Mistaken by J A Howell Read Free Book Online

lit the kitchen on fire, or the one time he had bathed her when she had felt deathly ill with the flu.  A new place meant that that night really happened and she was all alone.
    Dillan managed to stifle a tear before it rolled down her cheek, but was unsuccessful at concealing it from Trey. With a deep breath, she straightened her stance and turned towards him, attempting a half-hearted smile.  He smiled back sympathetically, and as her  eyes met his she saw something in his gaze that she hadn't seen in anyone else's. A silent understanding of what she was saying. So many other people had told her she was crazy to stay here after it happened, that she had to move after a thing like that.  Nobody else understood. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to. She couldn't .
    “You know, I saw you when you got here last night,” Dillan said after a long silence, turning her attention away from him and back out the window. “You came on a bus, right?”
    As soon as she said it, he recalled the eerie exchange with the girl on the motorcycle. The wide, disbelieving gaze as his bus flew through the intersection. It had struck him as odd then, but given the revelation of his brother’s death, it made perfect sense. She had looked like she had seen a ghost.
    “I passed by you on the bus, didn’t I?” He asked incredulously.
    “Yep,” she nodded, laughing but not because it was funny.  “I thought I was seeing things at first. I even followed the bus, thinking maybe it was really Jamie, and none of this had ever really happened. But then I got to the bus station and I couldn’t find him…or you I guess.”
    “Is that…Is that why you were so wasted last night?” Trey asked. As if he needed more to feel bad about. Dillan nodded, letting out another nervous laugh.
    “I was trying to do everything in my power not to think of him last night. Because it all happened a year ago last night. A year ago that he proposed. A year ago that I watched him die,” Dillan shook her head, “After I left the bus station,  that night was all I could think about.”
    “I’m sorry.” His head hung low and he avoided looking in her direction.
    “You don’t have anything to apologize for. You had no way of knowing.”  Dillan said, shrugging her shoulders, her eyes still fixed on some vantage point in the city.
    “Just like I had no way of knowing about you.” She couldn’t mask the betrayal she felt as the words left her lips, or the hint of hostility she held toward Trey.
    Her words made him feel as though the walls were shrinking around him. He shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other as he stood there.  During the last decade she had spent with Jamie, she thought she knew everything there was to know about him. She thought she knew all of his secrets, just as he had known all of hers. Trey’s presence was just a glaring reminder that deep down, everyone always has a secret hidden away.
    Dillan turned back from the window toward Trey, her fingers nervously playing with the edge of the window sill as she attempted to look up at him.
    “Look I’m not trying to make you feel uncomfortable, but I’m not going to lie. This is not easy for me, being around you,” Her lips formed a tight, straight line as she forced herself to keep a blank expression. “But I feel like it’s important that I let you stay. You were a part of Jamie’s life, even if I never knew it.”
    Trey nodded, understanding exactly what she meant. This whole situation was too much for her to wrap her head around, and just looking at his face was too much for her right now.
    He felt the same way.
     

CHAPTER SIX
     
     
    Tony Luciano stared down at his cell phone as he sat at the breakfast nook in his stark one-bedroom apartment. Shock still colored his expression ten minutes after he hung up. He had barely even moved.  To say he was disappointed was an understatement. He had only known Alex for one day, but ten years later, he recognized the voice on