Chapter 13

The explanation should have soothed her, but it didn't. It was the same lie, just a different reason. The foundation of their case was honesty, and he had just cracked it. Right in front of her.

"You told me you were in Berlin," she said again, her voice gaining a little strength. "When we were talking. On the ghost phone."

His jaw tightened. "It was a white lie, Anna. A necessary one. I needed to tell you I was coming home. I couldn't exactly say, 'Hey, cancel your plans, I'm flying back a day early so I can fuck you in my secret apartment before I go have a Scotch with your father.'"

His crudeness was a weapon, designed to shock her out of her anger. It worked, but only for a second.

"So you lie to him," she said, standing up, her heart starting to hammer against her ribs. "And you lie to me. Which one is the real lie, Desmond?"

"Neither," he snapped, his control finally fracturing. "They're both necessary! This whole life is a lie we are living to protect the one truth we have!"

"So where does it end?" She shot back, her own anger rising to meet his. "Do I lie to Chloe when she asks why I'm suddenly so busy? Do you lie to your board when you're skipping a meeting to be with me? Do we lie to our children someday when they ask how we met?"

The mention of children, so far in the future and yet so integral to the world they were building, hung in the air between them, raw and devastating.

"Don't," he warned, his voice low. "Don't go there."

"Why not?" She challenged, stepping closer. "Isn't that the point of all this? The 'building the case'? So we can have a real life? A family? Or is this just… a better class of secret? A penthouse instead of a boathouse?"

The question hit its mark. He flinched as if she'd slapped him. "You know it's more than that."

"Do I?" She asked, her voice trembling. "Or am I just the latest, most exciting mistake? The one you can't quite give up?"

"That's not fair."

"Fair?" She let out a harsh, broken laugh. "You want to talk about fair? I was in love with a ghost for years, Desmond. A phantom I could see but never touch. And now I have you, and I feel like I'm losing you to a million other people. 

To your business trips, to your ex-wife, to my own father. I don't even know who I'm angry at."

"Then be angry at me," he said, closing the last bit of distance between them. He grabbed her arms, not gently, but with a desperate, pleading force. "Yell at me. 

Scream at me. Hit me if you want to. But don't you dare, for one second, think that this," he said, gesturing around the room, "is a mistake. Or that you are."

His eyes were burning, a brilliant, furious blue. He wasn't just angry; he was terrified. She saw it then, the raw, exposed nerve beneath the polished armor of the CEO. He was as trapped in this as she was.

The anger drained out of her as quickly as it had come, leaving behind a hollow, aching sadness. "I just want one day," she whispered, a tear finally escaping and tracing a path down her cheek.

 "One twenty-four-hour period where I don't have to lie. Where I can hold your hand in the street. Where I can tell my father that the man who taught me how to skip stones is the same man I'm in love with."

He didn't answer. He just leaned down and kissed her, and it was a kiss that tasted of salt and desperation. It wasn't a kiss of passion, but of penitence. A promise and a plea.

When he pulled away, he rested his forehead against hers. "I know," he whispered, his voice rough with emotion. "God, Anna, I know