“I know. I know, Lilly, and it killed me to let you do that but…”
“There are no ‘buts’ for this. Oh my God! What a fool. What a goddamn fool I’ve been to just trust you.”
“You can. I swear—”
“I can’t!” She whipped around, snagged her keys. Tears streamed down her cheeks and her hair was a mess.
“Don’t go. Please Lilly.” I went to her then, stupidly. Tried to stop her by placing my hands on her shoulders in the very hopes she’d collapse against me, allow me to absorb her pain and we’d get through this.
She shoved me away, crying out with such despair it rattled my bones.
I was a problem solver. Not a drama creator. I didn’t enjoy inflicting pain and I definitely didn’t like not knowing how to fix something.
“I’m sorry. I’m so damn sorry. About all of this.”
“Why?” She pushed her fingers across her cheeks. “Why would you do this to me?”
There’d been no way I’d expected to love her so much. Not at first. Who the hell was I kidding? The way I felt about her was why I tried so hard to stay away.
“There’s so much more to this.” I might as well have swallowed a dozen razor blades for as painful as it hurt to speak. “Please. I know you’re upset. I get it. Can you please… please come with me to Dad’s so we can explain everything?”
She sniffed away tears and squeezed her eyes closed. For a moment I thought she’d agree. But then she rolled her shoulders and another whip of pain twisted her features. “David. He knew. And Brandon?”
I swallowed thickly. She took my silence as an answer.
“Jenna?” Her voice was rising, growing in panic and desperation. “Did you all think it’d be fun to build everything on a goddamn lie!”
She fisted her hands, leaned in close enough I could smell a hint of coffee on her breath as she shouted in my face.
I took every moment of it, unflinching, unwavering because I deserved it.
If she decided to pummel me with her fists, I’d take every punch.
There was no answer I could give her that would soothe her. I knew it as deeply as I knew how much I’d just hurt the first woman I’d ever loved.
“Lilly.” Her name was a prayer, falling from dry lips and a parched mouth. “Please don’t go. Don’t leave. Not like this.”
Forcing her to stay wouldn’t help a damn thing. My eyes burned with the loss of her even though she was still standing in front of me.
But that was only physically.
With every passing moment, I saw the grout and bricks and cement and all the walls I’d spent so long carefully taking down being erected between us.
“You gave me everything,” she said, her voice ragged and ripped and torn. “You gave me everything on a platter, all of it based on lies and secrets and now…” She flung her hands in the air before they fell lamely at her sides. “Now what do I have? Nothing. You gave me a hint at the life I could have had again, knowing this would destroy me. Didn’t you?”
“Please—” I begged.
“Didn’t you!”
Her scream sent icy spikes down my spine, each one more painful than the previous.
“Nothing has to change,” I said.
I didn’t mean us. I meant her job. Her apartment.
I couldn’t bear to see her look so terrified at losing all of it. “Your job….”
She laughed then, cold and brittle, and it shattered everything remaining inside of me. “You’re an asshole,” she hissed.
Before I could stop her, she flung open the door of my place and disappeared.
I could have chased her. I could have forced her to listen. I could have followed her to her place and cornered her and insisted she listen to every damn word I had to say but that wouldn’t have helped.
So I let her go, barefoot and barely dressed.
I’d give her some time. It wasn’t the first time she’d run from me but before, she’d listened once she had time to consider it.
This was no little thing for her to get over and there were no easy explanations to give.
It’d take all of us. It’d take Dad.
So I stared at the doorway, rooted to my spot, and I wiped away the tears in my own eyes as they fell.
I’d give her some time.
Then I’d go after her.
If she refused to listen—then I’d force her. I’d keep forcing and pushing until she told me to stop wasting my breath.
I loved her, and if getting her to give me a chance the first time was a fight—I now had the war of a lifetime on my hands. Fortunately, I already knew it’d be worth every battle, every wound Lilly would inflict in order to get through this… to the only victory possible—she and I together.
2
Lilly
They’d lied. Lies of omission, mostly. Lies, lies, lies. The word bounced around my brain and screamed at me so loudly as I escaped back to my apartment, I slammed my hands to my ears.
Everything from the very first time David stepped foot into Judith’s had been pre-planned by them. My head spun as I thought back to the beginning. To Hudson showing up at my school. To David’s slow and steady questioning of my classes, what I wanted out of life…
Their insistence about the job.
And oh God. This very apartment. I spun in a slow circle feeling the walls of it begin to close in on me.
Everything I now had was given to me by the Valentines. They’d tied my life and my success to them while they lied to me with every breath I took.
A sob tore through my chest that already hurt so damn bad. My bones ached from the agony of it all.
Melissa was his sister. The pretty and kind blonde who spent so many months searching me out. The months she spent asking me if I needed prayer for anything. The night of my birthday when I gave her everything I’d held back for so long.
Melissa had saved me in prison.
And then what… sent her brother and dad on a mission to finish rescuing me?
“You have a sister?”
“I had a sister.”
“Oh God.” I groaned as Hudson’s response repeated in my mind.
Had.
My hands clamped to my mouth and I rushed to the bathroom. My knees slammed into the cold tile, making me cry out in pain. I barely managed to fling open the top of the toilet before I gagged and puked up whatever was in my stomach.
“I had a sister.”
Those were Hudson’s words.
Which means she was dead.
Since that very last time I saw her, I’d always figured she got bored with coming to the prison and wasting a night when she could have been doing something normal. Never… never had I considered this alternative.
We had both lost siblings. People we’d loved. And in the nights where he knew about me, where he held me and let me cry about Josh… he related.
He related to me in ways he could have shared. He intentionally held back such a colossal part of himself, all while I was struggling with learning how to open up.
I’d given him all of me. All the ugliest, darkest, most regretful parts of my life and he’d taken every one, while holding back possibly the most important parts of himself.