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Having done all that I could do, I wrapped my arm so it wasn't so incriminating and climbed back into bed and waited.
"Janie?" Lo's voice reached me a while later. "You in here, babe?"
I couldn't do it. I couldn't face her. I was a mess. I burrowed deeper into the blankets.
"Honey." Her hand landed down on my shoulder. I flew up in the bed, crashing into the headboard. "It's me. Hey, it's me," she did in the 'soothing a scared animal' voice. I tilted my head up to the ceiling, taking deep breaths, willing the tears to stop flowing, trying to lock it all down. "You alright, honey?"
Oh what a loaded, loaded question.
I didn't want to lie to her, but what choice did I really have?
I tilted my head down, getting my first good look at her since I left almost nine days before. "Your face," I gasped, a spiraling feeling in my stomach. I knew she had been beat up, but it was another thing to see it. I'd seen Lo all kinds of battle-weary over the years, in various degrees of beat up. She always wore it well, like a badge of honor, never once even suggesting that it somehow made her less of a warrior for getting her ass handed to her here and there. But it wasn't the same. When it wasn't a fair fight, when it was one of her demons popping up out of nowhere and trying to drag her back down into hell.
"Back is worse," she shrugged, as was her nature. "Your arm," she said, gesturing toward the gauze. "Burn right?" she asked and I felt my head snap up. She knew. She knew. "Know you like a little sister. Did you really think I'd miss the Jstorm signature? No one does explosions like you, babe."
Of course she knew. What an idiot I was to think I would get away with it. I raked a hand through the bird's nest I called hair. "You knew. How long?"
"Since about the minute after I picked myself up off the ground."
I exhaled loudly. "You weren't supposed to be there. You were supposed to be at Reign's. I told Summer..."
"No effing way," she laughed. "Oh, that makes so much more sense now."
"What does?"
"That ridiculous dinner party. None of us understood why the hell we were there except that Summer threw a holy fit at any of us who said we weren't going to be able to make it."
"I wanted to keep you all safe," I admitted.
"While you created chaos."
"I didn't want any of the friendleys thinking it was any of the other friendleys doing the dirt," I said, referring to Hailstorm, The Henchmen, Richard Lyon, and the Mallick family- all the organizations that, while they did less than legal things, had a moral compass. I didn't want any of them to start pointing fingers and causing a war where there had always been peace, even camaraderie.
Lo was quiet for a long minute, looking like she was struggling for the right thing to say. "That night, babe, that night is burned in my memory," she said and I know she didn't mean the night of the bombing. She meant the night that she found me when I was sixteen. "When I close my eyes, some nights, I still see it clear as I did then. You were too young to be that broken. Sixteen with scars a grown woman would never be able to walk around wearing. And not just all these ones," she said, running her hand down the tattoos on my arm, tattoos I got to cover up what was underneath. "I mean the ones you wear on the inside. I didn't know you. You couldn't even speak to me your face was so swollen, but I knew you. I understood. Our souls spoke in the same language- the language only women can fully understand, babe. And the second I picked you up off that street, I knew I would give anything to see you able to carry your own weight again one day, to see you smile or laugh, to see you start to heal."
"I tried, Lo," I said, my voice a desperate whisper. I did. I tried so hard to brush it off, to bury it deep and move on, to be a better, stronger woman. I tried every day of my life.
Her hand grabbed mine and held tight. "No. You didn't try. You succeeded. It took a long time, years, but you healed from the outside in. But because I spoke your language, babe, I knew that there were some scars, the ones marked deep down on your soul, that might never heal. I understood that. I never expected you to live one day like all of that never happened to you. It would be hypocritical of me to expect that of you when I didn't expect it of myself."
"Lo..." I said, shaking my head. She was going to tell me about her past. She thought that by telling me, by letting me in, that maybe I would feel comfortable enough to do the same. But I didn't need that. I didn't need the gory details.
"I was wrong to hide it. I was wrong to think that what happened to me would define the way others would see me. It wasn't my fault that I married someone who wasn't who I thought he was. It wasn't my fault he beat me, that he pushed himself on me. It wasn't even my fault that I stayed. I was young. Older than you were, babe, but way too young to deal with that. I didn't see a way out. But when I finally did, I took it."
"Lo," I broke in, needing to tell her that I had already found out about him. "I know about Damian Crane."
Her body jerked and I could see betrayal crossing her face. "Cash told..."
"I snooped, Lo. I know I shouldn't have, but I could never sleep. There were only so many books I could read, so many articles I could browse. I looked into all of you at the beginning. I knew you were married. I knew you left him. I didn't know he beat you." My lip trembled slightly before I forced it to relax. "But you're right- it didn't change the way I thought about you. It doesn't define you. You're you. You're the baddest bitch I've ever met and you taught me so much about how to be strong, how to overcome, even though I didn't know there was something like that for you to overcome, I think I felt it. I felt it in my gut."
