White lies

He was hurting her; his grip would leave bruises on her arm. She pulled at it uselessly, gasping as he only tightened his fingers. "I was afraid to!"

"Afraid of what?"

"I thought Frank would send me away if he knew I’d discovered you weren’t Steve! Lucas, please, you’re hurting me!" At last she could say his name, even though it was in pain, and her heart savored the sound.

His, grip eased, but he caught her other arm, too, and held her firmly. "So Frank didn’t hire you to say I was Steve Crossfield?"

"N-no," she stuttered. "I believed you were, at first."

"What changed your mind?"

"Your eyes. When I saw your eyes, I knew."

The memory of that was crystal clear. When the doctor had cut the bandages away from his eyes and he’d looked at Jay for the first time, she had gone as white as she was now. That was odd, because he knew Sabin would never have overlooked a detail as basic as the color of his eyes.

"Your husband didn’t have brown eyes?"

"Ex-husband," she whispered. "Yes, he had brown eyes, but his were dark brown. Yours are yellowish brown."

So his eyes were a different shade of brown than her husband’s had been; it was almost laughable that Sabin’s carefully constructed scam could have fallen apart over something as small as that. But she hadn’t told them that they had the wrong man, which would have been the reasonable thing to do. She hadn’t even told him, not then and not during the weeks when they’d been up here alone. Angry frustration made his voice as rough as gravel. "Why didn’t you tell me? Didn’t you think I’d be a little interested in who I really am?"

"I couldn’t take the chance. I was afraid–" she began, pleading for understanding.

"Yeah, that’s right, you were afraid the gravy train would end. Frank was paying you to stay with me, wasn’t he? You were with me every day, so there was no way you could hold down a job."

"No! It isn’t like that–"

"Then what is it like? Are you independently wealthy?"

"Lucas, please. No, I’m not wealthy–"

"Then how did you live during the months I was in the hospital?"

"Frank picked up the tab," she said in raw frustration. "Would you please listen to me?"

"I’m listening, honey. You just told me that Frank paid you to stay with me."

"He made it possible for me to stay with you! I’d lost my job–" Too late, she heard the words and knew how he would take them.

His eyes were yellow slits, his mouth a grim line of rage. "So you jumped at the chance for a cushy job. All you had to do was sit beside me every day and anything you wanted was given to you, while Frank paid your bills. This explains why you wouldn’t marry me, doesn’t it? You were happy to accept your ‘salary,’ but marrying a stranger was a little bit too much, wasn’t it? Not to mention the fact that the marriage wouldn’t have been legal. You saved yourself some sticky trouble by dragging up all those excuses."

"They weren’t excuses. For all I knew you could have had someone who cared for you–"

"I do!" he yelled, his neck cording. "My family! They think I’m dead!"

Jay groped for control, managing to steady her voice. "I couldn’t marry you until you’d gotten your memory back and knew for certain you wanted to marry me. I couldn’t take advantage of you like that."

"That’s a convenient scruple. It actually makes you look noble, doesn’t it? Too bad. If you wanted the gravy train to keep running, you should have married me while you had the chance and just kept pretending I was Crossfield. Then, when I got my memory back, you could have been the poor victim and maybe I would have stayed with you out of guilt."

She shrank away from him, her eyes going blank. Somehow, during the long months she had spent with him, she had come to believe he loved her, though he had never said the words. He’d been so possessive, so tender and passionate. But now his memory had returned, and he couldn’t have made it plainer that his absorption with her had ended. He didn’t need her any longer, and he certainly wasn’t going to renew his offer of marriage. It was over, and they weren’t even going to part friends. The worst had happened; she had lied to him, kept his identity from him, and he would never forgive her for it. He thought she had done it just because the government had been willing to support her for as long as the charade had lasted.

He released her suddenly, as if he couldn’t stand to touch her any longer, and she staggered back. Catching her balance, she turned toward the ladder. "Open the door," she said dully.

He clenched his fists, not ready to break off the argument. He didn’t have all the answers he wanted, not by a long shot. But her movement recalled the need for urgency; he had to get her out of there before Piggot found them. The last thing he wanted was for Jay to be caught in the middle of a firefight.

"I’ll go first," he said, and shouldered past her. He signaled the door open and climbed the ladder, the pistol ready in his hand. As soon as his head was above ground he looked cautiously in all directions, then climbed out and knelt on one knee by the hole to help Jay out. "All right, come on."

She didn’t look at him as she crawled out, nor did she accept the hand he extended. He closed the trapdoor, then replaced the bale of hay over it. She started to just walk out of the shed, but he grabbed her and held her back. "Watch it!" he said in a furious whisper. "We go back the same way we came. Stay in the shadows." He led the way, and Jay followed him without a word.

He still wouldn’t allow a light on in the cabin, so Jay stumbled to the bedroom and gathered a few clothes in the dark. He came into the bedroom as she took off his shirt to put on her own clothes, and after a moment of frozen embarrassment, she awkwardly turned her back while she struggled with her bra. Her hands were clumsy, and in the dark she couldn’t manage to straighten the straps. Despairing of getting it on, she finally dropped it on the bed and simply pulled her sweater over her head.