Lex swallowed hard. “Yeah, I…I guess. It’s not…it’s not an easy thing I’m going to tell you, Mom.”
I prepared to stand up. “I think you guys need privacy for this.”
Lexie snatched my wrist and gripped me so tightly my bones ground together. “No, I…I don’t think I can do this without you, Myles.”
I sat down. “Okay. Whatever you need.”
Slowly, then, haltingly, Lexie told Liv her story, almost verbatim as she’d told it to me, clutching my hand in a death grip. Sparing no details. She cried through much of the telling, but remained strong. Liv seemed unable to process what she was being told. When Lexie was finally finished Liv sat, stunned, tears streaming freely down her face.
“Can…Can I have a moment?” she whispered.
She didn’t wait for an answer—shot to her feet and beelined for the bathroom. She was in there several minutes, and emerged with a box of Kleenex and red eyes, no more composed than when she’d gone in. “Lexie, I…I don’t even know what to say. I had no idea.”
“I know you didn’t, Mom. I hid it from you, from everyone.”
Liv cracked, sobbed. “I should have known. I should have known. Oh god, oh god, Lexie.” She peered at her daughter through a screen of tears. “I’m sorry, Alexandra. I’m so, so sorry.”
Lexie left my side and sat on the love seat by her mother. “It’s not your fault, Mom.”
“Yes, it is. I should have known.”
Lexie sighed. “You know, there is a part of me that wants to blame it on you. But I can’t. I hid it from you, and I’m a damn good liar. You couldn’t have known.”
Liv shook her head. “It’s not okay. I’m not okay with this.”
“Neither am I, Mom,” Lexie said. “But I have to learn to be. Getting it out is a big step. It’s not a secret anymore—and I’ve been keeping that a secret since I was thirteen. I’m free of it, now. Myles is to thank for that, honestly.” She smiled at me. “It’s going to take time to heal, for me, and for you, and for us.”
“It explains why sometimes you were so sharp with me, almost angry,” Liv said. “I could never understand, and now I do.” She sighed, long and deep and painful. “I am so, so sorry I didn’t protect you from that, Lexie. I should have. I feel like if I’d been paying closer attention, less busy with my career, with your sisters, with my marriage I’d have seen something...”
“There’s no point playing what-if, Mom,” Lexie said. “You think I haven’t spent the last eight years playing what-if? What if I hadn’t insisted on music lessons? What if I hadn’t said this or done that? What if something I did or said made him think I wanted it? What if I’d said no? What if… what if I hadn’t been too confused and scared to say no? What if I’d told you? What if I’d let you see how badly I was hurting? There’s a million, billion what-ifs in a situation like this, Mom, and not a single one of them will change what happened. We just have to move forward.”
“I don’t know that I’ll ever forgive myself,” Liv whispered. “Four years. Every week for four fucking years.” She hissed the last part, her use of a curse word a testament to the depth of her pain and guilt. “I’m so fucking sorry, Alexandra.”
Lexie wrapped her mother in a hug, and they stayed like that for a long time. Eventually, both of them sniffling and teary-eyed and clutching Kleenex, Lexie held her mother’s eyes. “I’m going to be okay, Mom. I survived it, I’m past it. I have Myles. I have you, and Charlie, and Cassie, and this whole crazy clan of people up here. I’m in a band! A world-touring, hugely popular, Grammy-winning band. I’m going to have a home, here, near you guys. It’s going to be okay, Mom. It will.”
Liv nodded. “You’ve had all these years to deal with this, Lex. I’m just now finding out. It’s going to take me time to work through it.” She took a deep breath; held it, let it out slowly. “Thank you for telling me.”
Lexie rubbed her face. “You and Myles are the only ones who know. And I’d like to keep it that way, for now. I don’t think the other girls need to know. Not yet, anyway. And now that Myles and I are getting married soon, I want this whole time to be happy. But I knew—I just knew you needed to know.” She held Liv’s arms. “And…I don’t blame you, okay? I don’t hold anyone responsible but him. He was a predator, and I was his prey. It happened. It’s over. We move forward. We see therapists. And we just live and be happy, okay? Don’t blame yourself, Mom. Please.”
Liv nodded again, trying to regain her composure, and mostly succeeding. “I’ll try. And yes, we’ll be seeing a therapist, because you don’t heal from something like this just by talking about it a few times. And god knows my mom guilt is going to keep me awake at night until I’m able to deal with it.”
“Don’t let it, Mom. Promise me.”
Liv shook her head. “I can’t do that, my love. I’m your mother. My sole purpose in life was to raise you and keep you safe, and I failed—I failed huge, in the worst way I could have. It’s a burden I’m going to have to carry, knowing I failed you that way. I hear what you’re saying, and I appreciate, but you can’t shield me from the guilt I’m going to feel. That I should feel.” She sniffed. “We’d just better not tell Lucas or Crow. Because if either of those two ever found out…”
“If any of the men in this family found out,” Lexie said, “it would be ugly. And for as much as I’ve daydreamed about the horrible ways I’d like that man to suffer for what he did to me, I won’t allow it. I won’t dwell on it. It won’t fix me. It won’t heal me, it won’t take away the pain I felt, and still feel.”
“You know how hard it is for me to not hunt him down?” I said, my first words in a long time. “I want to peel his fuckin’ skin off. But I know Lex is right.” I sighed. “I probably should let you know, though, Lex—I had a PI find him. He’s been in jail for the last four years, and will spend the rest of his life in jail. Someone spoke up, finally, and decades of abuse came to light. He’s gone.”
Lex nodded. “I got a letter from a lawyer when it all started coming out. But I couldn’t face any of it. I was too scared and embarrassed and ashamed and…shit, a lot of things—to be able to be part of that trial. It would be everyone finding out, and no one knew, and I just wanted it to stay that way. I never did let myself find out what eventually happened to him after the trial—I couldn’t face the prospect of him not being convicted.” She shook herself, tendered me a small smile. “So, thank you. I feel like the door to everything is closed.”
“I hope you know I would have contracted a hit on him, if he wasn’t in jail,” I said.
Lexie frowned. “Myles.”
I shrugged. “Not sure that’s much of an exaggeration. I still know people in the AzTex.” I let out a breath. “But I’ve been assured that child molesters and rapists…well, let’s just say they don’t fare well in prison. So he’ll get his due…for a long time.”
Lexie shook her head. “Myles, thank you for wanting to avenge me, but I just want to forget it all. I don’t want revenge. I just want to live my life and be happy.” She reached out, and I moved to perch on the edge of the love seat. “Just love me, Myles. That’ll more than make up for it.”
I smiled. “That’s easy, babe.”
Liv eyed Lexie. “He called you babe.”
Lexie grinned, laughed. “Yeah, I’m over that. As long as it’s not some smarmy old dude talking down to me, Myles using words to show me how much he loves me is something I’m more than okay with.”
Liv clapped her hands. “So. Happy things. Can I please, please be allowed to go a little crazy on this wedding?”
Lexie pretended to be annoyed. “No frilly shit, Mom. No swans, and none of that something old, something new, something blue stuff. You know me. Have fun, but…no frilly bullshit.”
Liv laughed. “Yes, yes. But you have to let me go a little crazy. You’re my first daughter to get married. Cassie and Ink and Charlie and Crow all say they’re waiting awhile and see no need for the ceremony.” She rolled her eyes to show
what she thought about that. “So now I get to plan a wedding, and I’m excited.”
“Ohh boy,” Lex laughed. “Here we go.”
I poked her. “Have fun with it, babe. I’ll give you my Amex Black card, and you can go fuckin’ nuts.” I leveled a look at Liv. “I mean that. Whatever you can convince her to go for, do it.”
“A what card?” Lexie said.
Liv’s eyes were wide. “ultraexclusive, truly unlimited credit. Like, buy literally anything.”
I dug said card out of my wallet and handed it over. “See how much damage you can do, ladies.” I kissed Lex. “I wanna go jam with Crow. Okay?”
She nodded. “I’m gonna stay and talk to Mom. See how much of your money I can spend.”
I touched her lips. “Ours, baby. Remember that.”
She kissed me back, and I had to pull away before I got carried away. When I left, Lex and Liv had their heads together, and I had a feeling the idea of a small family wedding this week was a goner. But I didn’t care. As long as that woman was my wife at the end of it, it would be worth the wait and the cost. I’d sell off a condo building or two, if I had to, but I doubted they could do that much damage.
My wife.
Lexie Goode, my wild goddess, was going to be my wife.
Suddenly, my life had gotten even better.
Epilogue
Torie
My phone rang in the middle of my shift, and my boss heard it before I could silence it.
“No cell phones on floor,” he growled at me in his thick Albanian accent. “You know this.”
“Sorry, Mr. Sokoli. I was running late this morning and forgot it was in my pocket.”
He knew I was one of his best waitresses, so he just grumbled in Albanian and waved me off. “Table eight wants more coffee.”
I hustled with the coffeepot, making sure to at least silence the phone. I felt it vibrate with a voicemail, but I got double-sat again because the girl in the back section was new and couldn’t handle more than three tables at a time, so I was busy running my two tables at once in her section, plus the six tables in progress in my own. By the time we closed and I got through all my side-work, it was after eleven at night and I hadn’t even had time for dinner, so my stomach was growling. I counted out my tips, tipped out the bus boy, pocketed the rest, and headed for my bike.
By which I mean bicycle. The old Camry of Mom’s I’d been driving since I was sixteen—handed down from Mom to Charlie, to Cassie, to Lexie, and then to me, had over a hundred and fifty thousand miles on it—and it had finally died. Dead, done, buh-bye. It needed a new transmission, which Mr. Sokoli, who knew a bit about cars, told me would cost more to fix than the thing was worth. So I was stuck using a twenty-year-old ten-speed I’d gotten for ten bucks at the Salvation Army.
Two roommates had moved out with boyfriends, which left Jillie, Leighton, and me paying extra rent, and things had been dead lately, and…well, the truth is, I was just broke. I had two hundred and nineteen dollars in my bank account, another hundred and five in my pocket, and rent was due tomorrow and it was three hundred. That would leave me with…shit, math is hard…twenty-four dollars to my name. For food, for everything I would need until my next shift, and I was scheduled to be off for two days. I’d have to pick up some shifts. Whenever I could, I worked doubles and extra shifts and even picked up some shifts at the cafe where Leighton worked, washing dishes for cash. But I was always a day late and a dollar short.
I’d gotten partial scholarships to local colleges, and Mom had made an open-ended offer to pay for community college if I wanted, and I’d tried that for a semester, but I just…I had no clue what I would study, so why waste the time and money? I was turning twenty in a week and had no education beyond high school. No talents, like Cassie with dance or Charlie with being, like a super genius with five degrees or whatever, and now Lexie was this world superstar musician all of a sudden, and even Poppy was like the most talented artist I’d ever seen—she took photographs and painted over them, used magazine cutouts and feathers and just about anything that inspired her, and she would embellish the photograph until it was this whole new thing.
All my sisters had talents and skills and careers and futures.
And then there was me. Torie. The middle child. You’d think Lexie would be the middle, since she had Charlie and Cass above her and Poppy and me below, but somehow I was the middle girl. The quiet one. The one who never went out for the school play, never did volleyball or soccer or music lessons, or dance. I didn’t paint or sing, I didn’t excel at academics. I had nothing. I just…was.
I waited tables and smoked pot with Leighton and Jillie. I didn’t even have a boyfriend. I’d never had a boyfriend. Max didn’t count—we fooled around when we were stoned, but it was just fooling around, and I’d told him I wasn’t going to sleep with him. I wasn’t wasting that on a stoner loser like Max. I say that with affection, because I’m a stoner loser too, and he’s been my best friend since third grade. But I don’t love him and so we just fool around.
The bike ride home was long and cold because it was late and I’d forgotten my hoodie this morning, and then it started drizzling and by the time I got home I was soaked and freezing my tits off. Leighton and Jillie were watching The Last Unicorn for the billionth time, so I jumped in the shower to warm up.
And by the time I got out, I was dead tired and went straight to bed.
I forgot about listening to the voicemail from earlier in the day, or even looking to see who’d called. My phone never even made it to the charger.
So when I woke up the battery on my phone was dead. I juiced it up enough to turn it on and saw the call had been from Lexie. The voicemail was like, four minutes long, and that just sounded super boring, so I just called Lexie back.
“Torie!” Bright, chipper, happy. “Did you get my voicemail?
I sighed. “Why are you so loud?”
She laughed. “Are you stoned already?”
“No, I wish. I just woke up. I saw your voicemail, but it was like an hour long so I figured I’d just call you. What’s up?”
“You really should’ve listened to it,” she said, “because now I have to say it all over again. But it’s better to say it directly to you than on a voicemail anyway, so…the story, Torie, is I’m getting married.”
I blanked out. “Uh. To who?”
“Myles North.”
“The country dude you were on stage with?”
“Yeah, him.”
“Dude, he’s hot.”
“I know!”
“You’re marrying him?”
She laughed. “Yeah, I know, it’s a little sudden but it’s, like, the most amazing thing ever.”
“How long have you known him?”
“Like, four months.”
“Lex, that’s crazy.”
She laughed again. “I know. But I’m stupid in love with the man, and we’re going on tour as The North Band this fall, and I’m doing it as Mrs. Myles North, thank you very much.”
“I’m happy for you.”
She snickered. “You super sound it, Tor.”
“I am!” I tried to sound chipper, but I’m just a mellow person, and I just woke up and I’m not a morning person. “I’m happy for you. For real. Congratulations.” I thought of a useful question. “Um. When’s the wedding?”
“That’s the fun part. In two weeks!”
I coughed my surprise. “Wait, what?”
“Yeah. That’s the real reason I called. You have to get to Ketchikan for the wedding.”
“Uh. I have work.”
“Take it off. I’m your sister and I’m getting married.”
“I can’t afford a plane ticket.”
“I’ll buy you one.”
“No, no,” I muttered. “I’ll figure it out.”
She sighed. “Torie, for real. We’ll fly you up. Please let me.”
“Would you accept that, if it was the other way around?”
Her silence w
as telling. “No.”
“All right, then. I’ll find my own way to Alaska.” I laughed. “Why Alaska?”
She giggled. “Ask Mom. She was the one to move up here. But once you’re up here, you never want to leave.”
“Great. I’ll get stuck in B-F-E, Alaska, and have no future in the middle of nowhere.”
“God, Torie, you’re such a downer,” she griped.
“Leighton calls me Tor-Eeyore.”
“Oh—my—god, that’s perfect. Tor-Eeyore.” She cackled. “I’m calling you that, now.”
“No, you’re not.” I huffed. “Shouldn’t have told you.”
“But ya did!” She sing-songed. “Anyway. Two weeks from today, that’s the date. Be here. If you get stuck in like Kansas, call me. I’ll have Myles send his jet down to pick you up.”
“He has a private jet?”
“Yep.”
“You bitch.” I laughed. “You had to snag a rich and famous dude?”
She laughed with me. “Right? Luckiest girl in the world, right here.” A serious pause, then. “I love you, Tor. Get here. And ask for help if you need it. I know the feeling, but ask. Okay? Don’t just be stuck.”
“Yeah, yeah. Love you too.” I picked at a scab on my knee. “Is Poppy coming?”
“Yeah, she’s driving. She met some guy apparently, and they’re making it a road trip.”
“Poppy has a boyfriend?” I asked. “No fucking way. I thought she swore off men forever after the last guy. I was half convinced she’d turn lesbian.”
“I know, right? But yeah, I guess. I don’t know, she’s cagey about it. I guess we’ll meet him at the wedding, though.” A pause, and I knew what was coming. “Are you gonna bring Max?”
I sputtered. “Max? Hell no. He’s a friend. But not the kind of friend you bring to a wedding. It’s never been like that.”
“Didn’t you lose your virginity to him?”
I blushed, swallowed hard. “To Max?” I scoffed. “No.”
Leave it at that, Lexie—please leave it at that.
“Tor?”