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“Oh, you’re gonna explain all right,” he clipped. “But you’ll be doing it face to face. Charlotte and I will be on the first available flight to Oregon, and you, for your own wellbeing, you better have the best reason anyone has ever had in the history of time, or so help me God, I’m going to beat you into the motherfucking ground!”
On that threat, he hung up.
“Shit,” I hissed as I tossed the phone down. I lifted the second beer to my lips and drained that one too before going for a third.
If I was going to have to live through my world falling apart, I was at least going to be shitfaced for it.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Cheyanne
I’d beenan anxious bundle of frayed nerves since picking Renee up from daycare earlier that day. I hadn’t been able to sit for more than a handful of seconds, and it was only by sheer strength of will that I was able to hide my turmoil from my daughter.
My mind had been racing with everything I’d found out. I kept hearing my sister’s voice over and over inside my head. I kept replaying that one instant when the world beneath my feet had crumbled away, taking my heart with it.
By the time Renee was bathed and tucked into bed, I was barely holding it together. So I did the only thing I could think to do to give me any kind of peace. I called Luna. That had been nearly two hours ago. On my request, she gathered Monica and Georgia and brought them to my house. I needed to be surrounded by my girls. I needed to give them the truth.
And that was exactly what I did.
I told them everything. About Charlotte and how we’d been ripped apart at such a young age. About growing up and never experiencing the feeling of being loved or wanted. Of being so desperate for love by the time I met Graham that I’d allowed myself to be fooled by a monster. I went into detail about how horrible those years with him had been. Then I explained about finding out I was pregnant with Renee and knowing I couldn’t allow my baby to grow up in that world. I told them all about creating Sawyer Darcy and the abject fear I felt like a weighted blanket pulling me down the whole time I was on the run. Until I came here. Until I met these people and finally,finallyfelt safe for the first time in my life. Then I told them about what had happened with Trent, how he’d been lying since the very beginning.
By the time I was done, my mouth was dry and my throat throbbed from all the words that had been torn from it. I’d never been so physically exhausted from an onslaught of emotions and adrenaline before.
I stopped in my pacing and grabbed the glass of wine that had gone untouched during my story and gulped half of it back, needing to relieve my parched throat as well as feel the buzz of the alcohol. I hadn’t been able to sit the whole time I spoke, pacing back and forth across the living room as they stared up at me, worried I’d worn a path in the floor.
I waited for one of them to break the silence that had filled the room, making the air thick and swampy with tension as the seconds ticked by. Finally, Monica spoke. Sort of. “I don’t—that’s just—I can’t believe—” She shook her head in bewilderment, her mouth gaping open. “I don’t know what to say.”
I decided I’d give her a little more time to wrap her head around the bombshell I’d just dropped on her. I shifted my focus to Georgia, who’d been sitting quietly beside Monica on the couch this whole time. Her eyes were swimming with tears that hadn’t fallen free, rimmed red with the same heartbreak I’d been feeling for the past several hours.
“Georgia?” I started warily, moving to sit myself on the edge of the coffee table in front of her. I was worried about her reaction the most. I loved them all equally, but Georgia and Desmond were surrogate parents to me. I was terrified that I’d lose her now that she knew I’d been lying this entire time. “Please say something. I understand if you’re mad, but I swear, I wasn’t trying to deceive you. Lying to you guys this whole time has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It killed me that I couldn’t tell you the truth. Please believe that.”
She blinked, two tears making tracks down her face. “Oh, sweet child,” she said on a shuddered exhale, “I’m not mad. How could I be? I’m just so devastated that you had to live through that kind of hell. My heart is broken.”
I hated that she was in pain, even if it was for me. But I couldn’t deny the relief I felt at knowing she didn’t hate me was so overwhelming I thought I might crumple to the floor.
“I hate that you’ve had to live with this secret for so long,” Monica said, finally managing to put her words together. “And I fuckinghateyou’ve spent all these years looking over your shoulder, scared that monster was going to find you. Is he still looking for you?”
I gave her a shrug, my smile tremulous. “Probably. He’d never willingly let me go. I was his property as far as he was concerned, and the fact that he wasn’t in control of me leaving is probably eating away at him. I followed the news for a while after I first left, watching to see what they were saying about it. About a year after I disappeared, the stories in the media started to change. The police held a press conference that they’d received intel that led them to believe I was dead, so they were calling off the search.”
Monica’s brow furrowed. “What does that mean? Did he stop looking for you?”
I shook my head, feeling like a two-ton weight was sitting on my chest. “Not a chance. I know him. He controls the police. That was him controlling the narrative. There was no evidence I’d died. That was all Graham.” And I could only imagine his reasons for making up such a story. “They made it sound like I’d been mentally unfit before my disappearance. That and my supposed death was his way of covering his bases for if or when he ever found me.” Because I knew, without a doubt, that if he did, that was it for me.
“We won’t let anything happen to you,” Georgia spat violently. “Not ever. If Dezzy and I have to camp out on your front porch with shotguns we will. No one is taking you.”
God, I loved her. I lovedallof them, this weird, quirky family I’d built for myself in this incredible town.
Luna spoke up for the first time then. “None of us will let anything happen to you,” she stated in a voice so hard, so fiercely protective, that it sent a shiver down my spine.
Twisting to face her, I reached out and took her hands in mine, giving them a squeeze. “I want you guys to know that I’m so grateful I found this place and all of you. I honestly don’t know what would have happened to Renee and me if I’d never come to Whitecap.”
“You’d have been fine,” Georgia decreed. “Not a doubt in my mind about that. You’re a fighter, sweetheart. Tough as nails. You’d never let anything happen to that precious girl.”
God, I hoped that was true.
Luna spoke again. “So much about you makes sense now. I always thought you were one of those weirdo technophobes, and that was why you didn’t have social media.”
“And the fact you never sold your pottery online,” Monica added. “I always thought you could make a living off your stuff if you’d create an online store or something. Now I get why you have the shops around town sell it on your behalf.”
