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“Explain.”
“Hailey married his dad when he was a little kid, so that he didn’t have to be in the system, and now I think he married me to do that for Daniela. Like he needs to pay a weird debt…sort of.”
“No.” Kennedy’s mug thudded to the counter. “Hell, no. That is not why he married you, Madelyn. Why would you even think that?”
Because I haven’t been in anything close to an actual relationship since I was twenty-five, and I fucked that up with my issues.
Because he looks at me like he’s dying inside but he refuses to touch me.
My pupils suddenly suffered an attack of gravity, because I couldn’t lift them from the floor.
“Because he doesn’t want me like that, not the way people…want each other.”
Kennedy snorted. “Plenty of married people don’t want each other that way anymore. Just ask my brother Ian. He and Sophie have been married thirteen years and have eight boys.Eight. She said he’s not allowed to touch her again until she’s in confirmed menopause and I’m pretty sure she wasn’t joking, because I don’t think they sleep in the same bed anymore.”
There was a sharp curse from the yard and both of us looked out the window to see Steve and Adam in a heated discussion as Adam braced the frame and Steve affixed the bolts.
“What happened, Madelyn?” Kennedy’s expression was soft and sympathetic. “Steve told me you haven’t been in a serious relationship in years, and that you have a history of sabotaging them when you feel a guy’s gotten too close. Maybe that’s what you’re doing now, without even realizing it.”
“It’s not me this time,” I said, with no idea how I was going to disclose this doozy.
Teagan chattered away in her playpen. She’d been slow to talk–Steve had considered taking her to a specialist–but now she was stringing together clearly pronounced words two and three at a time.
Kennedy joked that Teagan hadn’t gone through a practice phase at all. Instead, she’d quietly observed and then started talking when she was capable of dropping right into the middle of a conversation.
“Does Adam know what happened to you?” she asked gently, and I nodded slowly.
“Some of it. He knows the broader details of the story.”
“He’s always been protective of you,” she said, more to herself than anyone else. “You remember that time you got your period at school and you bled through your pants?”
I remembered that happening more than once, so I shrugged. At this point I just assumed all the information she had available to her was secondhand, thanks to my brother, and his memory wasn’t always the best.
“That little shit kid that always gave you such a hard time figured out why you had your sweatshirt tied around your waist and she was telling all the boys what happened, to try to embarrass you. She was such a little bitch.”
Why didn’t I remember this?
“Lila, I think.”
“Leia.” Just saying the name made me roll my eyes. “She probably still hates me for absolutely no reason.”
“Yeah, well…now she has a reason.” Kennedy looked smug. “One of my sisters-in-law is friendly with her. Turns out she married some cyber security guy fifteen years older than her. Two-point-five kids, a McMansion, a trip to the Caymans every year…and she still wants what you’ve got.”
“Pffft. What was her excuse then?”
“Same reason.”
I was about to ask her that reason, but there was yelling outside and I looked up in alarm, because it sounded like Adam yelling, and that was something I’d never heard before. It even shut Kennedy right up, her eyes going wide in alarm, and I almost ripped the slider off the track in my hurry to yank open the door and get out into the yard.
“That’s all I’m going to say about it.” Steve’s voice was quiet, tense and steely. “You know I’m right.”
Adam’s back was to me and I could see the tension in his shoulders. It was rolling off him in waves, an anger I’d never felt from him before, and when I stepped up behind him to smooth a hand over Adam’s back, my brother’s eyes snapped to mine.
“Mad?” Kennedy called from just inside the house, a distressed look on her face when I turned back to acknowledge that she’d called me. “Might want to brace yourself for this one.”
When it rained, it poured.
I turned slowly and lifted one hand to sayWhat?
