Avoiding Responsibility (Avoiding #2)(68)
Author: K.A. Linde

Parker’s head snapped so fast in Ramsey’s direction that she got a crick in her neck that she knew would be sore the next day. She honestly could not believe he had just said that. She had done what she thought was right. She might have acted impulsively, but her head had been in the right place about the situation.

The last thing she wanted was for another woman to fall for Ramsey’s age old tricks and get burned. She knew they were both in over their heads and that the secrets were never going to come out. If she had known what level he was capable of hurting her, she would have wanted to know from the beginning. Then he has the audacity to claim she was weaseling her way into his relationship. She couldn’t stand it!

"It’s not exactly my fault that I have to be around you all the time," Parker spat out without a second thought. Her venom carried years of pain and heartache over the man in front of her, and she hadn’t even thought before spitting out the first thing that she thought.

Ramsey leveled his gaze on her. His green eyes could have burned a hole through her. His jaw was taut and usually full lips were pulled tight into a straight line. Tiny wrinkles across his forehead and around his eyes showed the true fierceness of his anger. Parker swallowed hard as she met that gaze. She knew what that look meant. She had f**ked up. Parker darted her eyes to Lexi and back hoping that she hadn’t noticed. Parker wasn’t that lucky.

Lexi stopped her pacing and turned back to Parker at the end of that last statement. Where had that come from? What the f**k was she talking about? Since when did they have to be around each other all the time? This was news to her. This was news that she had never wanted to hear. She had just been doubting their relationship, and here they were confirming that they actually still had some semblance of a relationship. She didn’t know the extent of it, but clearly by Parker’s last comment it was existed in some fashion. This was more than Lexi had been told about it though which didn’t bode well for Ramsey.

"Wait," she cried holding her hand up to draw their attention back to her and keeping them from deftly changing the subject, "why exactly do you guys have to be around each other all the time?" Lexi eyed them both carefully. She knew they had their own language and she didn’t want to miss anything that was going on between them. Hopefully she would be able to pull something from their sidelong glances that told her one way or another what was going and if they were lying to her.

"Uh…" Parker mumbled looking at the ground. She couldn’t even face the two people standing before her. She hadn’t meant to slip up, but she didn’t know how to fix it. What she had almost revealed wasn’t public knowledge yet and she knew that Ramsey wasn’t ready to discuss it with Lexi. She would have preferred to get it all out in the open, but there were so few people who knew the details that Parker couldn’t exactly blame him from excluding everyone except the people directly involved with the project. She just hoped that she hadn’t done more damage even though she had been the biggest advocate for letting Lexi know about what was going on.

Ramsey couldn’t believe how Parker had let that last bit slip. He didn’t even know why she was so pissed about the whole situation. He was the one angry for her telling Lexi about their entire relationship before he had been ready. Yet she had nearly let another thing slip that he wasn’t prepared to tell her. How could someone so intelligent possibly be so stupid? Ramsey tried to keep from openly glaring at Parker as she stood there stupidly, but she made it damn near impossible. At least she wouldn’t look him in the eye or else his demeaning glare sure would have said a lot more to her. Though, he figured she knew that without looking.

The only problem was how he could fix this with Lexi. It seemed like all he was doing was making mistakes and trying to find a way to make it up to her. The last thing he wanted was to bring this line of conversation up when she had just been blown away with Parker’s confessions. "It’s stuff you don’t want to have anything to do with," Ramsey finally responded meeting Lexi’s eye.

Lexi’s dark brown eyes looked back at him suspiciously. She couldn’t believe that was his response that she just wouldn’t want to know about what Parker had said. Clearly she wanted to know or else she wouldn’t have asked. "I’m sorry, but I just heard that my boyfriend and his ex-girlfriend have to spend all this time together. Oh and by the way I knew nothing about any of this," she muttered scathingly. "I think I’d want to know what the f**k this is all about."

"Ramsey, can’t we just tell her?" Parker breathed barely louder than a whisper. She hated hiding the truth especially in this kind of situation. It would only make things worse in the end.

"Tell me what?" Lexi crowed turning on Parker who still wouldn’t look at her. Lexi was just getting angrier the longer they kept more information from her.

"Look you really don’t want to know!" he told her again a bit more vehemently.

By now of course, Lexi wanted to know nothing more than why she couldn’t know and what the big secret was. This was infuriating. How much more convincing did she have to do? She told him she wanted to know. She had already insisted she didn’t want any more lies, and yet here he was keeping something from her. She shook her head in disbelief. "Just tell me! Why do there have to be so many secrets between us?"

"Ramsey," Parker pleaded softly. She sincerely felt for the girl. Poor thing had no idea what she was dealing with.

Ramsey paused contemplating his options before sputtering angrily hating that he had to do this. "Look it just has to do with the wedding alright," he snapped. His eyes shifted to Parker whose own mouth had snapped shut. He could gauge her reaction as she tried to look at anything but him. He just hoped that Lexi couldn’t see through her mask of disappointment and regret.

"Oh God," Lexi cried, "can we not talk about the wedding?" Lexi shuddered at the thought of Jack’s wedding, period. She did not want to hear anything about it. She did not even want to think about it. She didn’t miss the sneaky look that passed between Ramsey and Parker, but she didn’t want to know what it had to do with the wedding. The last thing she wanted to know about was wedding.

"See I told you it was the last thing you wanted to talk about and that I wasn’t going to bring it up," he said sliding a hand through his hair and letting out a relieved sigh. It was true that they had been spending more time together because of wedding preparations, but he hated that he had had to exploit Lexi’s weakness about the wedding to avoid taking responsibility for the real reason.

"Whatever," Lexi said dismissively, "I still don’t understand why you had to lie about the other stuff. You know my past and how important trust is to me. How do I know you didn’t lie about anything else? How do I even know you care about me?" Lexi didn’t like stating that last statement. It made her feel incredibly weak and vulnerable. Her heart was in his hands at that last comment. She cared about him deeply. In fact, she knew that she loved him. It terrified her to put so much into one person only to not know where her future was taking her. She thought they had been on some sort of path, but his lying certainly made it clear that he had other things in mind. He couldn’t even trust her with his past. How could he trust her with his future?

Ramsey looked at Parker as if this were all her fault knowing that it was only partly the case. The majority of the blame landed on him for deceiving Lexi into believing she was his first true love. Now she didn’t even believe that he loved her all, because he had lied about loving someone else before her. He felt like an idiot. "You know how I feel about you," he said earnestly moving towards Lexi to reassure her. He would do anything to reassure her of his feelings. Lexi took a hesitant step back countering his movements. She wasn’t prepared to be in close proximity to him.

"Yet you lie," she breathed shaking her head at his advance.

"It wasn’t intentional for me to lie to you about it," he groaned miserably.

"Unintentional lying?" Lexi asked rolling her eyes. "That’s rich."

"No, come on. I told you that Parker and I don’t discuss this stuff with people. Well usually not," he said sliding his eyes towards Parker. She had broken that trend. It had been an unspoken truce between them that neither would divulge information about it anymore. It hurt them both too much to discuss it, and she had done it anyway. "Anyone who knew we were together knows better than to bring it up and the details were suppressed. Tell her Parker," he barked demanding her assistance in convincing his girlfriend that he cared about her that he wasn’t a complete liar. Parker was the one who had broken their rules. Ramsey hadn’t even seen it coming.

Parker sighed and sank into one of his cushioned chairs as if resolved that she had to remain for the remainder of this conversation. She knew what he had said was true and that she had more or less gone behind his back to tell Lexi the truth. She still felt justified in it. Even if she had told Ramsey that they should tell her about what happened, he wouldn’t have listened. Once he got an idea in his head about how things were going to be that was it, but she did have to agree with him. "We really don’t tell people."

"You told me," she said defiantly.

"I thought you deserved the truth. I could see where Ramsey’s head was with you and couldn’t hold it in. I didn’t want your world to come crashing down around you…like mine did." Parker bit her lip anxiously before continuing. She knew Ramsey wouldn’t be pleased with her statements, but at least it confirmed his story that they didn’t talk about these things. "But honestly, I haven’t told the whole story to anyone in a very long time and Ramsey I doubt has ever told anyone."

"Well fine you don’t normally tell people about it, but did you have to lie?" Lexi questioned him. "Couldn’t you have just told me that she existed so I wouldn’t be blindsided? Why did I have to hear her side first?"

"Lexi I told you I don’t have an excuse. This is what Parker and I always did. We didn’t tell people what happened. Parker was the only one who ever told and she always seems to get there first with her distorted version of reality," Ramsey grumbled. Lexi could tell just by the reactions of both parties that they had argued about this before and rather often.

"My reality isn’t distorted," Parker sputtered looking up from where she was seated. "I was there. I actually know what happened. You weren’t even there for everything…"

"Because you left! We argued and you left. How could I talk to you about it?"

"Ancient history," Parker said with a sad shoulder shrug.

"And you told her you miscarried," he spat at her his anger bubbling up again.

"Ramsey I did," she moaned a tear rolling down her cheek at the mention of her lost pregnancy. She sounded as if she had said this same thing many times. Lexi wondered how many times she had tried to convince Ramsey that she had miscarried. She wondered if Parker actually had. She just didn’t know.

He shook his head in disbelief. "And you believe her?" Ramsey asked turning on Lexi.

Lexi didn’t know if she truly believed Parker’s side, but she was even more uncertain about Ramsey. "She’s not the one who’s been lying to me from the beginning. I don’t see why I should believe you?" she told him. "Does an abortion that sent you over the edge sound any more plausible in your story?" Lexi asked crossing her arms over her chest.