“You’re Ben’s girlfriend?” she exclaimed in awe.

Not anymore. “Um…” I struggled, wanting to just get out of here.

“Yes, she is,” Jamie answered, moving to stand beside her. He smirked at me. “Unless of course he’s proposed to you, which I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Proposed?” The woman looked shocked. She glared at Jamie and said, “You told me he was having a hard time after me –”

“Well, I thought he did until I crashed here a short while ago and saw otherwise.” He then cringed and said to me, “You know, it would be best if you didn’t tell him about this. Her place is really far away, and I thought since I’d have the place to myself that –”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she interrupted him.

He sighed. “Because you would have reacted like this.”

“Like what?”

“All weird.”

“I’m not weird. I’m happy!”

I eyed the front door. “Look, I gotta go.”

“What’s your name?” she then asked, moving in closer to me. Her eyes flickered to my scars, but she still smiled, radiant as ever.

“Claire,” I said tiredly. “And you?”

She put her hand out. “Melinda.”

I froze. My body roared with the noise of my blood whooshing in my ears, and I gaped at her. “What?”

“Melinda,” she repeated, waving her hand now so I could shake it.

But I stumbled back a step. “Melinda what?”

She dropped her hand and glanced at Jamie in confusion. “Melinda Warren.”

And now that blood drained straight out of me as I hardly withstood the shockwave upon hearing her answer.

“No.” I shook my head violently. No, no, no.

NO!

“Claire?” said Jamie concernedly.

I pointed at the fake and moved away from both of them. “She’s not Melinda. That’s-that’s a lie.”

“What do you mean?” Jamie asked, moving to me slowly, as though I was a caged animal that had broken free.

I continued pointing at her. “That’s not Melinda. I saw Melinda Warren, and she… she was scarred, and she didn’t look like her, and…”

“Where did you see this person? Because I promise you, this is her.”

My back hit the wall as I stared between both of them in bewilderment. Tears fell down my face, trying to make sense of what he was saying.

“The same Melinda that use to be with Ben?” I anxiously asked.

The woman frowned. “I was with him for a few months, sure. But we weren’t serious or anything. I broke it off because…” She looked guiltily over at Jamie.

Oh, fuck. The truth was staring at me in the face.

This was why Ben was angry I’d been around Jamie. This woman had cheated on him. With his brother.

“And you two are together?”

She shook her head, but I could see the struggle in her face as she denied her feelings. “No, we just have fun every now and then.”

Jamie was still staring hard at me, inching to me. “Tell me what’s going on.”

I put a hand over my mouth as the shock continued to run through me. Puzzled, I tried to put the pieces inside my head together, but I was so lost. So confused.

Why would they lie to me?

“They said he scarred her,” I choked out. “They said he planned my attack. They said it was all a lie and –”

“Who said this?” Jamie demanded, getting red with anger.

“The police,” I stammered out.

His back straightened, and something dawned on his eyes. “Oh, fuck. Hardman?”

I blinked at him. “What?”

He moved to me and gripped me harshly by the arm, twisting it as he pulled me into him and screamed, “Was it Hardman?!”

“Yes!”

He let go and I stumbled back. The horrified look on his face confirmed what I had been desperate to believe.

I really had been lied to.

“The bastard has done nothing but try and get at him for years,” Jamie said grimly. “Not the first time he’s tried to turn Ben’s own against him with lies.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean they’re desperate. They said these things to you, but did they have proof?”

“They have footage of Ben around the place I was attacked –”

“Did you actually see it?”

“Well…no, but…” The room spun and my stomach churned. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I told him… I told him about the deal he’s on his way to. I’m so sorry!”

“What?” Jamie froze. “You what?”

“We have to go and stop him! I told Hardman he went to make a deal –”

“FUCK!” He raced into the lounge room and grabbed the keys off the table. Then he turned back and stormed straight to the front door.

I took off after him. “Stop! Let me go with you. We have to stop him and –”

He opened the door and faced me. His cold face halted me immediately as he took a step forward and shoved me back. Pointing a finger in my face with stormy eyes, he growled out, “You fucked up big time, woman. You get the fuck out of here before I’m back. And if I don’t have Ben with me when I walk back through this door, I’m going to find you and kill you with my bare hands.”

Then he turned around and slammed the door shut behind him.

Chapter Twenty-Six

You filthy little snake

I collapsed, palms flat on the floor as the world continued to spin.

What just happened?

What have I done?

“I fucked up,” I sobbed. “I fucked up. I…”

I didn’t just fuck up.

I fucked up bad.

The kind of bad I didn’t think anyone could come back from whole again.

When I eventually stood up, I looked around helplessly. What could be done right now? My emotions still hadn’t caught up to the truth, and what the hell was the truth exactly? That I’d been lied to by the police? The people I least suspected had faked the entire thing in order to get to Ben?

Melinda was still standing in the same spot and she was looking like she too was out of sorts. Without a word spoken, we stared at each other for a few minutes. I wrapped an arm around my stomach as the emotional pain turned physical.