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“Well, at least working on the wedding will give you something to do, to keep busy while you’re here,” she said, taking a sip of her wine. “So you don’t just… you know…”
“Spend my time eating Cheetos while plotting my new stepbrother’s murder?”
She practically shivered. “Stop calling him stepbrother. He ate you out. It’s creepy.”
Yeah; Alyssa knew the whole, ugly truth. And she was the only one who ever would.
“That’s literally what he’ll be in five weeks.”
“Okay, technically,” she said. “I guess. But you’re both adults. It’s not the same.”
I took a swig of my margarita and confessed, “I saw him yesterday.”
Her jaw dropped. “You saw him already? And you didn’t tell me?”
“I wanted to tell you face-to-face. It was too depressing to try to put it in a text.”
My best friend looked pained, for me. “That bad?”
“It was… a nightmare, actually. He was revolting. Tried to remind me how much I enjoyed it.”
“Seriously?”
“I hope he rots in hell.”
“What did you do? Please tell me you slapped his stupid, pretty face.”
I laughed bitterly. Alyssa had never met Shane, but I’d described him to her vividly, and anyway she’d Googled him.
So had I, after the night I met him.
As it turned out, there were a few searchable photos of him online, on account of his fifteen seconds of fame back in college. When he was a fucking hockey player.
I’d been right. He was an athlete.
Though his hockey career was over long before I met him.
Too bad I never thought to look him upbeforethat night at the bar. I’d met Jacob’s other sons by then, and I knew he had an adopted son; a son he had a strained relationship with. I knew his name was Shane. I even saw a few photos of him as a boy and a young teen in Jacob’s house. But the man I met in that bar did not look like that boy. And anyway, I had no reason to wonder what Jacob’s son, the only son I hadn’t met yet, looked like, or if he was hot or if he would try to fuck me in a bar one night. Because who does that?
“No, I didn’t slap him. I wouldn’t give him the pleasure. He’d probably get off on it or something.”
Alyssa kind of snorted, because we both knew that Shane was an amateur MMA fighter. Mom never said so, but my cousins had heard the rumors—that he was involved in “underground fighting,” whatever that was. And Alyssa also knew almost every detail about my night with him.
All the kinky, yummy shit we did, all instigated by him. The bruises and scars on his body and the way he dominated me. The way he called melittle girl. The way he bossed me around and I fucking loved it.
The way I cried the next morning because I was so humiliated when I discovered who he was.
I’d cried in her lap, too. As soon as I got home from Whistler and told her the whole story in person.
“You’ve got to forgive yourself for that night, Jolie,” she told me, reading me like a book.
“I know. I just… can’t yet.”
“You’ve punished yourself for four years already. Yes, you hurt your mom. Yes, you guys had a painful fight. And yes, she worried about you that night when you disappeared. You devastated her when you didn’t come to her engagement party. I know. We all know. But you’ve worked it out since then. Things aren’t as bad as they used to be between you two.”
“Yeah. Because I moved to another country to get away from her.”
“Did you?” Alyssa asked me meaningfully.
