41

41
ALICIA
“He’s lying,” Kayla says desperately. “Lonnie’s lying, Alicia. He has to be.” I shake my head. “I don’t think he is,” I say. “It all makes sense now.”
“I don’t know what you mean. None of this makes sense. You’re taking Lonnie’s word for something? Over Brandon’s?”
“I can come back and talk to Brandon once I’ve gotten Emmy out of here. Every minute she’s here is dangerous now that Lonnie knows the truth. Deidre might kill her, Kayla. Or she might kidnap her and sell her to one of those junkies out at the Boneyard, and I’d never see her again. That’s bigger than me and Brandon. That’s bigger than anything.”
Kayla catches me by my shoulders before I can throw anything else in my suitcase and guides me to sit on the bed. “You need to think about this,” she says. “You need to consider talking to Brandon.”
“You know I can’t do that,” I say. “What if Lonnie is lying?”
“What if he isn’t? What if everything he said is true?”
“You’re going to lose the love of your life,” Kayla says quietly.
“He’s not the love of my life.” “Really? Then who is?”
“I don’t have to have a love of my life. Not everyone has that. You don’t.” “But that’s me,” Kayla says. “You aren’t me. And I’ve seen the way you
are since you’ve been around Brandon again. It’s like you’ve come back to life, Alicia. You can’t lose that now. It would gut you.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time I walked away from Brandon.” “Yeah, and last time it took you out of our lives for twenty years.”
“That wasn’t because of Brandon,” I object. “He’s not the reason I stayed away. I left because of Deidre. She was never going to let me have a life here. She pushed me into a match with the person she thought was the worst in the pack, and she made sure I knew I could never have a normal mating bond with him without risking my life.”
“Dad-”
“Dad didn’t stop her, Kayla. Dad gave her the right to choose my mate.” “No, he didn’t,” Kayla said. “You need to hear this.”
I look at her.
“Dad chose Brandon for you,” she said. “I was there when he decided.
Deidre argued against it.”
I shake my head. “That’s not what happened.”
“That’s not what Deidre told you. But she lied. She didn’t want you or me mated at all. She was angry when Dad mated Pat to David. I didn’t want a mate, and when you came of age, Deidre tried to tell Dad that it was wrong for you to be mated when I hadn’t been. She was trying to make sure neither of us brought a threat to Lonnie into the family.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Yes I can. I overheard them talking about it. And I would have told you,
but you ran off, and I never knew you’d spent all this time thinking Brandon was Deidre’s choice.”
“Why would Dad choose him for me?”
“Dad always thought he had potential,” Kayla said. “That’s what he said to Deidre. That young man has a lot of potential. Deidre hated that. She hates anyone but Lonnie having potential.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me that?” I ask. Kayla shrugs. “I thought you knew.” “Dad never told me.”
“Dad’s never been a great communicator. But you could tell, couldn’t you? Hell, I figured you knew when Dad chose him to be your mate that he had seen potential in him.”
“But to feel that way so strongly that he would say it to Deidre…”
“So you have to talk to him,” Kayla says. “Lonnie is lying to you now, just like Deidre was back then. Give Brandon a chance to tell you the truth.”
I hear a knock at the door and break away, my heart in my throat. No one in my family would knock.
It has to be Brandon.
He knows.