Tryst

No. That can’t be right. But every bottle reiterates the same.

DuCane, Tucker J.

DuCane, Tucker J.

DuCane, Tucker J.

Tucker prescribed these pills to Ransom.

Tucker is Ransom’s doctor.

Ransom is Tucker’s patient.

I cover my mouth with a trembling hand, unable to grasp what I’m seeing—what I should have seen all along. It wasn’t a coincidence. None of this was. They knew each other. My husband and my lover, they knew what they were doing.

I walk backward out of the room and scurry to the safety of mine as quickly as I can, and plow right into a hard chest covered in white linen. I’d know the feel of him anywhere. Could identify his masculine, fresh scent blindfolded in a room full of men. Yet, I couldn’t see Tucker for what he truly is. The puppet master. He wasn’t sweet, loving A

He closes the door without saying a word, even though he can clearly see the disbelief etched in my wide, unblinking eyes. He’s perfectly calm like always. Perfect, impassive guise without even a hint of discontent. And that pisses me off.

“You.” It’s the only word that I trust myself with right now. “You. It was you all along. You did this. You wanted this. And in the back of my mind, I knew. I just didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to believe you were this . . . monster. The first night when we met him . . . I remember thinking that you never introduced yourself. You never told him your name. And the way you damn near pushed me into his bed. You wanted me to be with him. Why?”

Tucker sits on the edge of the bed and shakes his head. “No, baby. That was what you wanted. I just facilitated it. You needed something that I couldn’t give you. And I knew he could—he would. So while I may have given you the gun, I never made you pull the trigger. No, my love. You did that all on your own.”

“But he’s your patient, Tucker! He needs help! Not to be manipulated!”

“What makes you think I’m not helping him? You think I couldn’t be helping both of you right now?”

I shake my head in disbelief, refusing to accept what’s happening. Tucker was the mastermind. Tucker used Ransom, told him things about me, told him how to seduce me. And I fell for it. Maybe Tucker wasn’t manipulating Ransom. Maybe he’s Sebastian and they were in on this plan the whole time? To seek out the girl and break her down. Make her fall in love. Then crush her like brittle, paper-thin petals of a preserved rose.

“I knew it . . . I knew it when I heard it,” I stammer, thinking out loud as I try to put the pieces together. “When he sang . . . he called me little bu

Tucker looks at me with remorseful eyes, his first crack of emotion since I exposed his lying ass. “It wasn’t like that, Heidi. You both needed something from each other. You just couldn’t see it yet.”

I look down at the empty, orange bottle straining under my tight grip and throw it at him. “What’s this used to treat? What does it do?”

Tucker looks over the plastic bottle that once housed a prescription for Androcur and shrugs. “A number of uses, one being prostate cancer.”

“Stop bullshitting me, Tucker. Does Ransom have prostate cancer?”

He releases a breath, letting his shoulders sag in defeat. “No.”

“So why did you prescribe it? What is he taking it for?”

I watch him swallow down the last of his lies, before he closes his regret-tinged eyes. “Hypersexuality. Sex addiction.”

Sex addiction? Ransom’s a sex addict?

The first time I saw him drunk and high—it was as if it was a reaction to something. Like he was compensating for something much deeper with booze and pills. He told me he wasn’t a junkie, and I believed him. I wanted to. Now I see he was being honest, which is much more than I can say for my loving husband. I just don’t understand how he could put me in the hands of someone who needs sex like a drug. He was serving Ransom a hefty dose of X on a cocaine-dusted platter.

I look at the man I love, the man I’d built a life with. The man I had once considered having children with because that was what he wanted. We struggled together, fought together, cried together, laughed together. He was a piece of me, and up until this moment, I had believed he was the very best piece. But he was a liar. He was a fraud. And now, I can’t tell if I’m just looking at a stranger. I know absolutely nothing about him at all.

“I have to go,” I say, turning toward the door. “I have to go find Ransom. He could be lying at the bottom of the pool, no thanks to you. Were you trying to kill him? By prescribing all those pills?”

His face contorts in horror, and he inhales sharply as if he’s just taken a blow to the kidney. “No! Of course not. Ransom is a sex addict, but he also suffers from bouts of depression, anxiety, ADHD. Those pills were necessary to his treatment program.”

“And me? Was I necessary to his treatment program?”

Tucker diverts his eyes to the floor, unable to face the evidence of his transgression. He gave another man his wife—the woman he had vowed to love and protect—in some convoluted attempt to help her help his patient.

“Where is he? I’ll go talk to him,” he finally says.

I shake my head in frustration. “Don’t you get it? I don’t know! There’re empty pill bottles and alcohol. And he’s not answering my text messages.”

That certainly gets his attention, and Tucker jumps to his feet, pulling his cell out of his pocket. “We have to find him,” he says, headed for the door.

I put my anger aside and accept his assistance. Two people are better than one, and right now, Ransom needs me more than I need to crucify my husband. But there will be hell to pay later. You can bet on that.

“You check outside,” I instruct, going into boss bitch mode. “Check the pool areas, the bungalows . . . the lagoon. See if anyone has seen him. I’ll search inside and check with the staff. I know there are surveillance cameras. Justice can check for me.”

Tucker nods his head and looks at me solemnly before turning toward the doors. “I never meant to hurt either one of you—you know that. I thought that if you got what you needed, we could have a fresh start, and maybe . . . maybe I could learn to love you the way you needed to be loved. And I thought if Ransom got what he needed in a safe, controlled environment, he could see that he could tame the urges of his body and focus on the needs of his heart. That maybe he could open himself enough to see that he too could find love and happiness and acceptance. I just didn’t bet on him finding all those things with you.”

I stare at the stranger in front of me and feel . . . nothing. I know I love him deep inside, and I know he cares for me. But now I’ve gone to that place where none of that exists. That emotionally barren wasteland where love can no longer grow and thrive under the harsh conditions of his lies and deceit. Maybe one day I’ll be able to forgive him. Maybe we’ll even look back on this and be able to take a deep, cleansing breath, exhaling it all into the wind like ash. But for now, he doesn’t get to matter. He doesn’t get to make me feel sympathetic to him. Not when there’s a man out there who needs me to save him. A man who looked at me like I was his person, like I would be the answer to all the difficult questions of his heart. The same way I had once looked at Tucker.

My husband didn’t expect for Ransom and me to fall in love, but he let it happen. And for that, he’s just as guilty for our transgressions.

“Be careful what you wish for,” I say with an air of finality.

I don’t say goodbye as I turn and walk away. But I should.

Chapter Thirty