Tell Me No Lies (Bright Lights, Dark Secrets Collection Book 4)

  Tell Me No Lies

  The Bright Lights, Dark Secrets Collection

  Nolon King

  Copyright © 2020 by Sterling & Stone

  All rights reserved.

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  What to Read Next…

  A Quick Favor …

  Want More?

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Sunday Night …

  NATALIE

  The last time I’d seen Olivia, our sorority sisters were holding her back as she sobbed and screamed that I was a treacherous whore who’d slept with her soulmate.

  Not exactly true. Ryan had made his choice, and he chose me. He married me. In spite of the fact that his friends, his family, and even his graduate advisor suggested that he make up with the much prettier and much better-connected Olivia. He gave up a lifetime of opportunity to be with me instead.

  Can you blame me for believing that he was my soulmate?

  After two kids and a mortgage, our marriage felt less like a fairy tale and more like a cautionary tale. But no way was I admitting that to Olivia.

  Ryan didn’t know that she’d contacted me yesterday, asking if we could get together for drinks, like we were old friends who’d lost touch and she could hardly wait to catch up with me. No recriminations, no insinuations, no explanation for why she’d suddenly reached out now.

  I said yes, because wouldn’t you? Or am I the only one whose curiosity outweighs my common sense?

  It had been twelve years, for Christ’s sake. And before Ryan, Olivia had dated a different guy every day of the week. I figured it had probably taken a week for her to stop missing him, and eleven years, eleven months, and three weeks to get over the fact that she’d come in second for once in her life.

  Maybe she wanted to make sure I knew she’d moved on.

  Maybe she wanted to find out how it had all worked out, to reassure herself that she’d gotten off lucky, that she was better off without Ryan.

  Maybe she wanted to know if my life was as boring as my Livelyfe profile suggested, or to rub it in my face that she was successful enough to wear designer everything.

  Or maybe she wanted to make amends. She’d been a heavy drinker in college, and Daddy’s money could buy an awful lot of rehab.

  As I watched her slip between tables, I couldn’t help think that she belonged here at Drink, a swanky LA bar where I never would fit in, even if I ditched the soccer mom chic, lost my two-pregnancy pudge, and upgraded my Smart Snips haircut.

  Olivia looked as perfect as the last time I’d seen her – nipped and tucked in all the right places, from her head to her Louboutin-wrapped toes.

  “Natalie.” She smiled her pageant smile as she sat down opposite me. “You look exactly like your Livelyfe picture.”

  You look like a million bucks, or whatever it costs to keep a plastic surgeon on retainer, I didn’t say as I smiled back. “I was so surprised to hear from you.”

  A waitress approached our table, and Olivia ordered without asking me: two vodka sodas, no fruit – our usual, back in the day. I guess since she hadn’t changed, she was assuming that I hadn’t either.

  Once we were alone again, she pulled a manila envelope out of her Prada purse and laid it on the table between us.

  This time, it wasn’t the pageant smile she flashed. This was her time for your punishment, Pledge smile.

  Shit.

  I ignored the envelope. “How’ve you been?”

  She ignored my attempt to put us back on equal terms. “I thought about sending them to you on LiveLyfe, but that felt too … impersonal.”

  Meaning, she wanted to see my face when I got my first glimpse of whatever was in that envelope.

  The waitress brought our drinks. I took a sip to delay the inevitable.

  “Just rip off the Band-Aid,” Olivia said. “Every second you spend not opening it only makes this harder.”

  “You could just tell me, you know.”

  “You’re right. I could.”

  But she wouldn’t, because she’d always been the alpha female whose periods the rest of us synched up with.

  I took another sip of the vodka soda and forced myself to swallow. I was sure I’d felt this nauseous before, but I couldn’t remember when. I’d been imagining forgiveness, or an apology, or maybe even a scene.

  Who waits twelve years for revenge? Besides the Count of Monte Cristo, which we both read in the same Survey of the Modern Novel course, sophomore year.

  And which I was sure she wasn’t thinking about right now because she didn’t have a nerdy bone in her body. Unlike me, who’d only made it into Yardley by studying my ass off hard enough to land a full scholarship.

  No point in procrastinating. Whatever was in that envelope, there wasn’t enough vodka soda in the world to make it okay.

  I ripped it open and spilled a small stack of photos onto the table. Of Ryan, with other women.

  Eating in fancy restaurants, the kind he no longer had the time or inclination to take me to.

  Sneaking into swanky hotels, like we hadn’t done since before the kids.

  Kissing in public, the way he used to kiss me.

  Olivia beamed. That bitch.

  You’re probably thinking I deserved it. Maybe I did. Should I hate him or myself? Both maybe?

  “I know this must be a shock—” Olivia clearly didn’t see that as a down side.

  I cleared my throat and tapped on the woman in the photograph closest to me, because no way was I giving her the satisfaction of seeing me fall apart. “Is this the girl from that show, Adulting?”

  She nodded. “Jess Lindley.”

  While I’d been wiping the kids’ noses and helping them with their homework, Ryan had been fucking a starlet. Perfect.

  I forced myself to keep a neutral expression as I flipped through the pictures. Blonde, redhead, brunette. These women had nothing in common except they were all drop-dead gorgeous, in a way that I’d never been.

  Fuck you, Ryan.

  Olivia took a long and lingering sip of her drink, then licked her lips before setting it down.

  “You know what they say,” she said, without an ounce of sy
mpathy in her voice. “Once a cheater, always a cheater.”

  What was the point in arguing?

  “Okay, you win.”

  “Of course I do.” She took another sip of her drink and smiled like it was ambrosia. “But what I want to know is, what are you going to do about it?”

  What was I going to do about it?

  Fuck me, what could I do about it? “Nothing.”

  She raised her perfectly threaded eyebrows. “You can’t be serious.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Leave him, for a start.”

  “I can’t.” She opened her mouth to say some other snotty, entitled thing, but I interrupted. “I can’t afford to leave. I don’t have a rich daddy. I have no job and two kids.”

  She looked at me like she was seriously disappointed with who I’d turned out to be.

  That made two of us.

  I downed the rest of my drink, then signaled for the waitress. “Margarita, don’t be stingy with the tequila.”

  Olivia held up two fingers. I guess she was staying.

  “You know he’s cheating and you’re staying with him anyway?”

  “Jesus, I found out two seconds ago. I don’t have a plan for this.”

  I should’ve, though.

  I should’ve known that if Ryan had cheated with me, he’d cheat on me.

  I should’ve known that if rich, beautiful Olivia couldn’t hold his interest, I wouldn’t be able to either.

  I should’ve known when he stopped having sex with me and started working late.

  That motherfucker.

  “You can’t let him get away with it,” Olivia said.

  Of course I couldn’t. But … “Why do you care?”

  “I’m here because know what it’s like.”

  Yeah, right. “You came here to gloat.”

  The margaritas arrived, and I gulped half of mine.

  “If you think about it, you already knew.” Olivia tapped the pile of photos that showed my husband had been banging six different women behind my back.

  “I did, even though it took me a while to put my finger on it.”

  That uneasy feeling when he was working late, the artificial buoyancy when he came home after being out all night, the way he deflected when I inquired about work.

  Yeah, I knew, goddammit.

  But it was easier to fight about money. He was always talking about the big bonuses that would be coming his way — BIG! he always said, spreading his hands to show me — but then he’d get mad at me for indulging in a little bit of retail therapy. He’d tell me he was about to land a gig that would bring in 30,000 dollars then he’d yell at me for spending 300 dollars on new shoes for the kids.

  Last night, I grabbed his laptop while he was in the shower and logged into his bank account.

  And we are fucked.

  He’s been making payments to credit cards I didn’t even know we had. And payments on loans he never told me he’d taken out — high-interest loans from the kind of companies that cater to people with terrible credit. All of them taken out in both our names. In the eyes of the law, I was just as responsible for paying it off as he was.

  I checked our retirement account. He closed it a year ago.

  Our mortgage company confirmed the worst of my fears — not only did my husband take out a second mortgage on our house, we couldn’t even pay them off by selling it because the market had dropped off shortly after the second was signed. We owed more than our house was worth.

  It wasn’t even an option to clean out our accounts and move out. Our checking account had less than a grand in it, just enough to get us through with groceries and miscellaneous expenses until the end of the month. The 15,000 from the job he’d just finished hadn’t been deposited yet.

  As long as he didn’t get suspicious and change his password, I could wait until that cleared and withdraw it all. But then what? As soon as he started missing payment on all that debt, the bill collectors would be after me too. And even if they only held me responsible for half of it — which of course, they wouldn’t — 15,000 dollars plus whatever I could make at an entry-level job wouldn’t even come close to getting me free.

  I stuffed the photos back into the envelope and handed it back to Olivia. Ryan was an asshole, but I was stuck with him for now.

  None of that was Olivia’s business.

  “Nat, you can’t let him get away with this.”

  “Why do you care?”

  She hesitated, then drained her margarita glass and gestured at the waitress to bring us another round.

  “You taught me some things.”

  This ought to be good. “What things?”

  “Look.” She leaned forward, lacing her fingers under her chin. “I can help you.”

  Seriously? “You’ve helped way too much already, thank you very much.”

  “You need money, right?”

  “Fuck you.” Where was the waitress with that new round of margaritas?

  “As far as I can tell, you haven’t had a job since Alec was born.”

  “You’ve been spying on me?”

  “If I’m going to hire a private investigator, I want her to be thorough.”

  Je-sus. “We are done.”

  I tried to stand, but the floor tilted and I tilted with it. Olivia grabbed my wrist, which kept me from falling on my ass, but also humiliated me. I straightened and yanked it back, then flopped back into my chair.

  I usually have a glass of white wine with dinner. I’m a lightweight when it comes to vodka and tequila and finding out my husband is a cheating asshole, all in the span of twenty minutes.

  The waitress finally replaced our empty glasses with full ones. I licked the salt from the rim of mine, but that just made me want to take another sip.

  Ryan was watching the kids, so what the hell? Let him wait up and wonder, for a change.

  Olivia nursed her own drink as she watched me slurp mine.

  I didn’t care what she thought of me.

  I didn’t care if she stayed or left.

  I didn’t care about anything right now, and it felt good.

  Except that Olivia had to go and open her mouth again.

  “If you won’t accept help for yourself, do it for your children.”

  “Fuck. You.”

  But now I was thinking about Lena and Alec. I couldn’t let them suffer because their father was a liar who’d spent all our money without telling me. What was I going to do? I’d spent the last twelve years being a stay-at-home mom who’d never used her degree. My last job had been working the grill at Sloppy’s in college, to make money for the little things my scholarship didn’t cover. And I was pretty sure I’d forgotten everything I knew about that job.

  I’d intended to start a side business after we married, something that I could build slowly while Lena and Alec were small, and scale up once they didn’t need me so much. But Ryan argued that it didn’t make sense to deprive them of a full-time mom when his career was going so well.

  Mo-ther-fuck-er.

  How was I going to pay private school tuition — by going back to flipping burgers?

  I hadn’t just ruined my life, I’d ruined my kids’ lives too.

  Swallowing my pride, I asked, “What do you mean, you can help me?”

  “I can hook you up with a great opportuni—”

  “Oh my god, was this all a trick to get me into some kind of pyramid scheme? What is it, vitamins? Makeup? Superfood smoothies?”

  Olivia laughed.

  Then I laughed.

  Because it was fucking ridiculous, no matter what she was trying to do.

  By the time I managed to breathe again, my face was streaked with tears and the muscles in my stomach ached. But I felt better.

  Olivia wiped her own eyes and started her sales pitch again. “I know a way that you can make enough money to leave your husband, no pyramid scheme, no selling at all, just an honest night’s work.”

  “A night shift job?” T
hat was actually a good idea, I could sleep while the kids were at school and still be there for them in the mornings and at dinnertime. “But I don’t have any employable skills.”

  “Trust me, anything you don’t already know, you’ll learn on the job.”

  “What is the job?”

  “You’d be an escort. The expensive kind.”

  “You couldn’t pay me enough.”

  Olivia quoted me a number that would easily allow me to support myself and the kids for a week.

  “That’s for one night,” she added.

  “Shut the fucking door,” I slurred.

  Olivia giggled. “Front door.”

  “What?”

  I reached for my fourth — or fifth? — margarita, but she moved it before my hand got there. Everything was moving in slow motion, including my brain.

  “Shut the front door,” she said. “Or shut the fuck up.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Money. Lots of it. If you pass the audition.”

  I shook my head, trying to think.

  I was screwed because Ryan had spent all our money and cheated on me. I could leave him only if I was willing to make money by cheating on him.

  I wouldn’t have to do it long, just enough to pay the bills until I could start that business I’d been dreaming about before the kids came along. A few months, maybe half a year at most. I could work for a week to earn enough for the month, then I’d have plenty of time to rebuild our lives before I had to do it again.

  It made so much sense when I thought about it that way.

  But I was worried it might be a trap. Olivia was mad at me for sleeping with Ryan. She had told me about his other women because she’d wanted to hurt me.