Avoiding Responsibility (Avoiding #2)(63)
Author: K.A. Linde

Lexi’s eyes dropped to the floor. "I need to talk to you."

"Are you breaking up with me?" he whispered into the room. Those words alone sounded like heartbreak coming out of his mouth. It was almost too much for Lexi to bear to hear.

"No," she said quickly. "Well I don’t know."

"What do you mean you don’t know?" he asked sitting down heavily on the corner of his desk. "Tell me what’s wrong. How could you not know something like that?"

"It…it all depends on how you answer my next question," she whispered letting her eyes drag upwards and meet his very confused green-gold eyes.

"I’ll answer anything," he said desperately.

Lexi took a deep breath to calm her hammering heart. "What is your relationship with Parker?"

"What?" he asked standing at the mention of Parker’s name.

"You heard me," Lexi whispered.

"Parker?" he asked. Lexi nodded. "We’ve already had this discussion Lexi. I told you over spring break what my relationship is with Parker."

"Let me rephrase. What was your relationship with Parker?" she asked directing his attention to the past tense.

Ramsey ran his hand back through his hair and a small blush crept up onto his cheeks. "What are you driving at Lexi?"

"Just the truth. That’s all I want," she told him resting her hands against the chair in front of her to steady herself.

"The truth?" he asked hesitantly. "Well we slept together. I told you that, but there’s nothing going on between us now. I promise."

Lexi hung her head. "I believe you. I don’t think anything is going on now."

"Well then what’s the problem?" he asked moving towards her and grabbing her hands from the top of the chair. "I’m not cheating on you Lexi, if that’s what you think."

"I didn’t accuse you of cheating me," she said angrily pulling her hands from his.

"Alright," he said miffed. "What are you accusing me of?" He threw his hands up in the air and walked back to his desk.

"Isn’t it quite obvious?" she demanded.

"If it was, wouldn’t I have already guessed it."

"You’re lying to me!" she yelled more forcefully than she had even realized she was going to say it. She had bottled all of her emotions up so much that she could feel everything begin to explode out of her. She was furious with him. How dare he stand there and even try and tell her that nothing happened with Parker…that they had just slept together. It was obvious to everyone that there had been something more, and now she had been told by two people that that was the case…three if she included Jessie. He didn’t even have the balls to tell her the truth about that.

"What am I lying about?" he asked her snapping his head around to look at her.

"You and Parker dated! You were together for years, high school and college sweethearts. You were in love with her. You were going to marry her," Lexi said letting the truth spill out of her. Ramsey remained silent waiting for whatever else she was going to say. "Parker told me herself. How could you think that you could just keep that from me? All of that time you’ve told me that you never dated anyone that you never loved anyone, but it was all a lie. I’m not special to you. She was special to you. You couldn’t even tell me that to my face. You had to hide it. I don’t know why you thought I wouldn’t find out. Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?"

Ramsey hung his head his breathing coming out in short bursts. "She told you all of this?" he demanded.

"Yes she did."

"I can’t believe she would do that," he murmured.

"Why?" Lexi gasped. "You can’t believe she would tell the truth. Did you date her for that long?" Lexi waited for an answer. "Well?"

"Yes," he mumbled.

"Were you in love with her?"

"Yes."

"Do you still love her?"

Ramsey’s head shot back up to look at her. He couldn’t believe she was asking him this. "No. I love you Lexi. I told you that."

"How can I know that?" she asked angrily openly glaring at him.

"Lexi I do love you. You have to believe me with that at least," he told her.

She couldn’t really argue that point. It wasn’t what she was angry about anyway. "But why would you lie about everything else? Why lie about her? Don’t you think I could have gotten over all of this if you had just told me?" she begged the question.

"I don’t tell anyone that story Lexi," he said in frustration though it was a lame attempt to save himself.

"I’m not just anyone," she spat back angrily.

"I know that. It’s just…stupid habit. I don’t talk about it. She doesn’t talk about it. It’s like it never happened," he said awkwardly.

"But it did happen. It did!" she yelled back at him feeling her emotions break again. "You’re a liar. You just lie all the time. You lied about Parker, about having a girlfriend, about being in love…the beach house…everything. How can I ever trust you again? Can I ever really know if everything else coming out of your mouth isn’t a lie? I trusted you with my whole heart. I can honestly say that I’ve never done that before."

"Jack…" he murmured before being cut off with a sinister glare.

"I had known Jack only a month or two before realizing that I could never fully trust him. I hadn’t given him my heart at that point and I hadn’t fallen in love with him. None of this I hid from you. What would be the point of hiding it from you? You would find out sooner or later the history between us," she growled. "Did you never think I’d hear the real story from anyone about Parker? And I mean the real story Ramsey."

"What do you mean the real story?" he asked his eyes narrowing at the connotations behind the statement.

"Oh don’t give me that," Lexi said rolling her eyes. "You know what you did."

Ramsey strode back over to Lexi and slammed his hands down on the chair in front of her. "What else did she tell you?" he growled.

"Why are you getting so worked up?" Lexi asked eyeing him carefully. He had been so controlled before, but now he really looked angry that there was more to the story. She couldn’t believe that after everything she had just said that he couldn’t even own up to the rest of the story.

"Because she told you more than that, and I want to know what else she said."

"She told me everything," Lexi informed him. "She told me how she was sick and instead of taking care of her you were whoring around with other women. She told me that she was pregnant. She told me that she miscarried the baby. She told me that she came to see you and you were horrible to her. She told me that you yelled and screamed at her and called her all of these terrible things. Then when you realized how wrong you were, you tried to crawl back to her but you had done too much damage. Is that what you were planning to do to me? Or were you just going to lie about it?" Lexi asked being purposefully mean.

"She told you that she miscarried?" he asked grunting angrily. It’s like he hadn’t even heard the rest of the things that she had said. It was as if he had stopped listening after that one word. His nostrils were flared and his face was beat red with anger. Lexi had never seen him this furious. Even that one time on New Years when he had completely lost his temper, he had never looked like this. "Of course she would tell her side that way."

"What are you getting at Ramsey?" she asked her pent up anger so forceful she could practically see red spots in front of her eyes.

"She had an abortion!" he cried unable to hold back. "You think she had a miscarriage? She was nineteen years old. Her family has money. My family has money. It was a stupid drunken accident that should have never happened so she got rid of it. The likelihood of her really having a miscarriage is slim to none. It just doesn’t make any sense."

"Well she hadn’t gone to a doctor," Lexi said repeating what Parker had told her. "That’s the most likely cause of a miscarriage after the first 8-10 weeks." Lexi had done her research after leaving the hospital.

"Don’t let that girl fool you," he grumbled. "She had a life and a future ahead of her, and a baby never fit in with that especially after she walked out on me. So she just got rid of it," he told her fiercely.

Lexi sank back into the chair taking in everything Ramsey had just told her. She didn’t even know what to think. Could Parker have lied about the miscarriage? She knew it was possible and that many women got abortions, but she couldn’t even think about it. She didn’t care what another woman did with their own body, but the thought of doing that to herself. Lexi shuddered. She wasn’t sure she would have the strength for it…to put herself through it. Could Parker have had that strength? Lexi just didn’t know. She didn’t even want to think about it. There were too many sides to this one story. How could she ever decipher what had really happened between them?

And in the end did it really matter to Lexi? Whatever Parker had done with her body was part of their past. It was not Lexi’s past. All she cared about was the fact that he had lied…that he had hid an entire relationship from him. That he had expected her never to find out.

"Look I don’t care about that. What I care about is you lying to me," she told him.

"I’m sorry Lexi. I don’t have an excuse. It was just…what I always did," he told her some of his anger leaving his body.

Lexi sat there for a minute longer trying to collect her thoughts. She was still angry. There was something more that she needed to say. She just wasn’t sure how to articulate it to him. After a second she finally gasped out, "So am I just making up for all your mistakes with Parker?"

"What?" he breathed sitting across from her and staring up through his sad eyes.

"Is this what this is all about? You found someone who looked like her and thought you could recreate your past…fix all of the horrible things that you did?" she asked hating that these thoughts were even passing through her mind. But she needed to ask him. She needed these things out in the open.

"Lexi no," he whispered earnestly into the darkness. "You were nothing like that."

"Then what was I?" she challenged. "You can’t deny that we look alike. My mother even said that we looked alike."

"I know you look alike," he responded softly.

"Then that’s it. You saw me at the club and wanted to f**k me because I looked like your ex-girlfriend," she said the words so matter of fact that she actually believed what she was saying. What kind of person could possibly sink so low?

Ramsey sighed heavily seeing for the first time what a terrible thing he had done in keeping a secret from Lexi. "Yes."

"What?" Lexi snapped facing him wearily.

"That night at the club…that was my intention," he told her honestly. "I wanted to sleep with you because you looked like her and even then, years later, I still missed her."

Lexi’s mouth hung open at the admission. She hadn’t thought that he would really say it out loud to her. She had hated herself endlessly for the suspicions that Ramsey had only gotten with her because she looked like his old fling. Hearing the words out of his mouth though was a thousand times worse.