Free Just for You by Rosalind James Page A

that was what happened when you led with your heart instead of your head.
    She went to work the next morning as usual, put what she’d heard, what she knew, what she’d lost into the back of her mind, because her kids needed her. But by the time she walked home at four, the effort it had taken not to fall apart all day had taken its toll, feet felt leaden, and the thought of seeing Hemi, of telling him what she knew, saying what she knew she had to say, made her heart hurt with a pain so strong, she had all she could do not to clutch at her chest with it. And that made her even angrier. At him, and at herself.
    She considered getting made up for him, but what was the point? She changed into a sundress, because it was warm, left her hair in its knot, her feet bare. And when he knocked on the door, she opened it, and the anger and sorrow and trepidation over what was coming just about knocked her down.
    The broad smile that met her turned cautious as he read her expression. “Something wrong?” he hazarded. “Something happen? Your family?”
    “Something’s wrong,” she said, stepping back to let him come inside, wishing that he weren’t so big, that he weren’t so strong, that he didn’t look so good to her, that she didn’t wish she could fling herself into his arms and have none of this be true. She didn’t want to have this conversation, she wanted it to be the way she’d dreamed it would be, and yet she wanted to tell him, to fling the words at him like spears. She wanted to wound him the way he’d wounded her. “But it’s not my family,” she told him. “You thought I wouldn’t know. Do you think because I don’t know, it’s all right? It’s not all right. It’s. Not. All.
Right.”
    “What’s not?” he asked, standing still, barely inside her doorway and looking nothing but confused. “What’s not all right? What the hell are you talking about?”
    “That you’ve been telling me all this, about how you feel about me, being so special, all that, then going off and shagging somebody else. Whoever you can find. Whoever’s there,” she spat, heedless of the tears in her eyes. “Just like before. Just like always. Youtold me you’ve changed, and you haven’t. How stupid do you think I am? How bloody stupid?”
    “Right now,” he said, and his face was grim, set, nothing like the cheerful, charming Hemi she’d known, “I think you’re pretty stupid. Because you’re talking rubbish. I haven’t been shagging anybody, and I’d like to know why you think I have.”
    “Nobody you thought I’d find out about. You didn’t know that one of the girls at that party last night was Ana’s cousin’s friend, did you? You didn’t know I’d hear. You thought I would never know, and that made it all right?”
    “Whose
friend? What?”
    “My cousin. Ana. Her cousin Joann has a friend, and the friend was there, one of those girls at that party with you. And she told Joann about those girls in that bedroom with you. And what I want to know,” Reka said, not able to help the anguish in her voice, “is why? Why tell me you cared? Why make me believe, if you didn’t mean it? Why hurt me like this?” She was crying now, and she was raging, and she couldn’t help any of it. “Why, Hemi? Why?”

H emi stared at her, struggling for words.
What?
How?
    “Why?” He finally managed to echo her question. “I could ask you why, too. Why would you think that could even be true? And how am I meant to defend myself against something like that? Some…story?”
    “I don’t know,” she said, the tears gone, the sarcasm all but dripping off her tongue. “Maybe you could start by telling me you didn’t do it. Just as, you know. A suggestion.”
    “All right. I didn’t do it. Satisfied?”
    Her chin went straight up at that. “No. I’m not. So Joann’s friend just made it up, then? She’s not like that, not from what Joann says.”
    He blew out a frustrated breath. “Joann says. Somebody who