Page 66 of Wild Highway (Runaway 2)

She didn’t have to be jealous. She could have that same relationship. Gemma had no clue how much love my mother had to give. It was endless. She’d pull Gemma into her life and never let go.

I opened my mouth, unsure what to say, but Gemma spoke first.

“My mother was crazy.”

I closed my mouth, watching her profile as she kept her gaze locked on the path ahead. This wasn’t the first time she’d hinted at her mother’s issues, and unlike her other mentions, I hoped her story wouldn’t end here. I hoped she’d keep talking and finally get some of this shit out in the open. To set it free and let the wind carry it away.

“Not like wild and crazy,” she clarified. “Crazy, crazy. It took me a long time after leaving to understand that there was something fundamentally wrong with her. Her mind, it wasn’t right.”

“What happened? Why’d you run?”

“To stay sane. Things were . . . unlivable. As I got older, it kept deteriorating. Until I knew if I stayed, I’d go mad. I’d end it before I became like her.”

The air vanished from my lungs. The pain in my chest was crippling. Gemma was fierce and strong. For her to consider taking her own life . . . things were far worse than I’d ever imagined.

I shifted Jigsaw closer and held out a hand, palm open.

Gemma laid hers on mine and I held it so tight that she’d have to rip it free.

“My mom was beautiful,” she said. “I look in the mirror each morning and she’s staring right back. I hate that I look like her.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I almost got a nose job in Boston so I wouldn’t be the same. But then I found this great therapist and he helped me see that my looks were my own. Some days though, I still want the plastic surgery. Maybe that’s me being weak.”

“There’s not a damn thing weak about you. I get it.” And if she wanted to change her nose or her chin or her cheeks, I’d drive her to the surgeon.

“I want to hate her,” Gemma whispered, the words barely audible above the horses’ steps and the breeze rolling across the meadow. “It would make everything so much easier, except I don’t. I pity her. Her father, my grandfather, raped her from the time she was twelve. It broke her mind.”

I gritted my teeth, holding my breath so I wouldn’t explode as my temper surged. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Raped . . . by a parent? It was the unthinkable.

“As you can imagine, she was never right with men.” Gemma shook her head. “And thankfully, the bastard had a heart attack when she was six months pregnant with me.”

My heart stopped. Gemma had never mentioned her father. Was she—

“No,” she answered the question I hadn’t been able to think, let alone say aloud. “Once my mom turned eighteen, my grandfather never touched her again. She wasn’t interesting enough for him. My father was some guy Mom met at a bar and screwed in a bathroom. She was quite . . . forthcoming about her sexual escapades. She always told me every little detail. Other girls got fairy tales as their bedtime stories. I got detailed comparisons of Mom’s lovers.”

Gemma truly had lived in a hell.

“Mom worked at a grocery store,” she said. “I had a roof over my head and never went hungry. She’d buy me cute clothes from Kmart. I remember her laughing and tickling me when I was little. It’s hard for me to pinpoint exactly when I realized she was crazy, and I’d been too young to notice early on. We were poor, but we weren’t unhappy. Then everything changed.”

“What changed?” I asked.

“Me. I got older. I wasn’t as naïve to the boyfriends Mom had always invited to our house. She’d parade me in front of them and say things like, ‘Isn’t she pretty?’ or ‘You can touch her hair.’”

My stomach rolled. I wasn’t sure I could keep listening to this, but I held her hand and let her talk because this wasn’t for me. This was for Gemma. Maybe she’d told a therapist about this, but she needed to air it out here too.

She tightened her grip on my hand. “Most men who came over never came back. They either got what they’d been after from her or they saw Mom’s crazy and left.”

“Fucking cowards,” I spat. “They left. But they left you there too.”

Hadn’t anyone called the cops? Hadn’t one of those bastards seen a girl in danger?

“Everything would have been fine if they all would have left,” she said. “Some were worse than cowards.”

“Gem, did you . . . did they . . .” Christ. I couldn’t get the words out of my mouth.

“I was never raped. But there are things that happened that I won’t ever talk about again.”