Read Online Sweeter Than Sin by Shiloh Walker - Free Book Online Page A

have it to his ear when he heard her voice.
    “Forget I called,” Lana said, her voice cool and remote, a thousand miles away from what it had been only a moment ago.
    “What?”
    “Just forget I called. Don’t tell anybody and if you…” She stopped and sighed. “Look. I have to leave. I don’t know when I’ll be back. I may not be back. You’re probably going to hear some things, see some things. Nothing you hear is going to be true, but I need your word you won’t say anything about me calling tonight. No matter what.”
    “I don’t think so,” he bit off. Now the worry was a scream in his head and he clutched the phone so tight, it bit into his hand. “I think it’s time you tell me what’s going on, Lana.”
    “I can’t.” She laughed and the sound was unamused. “You know how you always told me that sooner or later, I’d bite off more than I could chew? Later has happened; now I have to deal with it. Don’t tell anybody, Adam, not if we’re friends. If anybody can lie about this, it’s you. Hardly anybody even knows we’re friends anymore except your folks.… I’m counting on you.”
    *   *   *
    If anybody can lie—
    He stumbled to a halt at the very edge of the sidewalk and bent over, his lungs burning, the muscles in his thighs quivering, and his heart felt like somebody had ripped it out and torn it to shreds.
    Just how did a man live with the knowledge of that kind of secret inside him? For twenty years?
    I’m in trouble.…
    You’re probably going to hear some things, see some things. Nothing you hear is going to be true.…
    Not a whole hell of a lot had ever been said about Lana.
    People speculated that she ran off.
    People speculated she’d done something stupid, although stupid wasn’t exactly Lana’s style. Determined, full of bravado … sometimes misplaced. She’d been out to change the world.
    Instead, she’d just disappeared and he’d quietly died a little inside, bit by bit, day by day, as he waited for her to come back.
    She’d said she didn’t know when . He’d took that to mean it would take a while.
    He’d never expected that he wouldn’t see her again. That she was gone … forever. She’d said she might not come back, but he hadn’t really expected her to mean it.
    Over the years, though, he’d realized that just might be the case and he had forced himself to live with it.
    Realized that maybe, just maybe, she’d run off with David Sutter, thinking about how he’d seen the two of them that one time.
    Lana and David … nah, it had never clicked.
    But maybe Adam had read it wrong. Read her wrong, because he’d been so stupid-crazy over her. After all, if she was the woman he’d thought, she’d never have stayed away from Jim like she had.
    And it was easier, really, to think about her out there somewhere with David. Or anybody else. Alone, even, than to think of her gone . For real gone. So Adam told himself that what was had happened, that she’d left with David, even though part of him knew better.
    The discovery of the body under the Frampton house had just about torn him apart, and he had to keep that quiet misery buried inside.
    But somebody had died. Somebody had killed .
    She’d said she’d done something … that she had to leave.
    Had she killed somebody? That alone was what kept Adam quiet. If she’d done something, hurt somebody, she’d done it for a reason, and he wasn’t going to be the one to drive a nail in her coffin.
    But fuck, this was killing him.
    Who was it?
    David’s mother? Diane had never been worth shit, and if she was the one Lana had been trying to get David away from  … she probably needed to die. There were worse scenarios, one that dug deep, ugly slashes into Adam’s soul and made him want to destroy something, hurt something.
    “Son of a bitch!” he snarled, spinning away from the river and driving the heels of his hands against his eyes. Images of blood danced across the back of his eyes like a