Utterly Forgettable | MM Romance | Complete

Forty-Five: You Know Nothing 2/4

That made Josh turn in surprise. If anything, Emma had been too free (harsh, incisive) with the truth. As much as she enjoyed scheming, Josh had never known her to lie outright. "She lied?"

Emery exhaled, tense as a coiled spring. "She told you the truth as she knew it. But it wasn't the truth."

Josh had no right to this tale, not if Emery had never seen fit to tell him. Not if they weren't friends, and not considering Josh had no plans to ever look at his face again after tonight. "It's okay. We don't have to talk about it."

Emery's smile was an ugly, bitter thing, pain radiating off him as a near palpable entity. "We do. Now that I know what you thought you knew, we must."

Josh didn't want to look at him, didn't want to see the loathing, but he had very little choice in the matter. There was love in Emery's eyes too, devotion underneath all the ugliness. His fiancé must have meant the world to him.

"I was pistol-whipped on the head and thrown out of the boat where they demanded the exchange be made. I was left lying helpless in the water, like so much trash, as the boat sped away with Simon's body. I was hounded with no quarter by a detective who thought I'd had my own fiancé murdered so I could collect on the ransom insurance policy." A huff of breath, in a recitation that was detached, empty. "As if I didn't have enough money."

Josh's own breath hitched in sympathy before he berated himself for it in the privacy of his mind. Emery had gone through a lot, granted, but he was toxic for Josh. Josh needed to feel less, not more.

"After a few months the detective summoned me to the police station. Told me not to bring a lawyer; that I could call one there if I felt I needed one, but that I wouldn't want to. I trusted him. I don't know why." That utterly joyless sound was Emery's laughter. He shook his head. "I don't know why, but I did."

His eyes focused on Josh for the first time, but Josh looked at his crisp white shirt instead. He had no desire to continue seeing that expression of hatred. Thankfully there was something kinder — almost rueful — in his voice now.

"You've witnessed nearly every other humiliation in my life. It was foolish of me to think I'd get to keep this one private." His tone grew disdainful once more. "When I got to the station I understood why he said I wouldn't want a lawyer. They had Simon in custody."

Josh's head shot up of its own accord, spinning.

"The man I knew as Simon never existed," Emery continued, grief etched deep in the lines around his eyes. "His name was Vincent. It was planned from the start, our entire relationship. He had two partners — the men I thought had kidnapped us. The men I thought had killed him. The men who double-crossed him and fled with the money once they realized the detective wouldn't let the matter drop. Karma is a curious thing, sometimes."

Surely Josh's heart would come beating right out of his ribcage at any moment now.

"He tried playing me at first." Another bitter laugh. "He thought he'd convince me to pay for his defense lawyers. He wasn't responsible, he didn't want to, he was coerced. He loved me. His partners made him do it. Trite, predictable garbage. When he realized he wasn't getting anywhere he turned ugly."

Josh was still not comprehending the magnitude of what he was hearing, but he hung on Emery's every word. Emery's eyes were downcast, his tone gone abruptly subdued. "He spoke of how unbearable it had been. Being with me." Did Emery even realise he was rubbing his own arms, likely chasing the kind of comfort no one had known to give him? "How the original plan had been to wait for the wedding, for the considerably larger ransom insurance, but that he couldn't stomach another two months by my side no matter the payoff. I don't actually believe it," he added, forcing his eyes back up but not quite meeting Josh's.

"I'm fairly certain he didn't want to risk the longer sentence a fraud that size would carry. What would two more months have been to someone who'd already wasted two years? No. He calculated the size of the risk he was willing to take and made a decision based on that. Insurance companies aren't to be trifled with."

Yet another desolate not-laugh. "Being with me had been unspeakably dull, he said. If I'd at least been ugly I might have been interesting, he said. He said quite a lot. I don't know why I let him." A shrug that did nothing to conceal the anguish he carried inside him. "But when I walked out of that station I vowed not to tell anyone — not even Emma. Simon was dead, and whoever this Vincent was, he was nothing to me."

Emery took another breath and faced Josh head on, soul laid bare. "So, you see, it's not the tragic tale of a great love stolen by death. Just an ordinary story of a con man and his very gullible, very stupid mark." His last words were filled with self-loathing; Josh felt like someone had yanked the rug from under his feet.

"I never meant for you to know. But, after everything, I can't stand to have you here looking at me and talking about him with that concern, that care. As if he meant something to me even today. I can't stand it." His eyes shone fiercely, all traces of hatred gone. "Not from you, when you're the very opposite of him."

How had Josh missed how much softer Emery's eyes became when the topic moved away from his former fiancé? When they focused on Josh instead?

"I know the pain I caused you," Emery continued, voice choked, "I know what I lost that night. After Simon — Vincent — I... I haven't wanted to be with anyone whose company I didn't pay for. Please don't misunderstand," he said, raising his hand to forestall the objection Josh was sure to raise. "I had relationships before I made money. I know there are men out there who'd be interested in me for me. But the thought of sifting through all that, of navigating those waters again, it... I needed simplicity.

"It was simpler, whenever I was attracted to someone, whenever that someone appeared to reciprocate my interest. It was simpler. To offer compensation. I know... I know you felt I was treating you like a prostitute, but it wasn't that. I've never been with a prostitute." The last sentence was tacked on as a minor realization, a quaint fait-divers, quite removed from the reality he had lived.

"I never... I made sure not to proposition anyone who hadn't shown an interest before. It didn't matter if they were after my money or interested in me — they'd already shown themselves willing to..." He trailed off.