to hurt me.”

  At 6’4,” L.T. was over eight inches taller than me, and in that moment he used that advantage to tower over me. “How do you know that?”

  I hated how small he could make me feel. “Because he could have,” I said simply. “We were alone and he could have. But he didn’t. He just wanted to—”

  I looked away, lingering in the direction the guy—Austin—had vanished.

  “Wanted to what?” L.T. asked.

  “Take my picture,” I said quietly. To show me something that didn’t matter anymore.

  “Then why were you so afraid?”

  It was a good question. “I don’t know.” But even as the words formed, the truth nudged. Because of what I might have seen—what Austin might have seen.

  L.T. sighed, not one of those soft quiet sighs, but rough and frustrated. “Zoe, Zoe, Zoe… What am I going to do with you?”

  “You don’t need to do anything.” I didn’t need a knight in shining armor, and I hadn’t in a long time, not since I was a little girl and my grandfather died.

  L.T. lifted the camera, aiming it first at the sky, where cotton-ball clouds drifted against the impossible blue. Then, gradually, he lowered the lens to point at me.

  I tensed all over again. “What are you doing?”

  He made no move to slide his finger to the shutter. Just looked through the viewfinder. “Seeing what Austin saw.”

  The urge to look away was strong, but this was L.T., I reminded myself. There was nothing I could hide from him, even if I tried.

  “Don’t,” I said instead, and with just that, the simple single word, he lowered the camera and handed it back to me.

  But his eyes remained narrow, the shadow of whatever he’d seen darkening the icy blue. “Need a favor, okay, Slim?”

  He could have asked me to go to the moon, and I would have tried. “Name it.”

  The breeze was blowing again, softer, cooler than before. “Be careful for me—people aren’t always who they seem.”

  Chapter 3

  The ominous words stayed with me through my short drive to the north side of Boulder, to the quiet, older neighborhood where I’d lived with my mother since I was two years old.

  The small, red brick, ranch style house looked tired, despite the pots of pink and yellow coneflowers I put out every spring. Sometimes I thought the whole neighborhood looked tired, but that wasn’t true. New life was coming in, young couples purchasing the older properties and sometimes updating them, sometimes tearing them down and starting from scratch. Houses that went into foreclosure were snapped up by renovators looking to flip for a profit. But our house needed more than new floors and countertops.

  I was pretty sure our house needed to be torn down.

  I parked under the dilapidated carport and went inside. The creak of the screen door should have announced my arrival, but the talk show blasting from the TV drowned out everything.

  Dirty dishes crowded the small, rusty kitchen sink. A carton of eggs and the orange juice bottle still sat on the linoleum counter, next to an open loaf of white bread. Laundry overflowed the two baskets next to the washing machine—I’d bet money that the load I’d put in that morning before work still sat inside.

  There was no sign of dinner, even though it was well past seven o’clock.

  “Zoe Anne? That you, baby?”

  I had no idea how she’d realized I was home. “Yeah.”

  “I was getting worried about you—it’s late.”

  In other words, she was hungry. “I’m fine.”

  “Come bring your mama some water. My back’s acting up today.”

  Her back was always acting up. She’d slipped and fallen too many times, and the doctors didn’t know how to fix her. All they could do was dole out handy little pills to help a pain she said she would have to endure for all the remaining days of her life.

  Familiar with the drill, I fished a glass from the pile of gunk in the sink, scrubbed out crusty juice residue, then dropped in a few ice cubes and poured some water.

  “Here you go,” I said, carrying it into her.

  She lay on the sofa, long, dark curly hair framing her face, her makeup thick and perfect, but nowhere near enough to hide the bags beneath her sunken eyes, or the pallor to her skin.

  “Thank you, baby,” she said, taking the glass and sipping deeply.

  I couldn’t help but notice that her hands shook as she reached for the prescription bottle on the fingerprint-smeared, glass coffee table.

  I snagged the pills before she could. “Mom—” I snapped off the lid and looked inside. “How many have you had today?”

  For a moment she looked confused, as if she had no idea what I was talking about.

  “I just picked these up last week,” I reminded her. “There should still be at least twenty in here.”

  But there weren’t. By my count, only seven remained.

  “Don’t talk to your mama like that, baby,” she said. “You have no idea what I have to live with.”

  The pain. The suffering. The days she couldn’t even make it out of bed.

  The afternoon I’d found her on the floor beside her bed, the bottle empty beside her.

  Just trying to make the pain go away, she’d cried once the paramedics revived her. Just trying to feel good again.

  I’d been seven years old.

  “But I do know what happens when you take too many of these,” I countered, slipping the bottle into my pocket.

  Her wobbly-lined lower lip trembled. “How many times do I have to tell you I’m sorry?”

  That’s not what this was about. “Where’s Kent?” I asked. He was her newest…friend. That’s what she called them. Sometimes they lasted months, sometimes only days.

  “Working late,” she said.

  Which meant she’d been alone all day. “What have you had to eat today? Anything since breakfast?”

  She wriggled herself upright, reaching for the pack of cigarettes on the arm of the old sofa. “I…haven’t really been hungry.”

  “You have to eat, Mom.” I winced the second the word came out of my mouth. Usually, I just called her Sheila. “You know that. You can’t take pain pills on an empty stomach.” Frowning, I removed the cigarettes from her hands. “I’ll get you some dinner.”

  Her tired eyes met mine, the smeared eyeliner reminding me of the raccoons from the park. “My sweet angel. What would mama do without you?”

  I’d really grown to hate that question.

  “Give me a few minutes,” I said, turning back toward the kitchen.

  “Did that cop find you?”

  I stilled.

  “He’s nice on the eyes, Zoe Anne, but I don’t like him sniffin’ ‘round here. I’ve told you that. He’s too old for you.”

  I spun around. Normally I bit my tongue. I’d learned there was no point confronting her with the truth. But the words shot out of me before I could stop them. “Don’t you mean he makes you nervous?”

  She reeled back as if I’d struck her.

  Maybe because I had. “Zoe Anne—”

  “Don’t call me that.” I had to get out, was all I could think. I had to find some way to get out of this house, for good. I couldn’t keep doing this over and over again. “And don’t trash him because he makes you uncomfortable. L.T. is a good man. He cares about me.”

  “He’s almost ten years older than you, and a cop. You have no business calling him L.T.”

  “I’ll call him what I want to.” And with that I twisted around and made for the kitchen, even though I could still hear the slur of her voice saying something. Fortunately the television stole the actual words.

  I should have left. I knew that. I should have gotten in my car and gotten out of there, maybe gone to Emily’s for the ni
ght, or at least until I was confident my mom would be passed out on the sofa.

  Instead I went to the cabinet and yanked out a jar of spaghetti sauce. By the time she ate and I finished cleaning the kitchen, Kent and my mom were, thankfully, on the back porch. Country music blared. Through the windows I could see shadows. Dancing, I thought. By themselves in the dark.

  Or maybe they were just holding each other up.

  I didn’t have much of a feel for Kent yet. Of course, I tried to avoid my mom’s friends as much as possible.

  I slipped into my room and closed the door, turned the deadbolt and slid the two chains into place, then went to change clothes…and froze.

  The bed was gone. L.T. had hauled it away. I’d torn out the old ratty carpet and found an aqua shag remnant that fit perfectly. I’d rolled three coats of a rich warm grey over the baby blue of before.

  But every time I walked into the room, my chest locked up and I couldn’t breathe.

  It was like walking straight back into a nightmare.

  Sucking in a deep breath, I changed into shorts and an oversized Denver Broncos t-shirt, then pulled my photography portfolio from behind my dresser and sprawled out on the zebra cushioned futon I’d bought to replace my bed. They were all there, the pictures from before, pictures of people and places, pictures I’d taken without being afraid.

  Earlier, in the park, I’d felt the magic again. Behind the lens of my camera, I’d felt alive again. Like me.

  “You’re pointing in the wrong direction.”

  What would have happened, I couldn’t help but wonder. What would have happened if L.T. hadn’t barged in and ruined—

  Ruined?

  The word surprised me.

  So did the quick swirl of longing—of loss.

  It had been a long time since a guy had looked at me like Austin had, with absolute no recognition or awareness, no lewd curiosity. Only—

  Warmth.

  Interest.

  Desire.

  But now he was gone.

  I could find him, I realized. I knew his name. It shouldn’t be that hard. Just ask around—

  I squashed the thought before it could finish.

  Wrapping my arms around myself, I stared at the images scattered before me: Hannah at the coffee shop grinning, Hannah hamming it up with the folk singer who played guitar the first Friday night of every month, Hannah showing off her new belly button ring, the intricate shooting stars she’d had inked along her ribcage only the week before—

  Before.

  Automatically I looked up, toward the window, the darkness beyond—and saw the car idling across the street.

  An older woman lived there, alone. Her old Buick sat in the driveway, and as always at this hour, darkness blanketed her house. Cars parked out front almost always belonged to someone visiting…my house.

  I knew I was being ridiculous, but my heart kicked hard as I approached the window—

  No one.

  No one sitting in the car.

  No one on the sidewalk.

  Only shadows, slipping in the cool night breeze…

  No one was out there, I told myself. No one was watching me.

  That was only my imagination.

  I was safe.

  But I kept the overhead light on anyway, and before stretching out on the futon, I opened the small floor safe, another new acquisition, and reached inside.

  I saw the flowers the second I walked into The Java Joint shortly before six, a bunch of them, bright pink and tied together with a little burlap ribbon, sitting on the counter near the display of scones. I smiled because they were my favorite, but didn’t think much about them, not until Emily breezed in from the back with a tray of blueberry and granola muffins.

  “You forget to tell me something, Zo-zo?”

  If you did a web-search for morning person, you’d see her face.

  “Something about what?” I asked, putting on the black apron I always wore when serving as barista. We usually had a trickle of customers for the first hour or so, but a steady stream starting at seven.

  She opened the glass display case. “Oh, you know,” she said, sliding her eyes toward the counter.

  I glanced over, and this time saw the envelope, and the name printed in the center:

  Zoe

  And everything inside me started to rush.

  “Aren’t you going to open it?” she asked.

  But I just stood there, trying to breathe.

  “Zoe?”

  The door jangled. A group of businessmen came in. Regulars. Emily and I knew what they wanted without them saying a word.

  “I got it,” she said, hurrying to fix their drip coffees while I stared at the flowers. Coneflowers.

  Exactly like the ones in my front yard.

  The car…idling across the street…

  “Okay, Zoe, you’re scaring me,” she said after the men left. “What gives?”

  Cold. I was so cold. “Where’d these come from?”

  The look in her eyes…sparkling only moments before…suddenly the soft brown hardened into something dark and ugly. “They were by the front door when I got here,” she said carefully. “You don’t think…”

  It was all there in the unspoken, the memory of the notes and the flowers she’d received a few weeks before, notes and flowers that had driven her into the wrong man’s arms.

  “You want me to open it?” she offered as more regulars—young mothers with babies in strollers—breezed in.

  I shook my head, pasting on a smile as I fixed first one, then two, then a handful more lattes and cappuccinos, each with an artful butterfly carved into its foam.

  Three business women. The owner of the art studio a few blocks away. Several groups of tourists. It was fifteen minutes before the shop fell quiet again, and I made myself reach for the envelope, sliding my thumb along my name before slipping a finger beneath the seal.

  Inside I found a white index card with two word words written in the same neat print as my name.

  I’m sorry.

  My breath caught.

  “Sorry?” Emily asked. “Who? For what?”

  I looked up, toward the windows fronting Pearl Street. Against the bright glare of sunshine, the cheerful slogan—We’ll Perk You Up!—blurred. “I have no idea.”

  Emily stepped closer. “I do.”

  And then suddenly I did, too.

  Lexi.

  She was the one who’d sent Emily the notes. To help her, she’d claimed when Emily confronted her in Group. To help her get on with her life.

  Like hell.

  “It’s possible,” I said. There was no love between me and Lexi. It would be just like her to try and drag me back into the dark place.

  That thought died the second I looked back and saw Emily. Her long brown hair swept against her face, emphasizing how pale she looked, the shadows in her eyes, as stark as they’d been the night L.T. and I found her crouched next to her unconscious ex-boyfriend.

  “Hey,” I said, reaching for her. I knew what she was thinking. I knew what she was remembering. “You okay?”

  “She’s such a little bitch.”

  There was nothing little about it. Alexis Abbott was a huge, major bitch. “And pretty damn proud of that fact, too,” I muttered.

  Someday karma was going to have a field day.

  “I listened to her,” Emily murmured. “I confided in her. I trusted her. When I think of what could have happened...”

  “But it didn’t,” I said. “You didn’t let it.”

  Her gaze hardened. “People got hurt—bad. Josh could have died. Coach Grimes…”

  “It’s over,” I said as the door jangled and a few more customers I’d never seen before came in. “You and Josh are back together and that pervert…” I gave her a pointed look while the family, clearly tourists, studied the menu board. “He was hardly an innocent by-stander.”

  Emily looked down. Discovering that you’d never really known someone you’d trusted for yea
rs was a lot to deal with.

  “He lost everything,” she whispered. “Because of me.”

  He deserved to. He and his wife had already split, but after what he did, after the pictures the police had found at his house, of Emily dating back three years, he’d lost all access to his own children, his job at the high school, and every last shred of his reputation. There was no denying the fact he’d had his sights on Emily for a long time. Rumor had it he’d left town.

  “Not because of you,” I said. “Because of what he did. No one made him invite you in. He knew what he was doing…what he wanted.”

  She swung back toward me. “If I hadn’t been there, if I hadn’t been so desperate to prove I was over Josh—”

  “Coach Grimes had been trying to hook up with you for years, even Hannah knew that.”

  Emily frowned. The truth was impossible to deny.

  “The man was lusting after you when you were his thirteen-year-old babysitter,” I reminded, and with the words, my stomach twisted. “He knew you were vulnerable, and he used that to get what he wanted. He got what he had coming.”

  Emily was one of the sweetest people I’d ever met. I still found it unbelievable that she’d almost convinced herself that seducing an older man was going to heal her broken heart…but that was Lexi for you.

  She had manipulation down to an art form.

  I picked up the flowers and the note, and dropped them into the garbage. For added measure, I dumped coffee grinds on them. “She can play whatever game she wants,” I said, “but trust me, she’s not going to win.”

  “Maybe we should give her a taste of her own medicine.”

  It was an intriguing thought.

  But there wasn’t time to take it any further, because the family was ready, and then a group of coeds crowded in, followed by another, and within minutes the line stretched out the door, and morning rush was in full swing.

  By the time the craziness slowed down, it was well after nine.

  “What can I get for you?” I asked, sliding a fresh batch of muffins into the refrigerated case as another customer straggled in.