The Truth About Us Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  ALSO BY MEGAN D. MARTIN

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  THE TRUTH ABOUT US

  Copyright © 2018 Megan D. Martin

  Cover and Interior design by Kassi Jean Formatting and Design

  Editing by Crystal at AnimaEditing.com

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Contents of this book may not be reproduced or distributed in any format without the written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used for review purposes.

  Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. Printed in the United States of America

  ALSO BY MEGAN D. MARTIN

  Drowning in Rapture (Rapture, #1)

  Clinging to Rapture (Rapture, #2)

  Bound by Rapture (Rapture, #3)

  Alive

  Skin Deep

  The Filthy Series: The Complete Serial Novel

  Viole[n]t Obscurity (Violent, #1)

  Viole[n]t Oblivion (Violent, #2) – coming soon

  For Josh,

  I love you.

  I stared at Rowan, the woman I used to love. I watched as the tears slid down her cheeks. How could someone so breathtakingly beautiful be so deceptive and cutthroat? How could she have done the things she did and still live with herself, day in and day out? I didn’t have answers for these things, and she didn’t seem to have any either. Nothing besides her tears – tears I had long since stopped trusting.

  It turned out the things I had believed about us for over a year, the terrible, hurtful, life-altering truths, weren’t actually real or true. They had been lies. A fuck-bushel of lies that turned everything in my life upside down. Reality, it turned out, was much worse. The truth, the full truth, one she hadn’t intended to share, was out now, in the air between us.

  I had hated her before, when I believed the lies – but now? Now hate couldn’t cover it. It couldn’t encapsulate the feelings that dwelled inside my very soul when it came to Rowan Steel. It didn’t matter how perfect or beautiful I found her. She was deceptive, sickening, and disgusting on the inside. A monster in a costume of perfection. If I’d thought I’d been broken by her lies over a year ago – then the truths she laid out before me now were going to crush every bone in my body, every muscle, vein, artery, capillary, until my soul itself was extinguished.

  She tried to offer her excuses, but I wouldn’t listen to them. I wouldn’t hear her out. It was too late for that – too late for us.

  I fell in love in a parking lot, in the middle of a sweltering Texas summer day. The heat beat down on my shoulders through my white t-shirt as I approached Steel Mechanics, Inc. for my job interview. It was supposed to be a normal day – just like any other, and hopefully a good one that ended with a job at the best automotive center in town. But that was it. That’s all it was supposed to be.

  Something else happened, though, as I walked across that parking lot with sweat staining my back. I saw someone. Her. She stood in the second bay from the left, closer to the waiting room than some of the others. The blue jean shorts she wore were torn, and the white, sleeveless t-shirt she had on was dirty, like she’d been under a car all day long. Her long, dark hair was pulled into a messy braid down her back. Those things weren’t the reason I fell in love though. No, it was something else. It was her face, when she glanced at me over her shoulder. The movement lasted only a second, a moment in time that ended as quickly as it began, but it was the most life-changing moment I would ever experience.

  Her chin was smudged with grime and her nose had a smattering of freckles – brown freckles of different shapes and sizes. Her eyes were like golden brown arrows that stabbed directly into my heart, practically sucking the air from my lungs. There was a sadness in them like I’d never seen before, like some sort of perpetual calling from her gaze to my very soul, that told me she needed me. I’d never known that I needed anything in my life until the moment when her freckles, smudged cheeks, and honeyed eyes called to me. I was twenty-six, a master technician in the prime of my life, with no attachments and nothing but the future ahead of me.

  I needed her, though. Suddenly, bewilderingly, she was all I could think about.

  I stumbled my way through my interview with my hero himself, George Steel, while my head swam with fantasies of the mystery girl with the sad eyes and freckled nose. Somehow, I managed to get the job. Through some miracle of God, or man, or mythical mystery, George hired me.

  As we walked out of his office, he stopped to introduce me to my new coworkers, but I didn’t care about any of them. Only her.

  “This is my daughter, Rowan Steel. She helps out in the shop sometimes, but mainly runs the office work. She’ll be in charge of getting everything set up with your new hire paperwork.”

  I shook her hand. I felt her soft skin against my own, and I wondered if she felt it too – the bubbling connection, the fierce attraction. It was all so dramatic in my head. Ridiculous, I knew that. Love at first sight didn’t exist. It wasn’t real. I knew that. I knew that better than anyone.

  But I wanted her. There was no denying it. I wanted Rowan Steel more than I had ever wanted anything in my life. More than the new GTR I hoped to one day afford, more than this job, more than my favorite Doritos, more than water, and air and food and everything that could keep me alive.

  I wanted her.

  “Rowan?”

  “Yes,” I replied, fidgeting with my purse. I stood awkwardly at the front desk. A girl around my age, early twenties or so, sat behind a computer in front of me.

  “Rowan,” she repeated. “What kind of name is that?” She had mousy brown hair and a frown permanently etched into her mouth.

  I shrugged, annoyance burning through me. People had asked me similar questions all my life. One would think people had never heard a different name before, that every name they’d every known had fit into their tight little box of Marys and Susies.

  I cleared my throat. “I’m here to see Tyler Nusom.”

  “Do you have a car in the shop?” Her eyebrows pressed together in the center.

  “No.” I glanced through the window of the office, out into the Nusom Automot
ive shop. There were six bays, all filled with cars and men working on them.

  They were busy, really busy, especially for a new shop. A smile crept along my lips while tears sprang to my eyes. The conflicting emotions caused me to suck in a deep breath so I didn’t fall apart on the spot.

  “I’ll call over to his office and see if he’s available. If you’ll take a seat?”

  I sat between an older man and a woman with a baby. The blue, cushioned seat could have been comfier, but I couldn’t help but notice that they were nicer than my father’s shop’s, Steel Mechanics, Inc. Not that I was surprised. My dad, George Steel, had been in business for over thirty years in the same shop, with the same waiting room amenities as when he opened, before I was born. The chairs were metal with wood backing, almost like they had been made for an old, early-twentieth century school house. It wouldn’t have surprised me if they actually had been. I could imagine my dad digging through the dump before he first opened, just to find seating for his new business.

  Thirty years later, only a few patrons complained, as the quality of waiting room seating did not seem to matter as much as the quality of work done on their cars. Steel Mechanics, Inc. had been rated number one in our small city since Dad opened shop – something to be proud of, as quite a few name brand mechanic shops had opened in town since.

  Everything inside Nusom Automotive was shiny and new, soft, and clean. The white and black tile flooring had clearly been mopped recently, and I couldn’t help but smile down at it. I had picked this exact pattern out for Dad’s shop a couple years ago, but he hadn’t wanted to spend the extra money on fancy flooring in the waiting area, when the concrete floors he already had mopped up just fine.

  I’d been disappointed. I’d told Tyler about it. He’d loved the idea. The small black tiles created a mosaic picture amongst the white, revealing two cars racing to a finish line they would never reach – the perfect sort of design for this kind of business.

  “Excuse me, ma’am, can I help you?”

  I glanced up to meet the gaze of the last person I wanted to see. It wasn’t Tyler, but Victor, his best friend, and a former employee of my father’s.

  I stood up quickly and shouldered my purse. “I just came to see Tyler.”

  I watched the kind expression on Victor’s face morph into something hideous and hateful. I had often wondered how women found him attractive. He always looked so vile. But then I realized he reserved this special sort of anger and hatred for me and only me.

  “Why are you here, Rowan?”

  I brushed my hand nervously down the front of my light blue shirt. I had picked out my outfit carefully. I mean, I was going to see my ex today – I didn’t want to look like a total flap. So, I’d picked my favorite scoop-neck and skinny jeans, complete with my favorite flats.

  “I need to talk to him.”

  “Talk? He has nothing to say to you.”

  I chewed on my lip. I hadn’t expected this hiccup. Of course, I knew Victor worked for Tyler now that he had his own shop, I just didn’t think he would be a roadblock in my seeing Tyler. I just needed to tell him the truth about what happened last year – about why I did what I did and destroyed our relationship. That was all.

  “I know you don’t like me much, Victor, but this doesn’t really concern you. I just need to speak with him for a minute and I’ll be on my way.” I spoke softly, noticing now that everyone in the waiting room had their eyes on Victor and me.

  “Doesn’t concern me? I literally told Tyler for years about your real intentions. He never listened, not until you screwed him over.”

  I glanced down at my feet. “I get it Victor. I just want to speak with him for a moment, and I’ll be on my way.”

  “You know he changed his phone number.”

  “I know, Vic.”

  “He’s busy.” Victor turned around and left. I stood alone in the middle of the packed waiting room with all eyes on me.

  My skin flushed with nervousness. I wasn’t one of those girls who liked attention. In fact, the less attention I could garner, the better. Sure, sometimes I wanted to be noticed, but in a silent, dignified way, not because I was causing a scene. I was also one of those girls who didn’t like to push too hard in a situation. I mean, what good was there in that? If someone didn’t want to do something, I wasn’t about to make them. Like that time in fifth grade when I really wanted Melinda to spend the night with me, but she wanted to stay home and play with her new puppy. I didn’t beg her. Why make someone do something they don’t want to do for my own benefit? There wasn’t really a benefit in it for me, because Melinda’s mom made her spend the night anyway, since we had already made the plans. The whole night, all she did was whine about not being at home. Which proved to be a miserable and boring sleepover for me, i.e. not worth it.

  Not wanting to push was part of the reason I hadn’t sought Tyler out sooner, though only a small part. He had already opened Nusom Automotive around six months after we split. I could have told him then and it would have been soon enough. I had tried, just as Victor pointed out. I’d spent weeks conjuring up the nerve to call him, and when I finally did, a girl named Sally had answered and rudely informed me I had the wrong number, that she’d had the number for several months.

  Tyler didn’t want to be contacted, especially not by me. Not by the girl who broke his heart. So I backed off. I let it go. I was Elsa in Frozen. I went to work just like I had every day before that phone call, and told myself that it was all for the best, that Tyler Nusom didn’t need to know the truth about what happened. That he didn’t want to know – and that was even more important.

  But as time crept by, my desire to confess continued to fester, deep down inside my chest. The truth, or at least part of it, needed to be set free – and what he would do with it? Well, that didn’t really matter to me. I just needed it off my chest more than anything else.

  The normal me would have left Nusom Automotive and been on my way, but not today. I was here on a mission, a mission to tell the truth. I let out a breath and tilted my chin up with fake confidence, and walked out into the shop. The smell of oil and grease assaulted my senses, yet the familiarity of it calmed me and kept my feet moving forward. I could see the door on the opposite side, with the words Master Mechanic & Owner, Tyler Nusom printed in bold letters. I should have gone there first, but a part of me had been afraid.

  The door was open when I reached it. I hadn’t passed Tyler as I moved through the work bays, but here he was inside at a desk. He wasn’t alone. I half expected Victor to be inside with Tyler, prepared to keep me from saying anything to him. But instead, a woman sat on his desk, obscuring his face from view. A woman with long, platinum blonde hair – the kind that could only be purchased from a very expensive salon. I fingered the end of my side-braid. My hair color was somewhere between the ashiest blond and dirty brown, with nothing spectacular or shiny about it.

  Tyler’s hand rested on the outside of her thigh, which was clad in tight black pants. His hand was little dirty, smudged from his work. I knew that hand better than I knew my own, from his long fingers, to the scar along his palm where he had slid down a rope as a child. I chewed my lip hard at the sight of it pressed against this stranger.

  After several moments, he laughed that deep, rich timbre I knew so well. The mystery blond had said something hilarious, no doubt. The pathetic organ in my chest ached. I wanted to run as far as way as possible – get the hell out of this shop and pretend I had never ever planned to come here.

  No, Rowan, you’ve come this far. Don’t back down now.

  I knocked on the door frame, and just like that, two pairs of eyes met mine, a dark green pair, one that haunted my memories, and a light blue pair, framed by perfect hair.

  “Hi, uh, I’m here to speak with Tyler for a moment.”

  I watched as his gaze wavered between surprise and confusion. I was sure I was the last person he expected to grace his office.

  “Rowan?”

 
; I shivered at the sound of my name on his lips. It had been so long. Too long.

  “Hi, this will only take moment, if you have time.”

  “Why are you here?”

  I fidgeted with the strap of my purse while he stood. The blond on the desk glanced between us. “You’re Rowan?” She stood as well, and I realized she was almost as tall as Tyler. At over six feet tall and full of perfect curves, she dwarfed my short frame.

  The accusation in her tone didn’t bode well for me. This gorgeous model of a woman had been sitting on Tyler’s desk, making him laugh, and she knew my name? That meant something serious was going on between the two of them. I shouldn’t have cared, of course. I had broken things off with him, and I wasn’t here to mend what was broken, only to deliver the truth – or at least some of it. But I did care, and dammit, it hurt.

  “Yes.” I held out my hand to her, keeping my face neutral. I was a good person. I wasn’t going to be bitchy – remember when I said I didn’t like unnecessary attention? Well, that included this interlude. I just wanted to get this over with so I could leave. I imagined my cozy little apartment waiting for me, complete with my cat, Ranger. I would go home after this, eat Ramen, and cuddle with him.

  Everything would be fine.

  Be brave, Rowan. You got this.

  This couldn’t be happening. Rowan Steel wasn’t standing in my office. The Rowan Steel. The woman I had fallen in love with at first sight on the first day of my job at her dad’s company years ago. The same woman who ripped my heart out with jagged nails and tore it apart last year.

  Nope.

  She couldn’t be here.

  I blinked a few times and she didn’t disappear. She stood right in the doorway, wearing a light blue shirt that hugged her petite and curvy form. I knew that shirt. It was one of her favorites. In fact, she liked it so much she had bought the same shirt in all the colors Target offered. It fit a little looser than I remembered. Her braided hair was longer too. But that’s what happens when you don’t see someone for almost a year after things end out of nowhere.