Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 86741 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86741 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
It was a stretch, yes, but I didn’t know what else to believe at this point. I had all these theories running through my mind, and I was sure the answer was right at home, waiting for me. All I had to do was ask.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
When I drove up to the mansion, Roland’s car was in front of one of the garages. He’d been home and had been there for a while now. I could tell because the hood of his car was cool to the touch.
I collected all of my thoughts, drew in a long, deep breath, and then went inside. The house was darker than usual, nothing on but a light in the den and in the kitchen.
“Roland?” I called, but no one answered.
I wasn’t sure where he was, but I needed to talk to him, so before finding him I went back out the door and around the house to get to the shed so I could retrieve the journals. But as I neared the door, I noticed it was cracked open and a light was on inside.
I hurried toward it and pushed the door open, and there he was. My husband. Standing in the middle of the shed, his head bowed as he read the journal in his hands.
He didn’t look at me right away, but I was certain he’d heard me come in. He kept reading, his jaw ticking, his eyes hard on the pages.
“Roland,” I called.
“How long?” His voice was raspy, gruff.
My pulse was pounding in my ears. “How long what?”
He picked his head up, grimacing at me. “How long have you known about these?”
I wrung my fingers together. “A couple weeks now. I found them when I started cleaning the shed.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me about it?” He closed the journal and lifted it in the air. “Is this why you’ve been sneaking around? Acting so jumpy around me?”
“Yes,” I confessed, and he sucked his teeth and shook his head.
“Wow, Samira. Wow.” He tossed the journal onto the desk, making the pages flap.
“How much did you read?”
“Oh, I read enough. Trust me.”
I stepped into the shed, easing the door shut behind me. “Roland, I know you’re upset right now, but I need to ask you something very important.”
“What, Samira?”
“Do you promise me you had nothing to do with Melanie’s death? Like nothing at all?”
“I’ve promised this to you so many times. I don’t know how much more I can.” He glanced back at the journals stacked on the desk. “I know from what you’ve read that it probably looks like I did something, but I didn’t, Samira. She was a liar. All she ever did was fucking lie.”
I nodded, tucking my cold fingers into my jacket pocket. “Did you get to the part . . . about her affair with Dylan?”
“Yes.” He dropped his head, staring down at the floor. “I always suspected it, but . . .”
“Did you ever talk to him about it?”
“No. By the time I figured it out, it was too late. Our marriage had already gone to shit and she still wanted a divorce.”
“So why keep Dylan around if you knew what they’d been doing behind your back?”
“Because I knew how Melanie is. And I didn’t keep him around. I told him he had to leave—find somewhere else to stay. I didn’t tell him I suspected anything about the affair. I just blamed it on my marriage—said we needed some space as a couple to work through some things. I love him like a brother, and in my heart, I forgave him, but I couldn’t cope with him being in the same house as us anymore, so I made up an excuse to get him to leave.”
“So, you forgave him, but not Melanie?”
He whipped his gaze up, locking eyes on me. “Samira, you don’t fucking understand. You may think Melanie was this nice, endearing girl, but you’re only seeing one side of this. There were so many times when she attacked me because I wouldn’t even look at her.”
“Attacked you?”
“Yes! Prior to her telling me she’d cheated, she tried so hard to get a reaction out of me. But I was still recovering from my injury and I was fucking depressed about it, and I just didn’t care about anything else at the time. And I hate admitting it, but it’s the truth. I was angry about my life and where my career was headed, and Melanie didn’t give a fuck. All she cared about was herself. When we went to Hawaii, she told me she’d cheated, and I didn’t react. I didn’t know how to react. Instead, I was ready to walk away, give the entire situation some space so we could both collect our thoughts. Hell, I was even willing to forgive her and to make it work, but she didn’t like that I was going to leave the room without saying anything, so she slapped me. And that night she just kept hitting me, demanding me to react, demanding me to show her how I felt, and I just—I snapped. I . . . I grabbed her a little too roughly on the face and I know that scared her, but she brought it out of me. She kept hitting and shouting at me, calling me a pussy and a coward and saying how I didn’t deserve her and that she was going to cheat again, and I lost it. You can only poke a sleeping bear so much, Samira.”