Irrefutable (The Apprehensive Duet Book 2) (8 page)

She nods then quickly averts her eyes to the coffee in her hands.

“So you’re saying that if you don’t go through with this wedding, your dad plans to set you up and call in a tip to get you thrown in prison?”

She doesn’t answer verbally but gives me a tiny nod confirming the fact her dad is a bigger motherfucker than I ever gave him credit for.

It’s hard to hold on to my anger with her while she’s going through this awful shit. Looking at her right now is heartbreaking.

No wonder she’s a fucking zombie. I don’t know how she’s been walking around keeping something so big between just her and Jordan. But whatever they’ve been doing to deal with this whole situation isn’t helping her. She’s drowning, barely keeping her head up.

Just looking at her, it’s easy to tell how awful it has been for her to find herself here. The Quinn I know wouldn’t ever back down from a fight, even if it’s with her father. She’s battled against him for so long. Not having a leg to stand on has got to be killing her.

Does she really think her father will do it? Why aren’t she and Jordan fighting this?

“What does your lawyer say?” I ask the obvious. “What are your options?”

She peers up at me from under her still wet lashes and answers me in a soft, broken voice. “I don’t have a lawyer.”

“What?” I ask incredulously. “Why the hell not? Why don’t you and Jordan have the best attorney you can find on this? You can’t let your father get away with this.”

The rage boiling inside me is getting close to the point of eruption. I want to find Jordan, rip his arms from their sockets and beat him with them. “What kind of man allows a woman to be bullied into marrying him and does nothing to stop it? How can anyone call himself a man knowing that he’s marrying someone basically against their will?”

I thought she was in good hands with Jordan. I thought he truly cared about her, otherwise I’d have stepped in earlier. No matter what she’s done to me, I’ll never allow her to spend her life with someone who doesn’t give two shits about her.

“Jordan doesn’t know.”

Her confession breaks through my murderous thoughts but does nothing to curb the rage I’m feeling. “What do you mean he doesn’t know? You told me the morning you were supposed to marry him that you told him all about your dad.”

“I did. I just left out the part about him threatening an investigation.”

“You left that part out? Why the hell would you do that?”

“He didn’t need to be involved in that, and plus, he could’ve decided to not go through with it.” Her voice goes from soft to frantic as she begins to babble. “My father would’ve fucked me over either way. At least this way I could buy some time until we got through the merger, and I could force my dad out.” Her eyes have a pleading look in them. Almost as if she needs me to understand.

“I get where you were going with this, I do. Getting married would buy you some time, but then what? What happens if things don’t go according to plan? You can’t keep this from him. He needs to understand what he’s getting himself into.” No matter my feelings on the man or the subject, nobody deserves to be lied to like this. “He should also know the only reason you’re doing this is to stay out of jail.”

She shakes her head disagreeing. “His father just died. How the hell am I supposed to tell him this?”

“You should’ve told him from the beginning, Quinn. Why didn’t you?” I can’t seem to wrap my head around her line of thinking. How was she going to handle something like this on her own? For such a smart woman, she really made a stupid decision.

“I wasn’t thinking, okay? I thought I could handle this on my own and keep everyone out of it so they didn’t become targets too. I have no idea why he’s doing this. I was scared. I
am
fucking scared.” Her voice gets shaky and her hands thread through her hair in frustration but her face screams terror. “Prison, Alex. He’s threatening to have me sent to prison!”

Her fear and defeat are evident in every part of her. Her expressions, her body language, the tone of her voice. For fuck’s sake, how has Jordan missed all of this? “All right, Quinn. Take a deep breath. We can figure out something, but first you need to talk to Jordan. You can’t keep hiding this from him.”

“I never saw this coming. Not in a million years. Sure, we don’t get along but I never thought my father actually hated me.” The small amount of composure Quinn was using to keep herself together is gone. Her whole body shakes as the sobs leave her throat, and when she looks up at me with her beautiful eyes so full of sadness, I’d give anything to make her life okay again. I’d take on the pain of the world if it meant taking hers away so I didn’t have to see her like this. “How can a parent just outright hate their child? How can my mother just go along with this?”

I wish I had an answer for her and there was something I could tell her to help her make sense of this mess, but I’ve never seen a family tear each other apart like this. “I don’t know.”

“My childhood was pretty good,” she says, a hitch in her voice. “My parents actually acted like parents for most of it. When did they go from being my parents to my enemies? Why? If anyone has the right to hate anyone in this situation, it’s me. They shattered all my hopes and dreams at the ripe age of fifteen. Neither ever mentioned it again after that night. My world was permanently altered that day, and my parents didn’t even care.”

God, these people have done such a number on her. I’m afraid they’ve finally broken her. She needs to snap out of this before this is the person she becomes permanently. “Quinn, you need to fix this. Fuck your dad and what he’s trying to do. Don’t let him do this to you. Don’t let him win. You’re better than backing down and crying in the corner.”

“There’s no way out of this that ends well for me,” she says drained and out of hope. “My father’s already booked a whole new wedding venue. I was given the reminder yesterday that my job, hell, my whole dame life, still isn’t safe.”

“That’s why you need a lawyer, Quinn. You need to figure out a way to get ahead of this. You can’t do that by yourself,” I tell her before I’ve given myself time to think about the fact that she may want to marry Jordan. She obviously cares deeply for him. It shows in everything she does. Maybe marrying Jordan isn’t what’s bothering her. She could just be stressed, because even if she does marry Jordan, her father is still very crazy. Maybe she’s just scared what he’ll try to do next. There always seems like a “next” with that man. “Is getting married what scares you? Or is it just your father you’re afraid of? Do you want to marry Jordan?”

She stares down into her lap for what feels like forever. Her hands wringing together. Legs bouncing up and down with apprehension. I can feel the emotions raging inside her. Admitting feelings has never been Quinn’s thing. She keeps herself very guarded. Always needing to be stronger than everyone else. She does that by remaining detached. And keeping her feelings to herself is part of that. She doesn’t have to worry about being hurt because not many ever get close enough to have that power.

“Both of them scare me,” she finally admits. “I love Jordan but not like that. It’s not a romantic type of love. I don’t want to be in a marriage without love and romance and passion. I’ve seen those kinds of love-filled marriages. I believe in them now. If I was ever going to get married, I want it to be for that. Not because my father is making me. My father is completely crazy. If I don’t agree to this, who knows what he’ll do. Where does it end for me?”

She’s right—she gets hurt either way. It’s like picking your own poison. The lesser of two evils. But there has to be another option for her. “That’s why you need to figure out a plan C. Another way where maybe everyone can walk away happier. Jordan can help you with that. Besides, he needs to know everything that’s going on because it affects his life too.”

“But I don’t know how to tell him,” she sighs and leans back into the couch. “His whole world has been rocked. His family is a lot like Tanner’s. They were close as hell. Imagine Mr. Garrison dying. How would you give Tanner more bad news after that? His parents think this relationship is real. He wanted his dad to believe he found his new family. How do I tell his mom I’m a lying bitch just after she buried her husband?”

“I understand your dilemma. I do. But it doesn’t change reality, Quinn. You need to take this one step at a time and right now you need to worry about step one. Tell Jordan the truth. You’re not a coward. You’re strong. You can do this. At best, you will feel better having been completely honest.” I try to reassure her. She can’t continue on like this. I have no idea how this will play out for her but at the very least she can say that she did the right thing by ‘fessing up to what’s really going on.

I FEEL LIKE I’m going to puke! I’ve been going over everything I want to say to Jordan in my head for the last two days. Alex is right. There’s no way I can keep lying to him any longer. It’s not fair to him, and I’m in way over my head.

Jordan has been good to me. Sure, I thought he was a dick at first, but that had more to do with me and my father than it did him. Even when I tried to be a bitch to him, he was always a decent guy. When I finally dialed it down a bit and saw him as a person, I liked the person he was. He’s been a great friend to me and has held my hand through one of the toughest things I’ve had to deal with.

How to tell him the whole truth is the part I’m struggling with. It means I admit I’ve been lying to him. Okay, not necessarily lying. Jordan knows my motives for conceding to my father just not all of them. I haven’t technically lied, just withheld important possibly life-altering parts.

Jordan could very well tell me to go fuck myself. I wouldn’t really blame him. Why would he want to be tied to me knowing what a loose cannon my dad is. How many times will he hold something over me? How bad will things get? What happens the next time he wants something from me? I don’t know anyone who would willingly sign up for this shit. I can only hope he doesn’t.

The sound of a key pushing into the lock of the front door fills the quiet of the apartment. I’ve been sitting at the island in Jordan’s—well, our—kitchen waiting for his arrival home. I think I’ve counted every tile on the backsplash trying to occupy my mind for the last hour and a half. I don’t want to have this conversation with him, so to keep myself from thinking about it, I counted tiles. Five hundred and twelve green. Eight hundred and seven black ones and seven hundred sixty white ones. I never realized how just the little bit of green brightened up the white and black room. Maybe because the green is very similar to the gorgeous shade of Alex’s eyes.

“Hey, babe.” Jordan smiles as he approaches. “Why are you sitting here in the dark?”

“Just been doing some thinking.”

My palms begin to sweat knowing that the time has come. The wine glass in my hand becomes slippery, so I set it down to minimize the probability of me dropping it. The nausea I’ve been battling all day rears its ugly head again, only stronger. My heart pounds in my chest. I can’t recall a time I’ve been more frightened. This is what I get for withholding in the first place.

“You don’t look too good. Is everything okay?” he asks, setting his briefcase down on the beautiful stone countertop. He stands across from me, giving me his undivided attention. It doesn’t help. It just makes me more unsettled.

Taking a deep breath, I decide to go with just ripping the Band-Aid off. Bad news is bad news. There’s no way to sugarcoat this. I force myself to look him in the eye as I speak. “I don’t think this wedding is a good idea anymore.”

Jordan’s face is all shock. His mouth hangs open and his eyes are as big as saucers. “What?”

Fuck! This is turning out to be a million times harder than I thought. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and I just don’t think this is the best way to handle things. We shouldn’t be getting married because someone like my father is forcing us to.”

Jordan goes from shocked to negotiator in a nanosecond. “You’re just nervous, babe. I know I haven’t been around a lot these last few weeks, but it’s only temporary. We’re starting our lives together. We’re basically already married anyway. We live together, we’re going to be working together. You’ve got nothing to worry about. We’re great together.”