Raven Lane by Amber Cowie

Author:Amber Cowie [Cowie, Amber]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781542091206
Published: 2019-11-11T16:00:00+00:00

It took close to an hour for the police administrators to process Benedict’s bail and lead him into the waiting room to meet her. Once again, she had to work hard not to recoil at his scent of panic and unwashed clothes as she stepped forward to embrace him. He refused to raise his arms, so she dropped hers in turn. They stared at each other in the dirty room.

“I’m so sorry. I can explain, but not here.”

He didn’t meet her eyes, so she turned toward the door that led outside. They walked to their car in the parking lot in silence. Esme ran through her apology in her head, beginning to speak the moment Benedict slammed the passenger-side door.

“Torn and I did sleep together,” she said.

Benedict looked at her with accusing, self-righteous eyes, and she steeled herself against the unfamiliar, unfair realization that she was the one who needed to apologize. Benedict’s eye had wandered too many times to count. He had flirted with Kitty blatantly in front of her for years. But, in his mind, she had crossed a line he had never dared to step over: an affair made public, a betrayal that endangered every part of their life. Underneath the anger is pain, she thought. It made her next words come more easily. “I’m sorry.”

“How many times?” he asked, turning his head to stare at the pitted concrete building instead of her.

Esme gripped the steering wheel, then released. “More than once.”

“How many times, Esme? Just answer the question.”

Esme shrugged helplessly. “I’m not sure. It went on for a few months.”

Benedict’s face sharpened with anger.

“How many men before him?”

Esme bristled. Benedict was lashing out. He couldn’t possibly believe she had ever done this before. “None. None, I swear. Torn was the only one.”

“When did it start?”

“The night of Kitty’s key party,” she said, scanning his face closely for a reaction. His mouth dropped open slightly before he buried his face in his hands.

“That stupid party.”

“We all behaved badly that night,” she said. He glared at her, as if his behavior were suddenly beyond reproach. “It didn’t mean anything,”

Benedict snorted. “The police certainly think so. So does everyone else in the world.” He pulled a plastic bag from his pocket. Inside were his wallet, keys, and phone, all the trappings of a modern life that had been sealed away from him upon his temporary imprisonment. His finger scrolled across the screen before he stopped to read something.

“They’ve found out who we used to be,” he said, shaking his head dolefully, but Esme knew him too well not to see that the corners of his mouth turned up slightly at the sight of himself as a young man. She remembered how much Benedict had loved to be on her arm when the cameras were flashing.

He let the phone drop, then rubbed his hand against the short blond hairs that had grown on his face overnight. In the bleak light, Esme could see some had faded to gray. Another betrayal for a man who still considered himself young.

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