Well, Paige was happy to play the bad guy if it meant getting Evan to wake up and realize how much everyone cared for him—and how badly they all wanted to help him rebuild his life without Whitney. Hopefully, their friendship could survive some hard truths. Because Paige couldn’t imagine her life without Evan in it.
Deciding there was no time like the present, even if they were currently standing in front of the vast array of food set out at the buffet, she said, “Everyone has been frantic about you.” She made sure to modulate her voice so that only Evan could hear what she was saying. “You ran out on them all—Susan, Bob, the other Mavericks.” And me. “It didn’t help that your text left way more questions than it answered. Daniel told me all about it when he called to see if I might know anything that could allay Susan’s worries.”
“The bean casserole is good.” Evan added a lump of it to her plate before saying, “I needed some time. They all understand that.”
“Of course they understand. But you still deserted them. The wedding was coming up. The holidays. It was supposed to be a happy time, but they were all too worried about you to really enjoy it.”
Emotion moved through his eyes even as his mouth settled into an increasingly stubborn line. He took her plate and plunked it down next to his at the end of the dining table, far away from everyone else in the house. But though his family tried to pretend nothing was happening in Susan’s prettily decorated dining room, Paige still felt as if they were on display.
“I know how bad it was for you,” she continued in a low voice. “But you still blew it. You’ve been there for them when they needed help. You should have let them be there for you.” She’d gotten herself so wound up, she couldn’t hold back anymore. “And you should have let me be there for you too.” She swallowed hard before adding, “I’m sure that my being Whitney’s sister made it hard for you to talk to me, but I thought we were friends.”
“We are friends,” he said in a low voice. But he followed up with, “What exactly did she tell you?” The tenor of the question told her he suspected the worst.
“She admitted that she faked the pregnancies and miscarriages…and took steps to make sure she wouldn’t get pregnant by accident either.” The horrible way Whitney had abused Evan’s love and devotion sickened Paige. She shook her head, unable to adequately express the monstrosity of those lies and the utter ruthlessness of her sister’s actions. “I don’t know how she could have done that—and I can’t even begin to imagine what learning the truth must have been like for you.”
The shock of discovering Whitney’s horrible lies must have been devastating. Beyond devastating. Paige had been so sure Evan would need his family, his friends. She’d waited for his call. A text. An email. Some word from him.
Instead, there’d been total silence.
Even now, his face was a steely mask as he worked to hide every last ounce of emotion. But that was no good. Not with her. Not when she knew him well enough to see the grief—and fury—that flickered in his hazel eyes, darker now with the emotions he couldn’t fully conceal.
“She claimed it was all because of me,” he said in a grim voice. “That I pushed her to have kids when she didn’t want to. That she had no other choice.”
“She’s always been good at putting the best possible spin on things for herself,” Paige said. “Gathering her supporters around her, revealing exactly what she wants them to hear, eliciting the necessary sympathy.”
He held her gaze for a penetrating moment. “Did it work?”
She stared at him in shock, an actual physical pain tightening around her heart. “How can you even ask me that?”
Whitney was two years younger, the baby of the family, and though Paige hadn’t wanted to admit it, she’d long known that her sister had a dark side. How could she pretend it didn’t exist when she’d been the recipient of that darkness herself so many times?
But this was beyond anything she could have imagined Whitney was capable of.
As a psychologist, every single day Paige helped people manage their emotions—which often included dealing with difficult family members. Somehow, though, none of her schooling or experience helped her when it came to her own sister. Whitney always managed to make her feel like she wasn’t good enough.
According to her sister, the men Paige dated were losers. She didn’t wear the right clothes. Didn’t live in the right neighborhood or have the right kind of friends. And every time Paige looked into the harsh mirror her sister held up, she would question her decisions, asking herself if Whitney might be right.
Evan’s question pricked that nerve all over again, making her angry enough to snap, “You should trust me more than that. Yes, there are as many sides to every story as there are people involved. But there’s no way I could be on her side in this. It doesn’t matter that I’m her sister. I abhor what she did.”
Paige’s breath was shaky as she dragged it in. Despite her irritation—and how painfully aloof Evan seemed right now—her whole body ached with the need to throw her arms around him, to absorb his pain, to make it all better. Whitney had ripped his heart out and shredded it into pieces. Even if he wasn’t admitting it.
During the past year or so, Paige had felt him withdrawing more and more from everyone, and she hadn’t known what to do for him. It was so much easier to analyze from the outside than it was to examine your own emotions. And the truth was that hers were too involved to offer the solace he needed.