Connie's Cafe/Book Shop

Chapter 17 - His Secret

Dean slowly walked over to the sofa and sat down in the corner of the sofa facing Connie.

"Connie, I really love you, you know that don't you?"

Connie looked across at Dean, a little apprehensively, "Umm, yes and you know I love you too"

"OK, let's not try and hide the fact that you have a secret. Something to do with your scar and your family" Connie opened her mouth ready to protest but Dean held up his hand to quieten her down, "No wait, please Connie," he continued, "Let me speak.  I do want you to share your secret with me, I know it will be hard but I want to know all about your family. I have been thinking about it for a long time and if we want to have a good and solid relationship we can't hide important things from each other. So I will share something about my past which I am not proud of.  I haven't told anyone. The only people who know are myself, Andy and Becky his girlfriend."

Dean stopped for breath, Connie looked at him quizzically. She was the first to break the silence.

"I agree, I have also been thinking about it and it is silly, it really isn't a secret at all, it is just painful to talk about that's all. You deserve to know and also to meet my brother."

Dean again held up his hand, "Let me speak first, you may not be ashamed of whatever you aren't telling me but I do have a secret and I am ashamed of it."

Dean sat back and took a deep breath.

"Next Monday it will be exactly two years ago when this happened. I had broken up with my then girlfriend. I'd been feeling quite depressed. Andy and Becky came round to see me one Saturday afternoon and we decided to all go out for lunch. We had a great time, Andy and Becky had ordered wine with the meal, I only had a couple of glasses because I was driving.

When we left the restaurant it had started to rain, but not too heavily. Andy and Becky were messing around in the back, Becky was taking photos with her phone.  We were all happy, laughing and joking around. 

Becky called out to me to turn and look as she quickly took a photo of me driving, I swear to god I only took my eyes off the road for a second. But I guess it was a second too long. I had swerved a little as I turned and it seemed from nowhere this other car appeared, coming at us in the opposite direction.

I quickly swerved, the road was wet from the rain and I skidded a little, Becky screamed in the back, but I managed to straighten the car, I looked in the rearview mirror and I could see the other car swerving and going into the side barrier scraping his car along the metal barrier, but we then went round a bend and I couldn't see anything else.

A little way up I pulled over, checked that Becky and Andy were ok. We thought about trying to go back, just to check that the other car was okay but I was sure the occupants of the car were fine, but the car itself would be badly scratched. They probably had driven off because I hadn't stopped anyway.

Although I was not drunk, not by any stretch of the imagination, I had drunk a couple of glasses of wine, so we decided it was best just to continue on. After all no-one had been hurt. I was applying for a new job at the time and something like this could really damage my prospects not to mention the increase in my car insurance. So I drove off.

When we arrived at Andy's I dropped them off and we agreed never to say anything to anyone"

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