The Best Lie (Damaged Book 2)

by Jenna Mills

  Not that long ago I would have. I was really good at it, too. Pretending.

  Lying.

  But I had a choice, I knew. That’s what Dr. Rivers was always telling me. I had choices. I could choose to go forward, I could choose to stay where I was—or I could choose to go back.

  “My mom is a drug addict.”

  Chapter 6

  Everything was the same. The tall meadow grass still waved around us. Yellow and purple wildflowers still danced. The sun warmed and the breeze cooled.

  But in speaking the words, the truth, I knew something fundamental had changed.

  “I don’t usually talk about her,” I said, staring up at Austin and trying to understand what I saw in his eyes, how the green could be gentle but fierce at the same time, how the gleam could be frozen, but burning still.

  “Sometimes I like to pretend she doesn’t exist,” I went on, and he let me, let me talk while he stood silently, listening, “like I can just erase her from my life. But I can’t. Not literally, because then there would be no me. And not figuratively, either, because…she’s my mom.”

  An unfortunate fact she reminded me of over and over and over.

  “So I used to make excuses for her.” When my friends stopped by, but never once saw my mother. “That she was sick or in pain, that she had a headache, that she had a hard time sleeping at night and that’s why she couldn’t get out of bed during the day.” That’s when the lies, the stories, had started. “I’d tell them they couldn’t stay because I had chores or piano to practice or something—always something.” Because the truth was too ugly. “Because I didn’t want them there, in the house. Because I knew that if they saw her, they’d know. They’d figure it all out. And then they might…”

  I didn’t know what. Because when you’re a little kid you don’t always know what you’re afraid of. You can sense things. You can know that things aren’t right and that even worse things could happen, but you don’t know what those things are. So you protect. You protect what you know, what you have—even if it’s ugly.

  Because it’s all you have.

  All you know.

  And if you lose it…

  “I was seven years old the first time she almost killed herself,” I said, and the flash of pain across Austin’s face was so sharp, it lanced straight through me. Maybe I winced. Maybe it was worse than a wince. But he finally let go of the tangle he’d been fingering all that time, letting his hand drift lower, to my shoulder.

  And I let him.

  I let him touch me, let him put his hand to my shoulder.

  “Zoe,” he said, and this time it was his voice that ripped through me. “You don’t have to do this.”

  And this time when my throat tightened, it wasn’t with horror or anger, but with a longing that took my breath away.

  “Yes, I do,” I said. I did. “I need to.” Wanted to.

  I’m not sure which surprised me more—the need, or the want.

  He kept his eyes on mine, his hand steady against the curve of my shoulder.

  “I came home from school and found her,” I said—remembered. Relived. “She was on the floor beside her bed, all stretched out, and I remember thinking that was a strange place to take a nap. I…” Memories tumbled, faster, harder. Sharper. They were all there, gurgling like acid. “I almost left her.” It still messed me up to think about what would have happened if I had. “I started to turn and leave her, annoyed that once again she wouldn’t be able to take me to the store for fresh bread.”

  “You were only a little girl,” Austin said.

  “I got mad. I got mad because I’d asked her to go to the store, and she’d forgotten, again, and I had nothing to eat for dinner, and I was hungry. So I dropped down beside her and tried to wake her up.”

  Against my shoulder, Austin’s hand tightened.

  “She didn’t feel right. That’s what I remember the most. She was cold, clammy, and when I shook her, nothing happened.” I closed my eyes, opening them a heartbeat later—but the images kept right on playing, over and over and over, like a movie that would never end. My mom. There on the ground. So still. Her face crazy white, streaked by tangles of dark, dark hair. Her mouth slightly open.

  “I remember screaming. I remember screaming Mama over and over. And then I ran. Our phone wasn’t working. She hadn’t paid the bill or something, so I had to run to the neighbor’s. I remember banging on the door, and I remember Mrs. Langston opening it. I remember telling her my mama was sick and that she needed help…that she must have fallen because she was on the floor and she wasn’t moving. I remember Mrs. Langston calling for her husband and running out the door—”

  We stood in the middle of a wide open space, blue skies and a green waving meadow, snow-capped mountains in the distance, but the invisible box around me, the one with those cold tight walls, in which I’d lived for so long, kept squeezing, squeezing…

  “I remember running for the phone and calling 911, then my granddad—her father. I remember the ambulance and the paramedics and Mrs. Langston taking my hand and leading me from the room…” And for a moment I was that little girl all over again, not understanding what was going on and the way everyone kept looking at me. “…and seeing my granddad’s car pull up and running for him, down the driveway…”

  My eyes filled. I looked away, looked away fast, before the salty warmth spilled over.

  “Hey,” Austin said, quietly, gently, and I couldn’t help it, I turned back toward him, and let him see what I’d been trying to hide.

  What I’d been trying to hide for so, so long.

  Long, dark blond bangs slipped against his eyes, but did nothing to hide the glow of compassion.

  “He always made me feel safe,” I murmured as Austin lifted a hand to the side of my face. “He had a way of making me believe everything was going to be okay.”

  Austin’s fingers played along my cheekbone. “Isn’t that what grandparents are for?”

  Around me, the park and the mountains softened, the stark, jagged lines becoming more of an Impressionist’s blur. “He died about a year after that. Pancreatic cancer. Diagnosed right before Thanksgiving, gone by Christmas.”

  Austin’s eyes darkened.

  “But Mom was okay,” I said, not wanting to dwell in the dark places, at least not the ones that couldn’t be changed. “She swore the overdose was an accident. That she was only tired and trying to get some sleep. She promised things would get better—she even got a job—” Abruptly, I broke off and looked away.

  “Don’t,” Austin said, and then he was there, closer than before, the fronts of our thighs brushing. “Don’t look away.”

  I flashed a smile, one of those default, uncomfortable ones designed to gloss over what was really happening. “Not sure where all that came from.”

  He smiled back—but his looked more real. “Doesn’t matter. Maybe it needed to come out.”

  I laughed. “There you go sounding like my shrink again.”

  “Just a friend.”

  Three words. That’s all they were. It didn’t make sense that they could make me smile and want to cry at the same time.

  “It was one of her friends, wasn’t it?”

  The question hit me like a sudden slide of rocks. I felt my eyes flare, my body go absolutely, deadly still.

  “The guy who attacked you.” His voice was quieter now, so very, very quiet his words barely registered over the scream of the wind. “Because things never got better.”

  My mind raced. Stories spun. Excuses—denials.

  But the truth hung right there between us.

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “Son of a fucking bitch—”

  “I don’t think she had any idea,” I rushed to explain, but Austin didn’t let me finish.

  “Any idea what?” he said so roughly that my breath caught. “That hanging around with junkies might not be in the best interest of her daughter? That one day the wrong person might get the wrong idea? See how
beautiful you are and decide he wanted a piece for himself?”

  “I’d been up in the mountains all day,” I murmured. Taking pictures. With Hannah. In a beautiful area she’d been dying to show me.

  Hannah.

  Dying.

  The thought was like a knife to the gut—only ten days later she went missing.

  “Sheila was alone when I got home,” I remembered, and even though I stood in bright sunshine, I could see her all over again, my mother, propped up on the sofa with her long, dark curly hair still damp from a shower, a wine glass on the coffee table next to the pack of cigarettes.

  “After I went to my room I heard voices and saw cars outside, but I was tired and wanted to go to bed.” I’d barely even taken time to upload the pictures I’d taken with Hannah. “I’m not sure what woke me. Maybe he made a noise—maybe I sensed something. But he was there, across the room with this big duffle bag, going through my things. Taking them…” And I could feel it all over again, the icy wave of shock and confusion, followed by anger—and fear. “I didn’t know what to do.”

  A harsh sound broke from Austin’s throat.

  “I didn’t want him to know I was awake. I thought maybe I could wait until he left the room, then call the cops—”

  “But you never got that chance.”

  This was when I usually looked away, but there was a strength in Austin’s gaze, a strength I couldn’t disconnect from. Didn’t want to. “It was like he knew, like he could feel me watching him. He spun around and walked to the bed, and I closed my eyes and held myself still, pretended that I was asleep.” Even when I could feel—smell—the pungent warmth of his breath. “Even when he touched me.”

  Nothing prepared me for the way Austin’s eyes hardened, the way his whole body went granite-still.

  I knew I’d said enough. I knew I’d said more than enough. But the words, the memories, pressed harder, scraping and slicing, refusing to be quieted.

  “I kept thinking if I didn’t move, didn’t open my eyes, he’d go away. That he’d take my stuff and leave, and it would all be over with.”

  All the while I’d wondered…wondered where my mother was. Why she wasn’t coming.

  If she knew.

  If she was okay.

  Alive.

  “But then he was on top of me—and I knew—I knew it wasn’t going to be over with, not the way I was hoping.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Austin muttered.

  “He had no idea,” I whispered, and with the words, I lifted my eyes to Austin’s. “No idea that I was awake—no idea my grandfather had been a Marine…that he’d taught me well.”

  How to live. How to fight. Survive.

  “I bit his ear—hard—and when he pulled back I jabbed his eyes and karate-chopped his windpipe—”

  Austin’s eyes widened—those details had never made the paper.

  “And then I ran.” Just like the first time I’d found my mother on the floor of her bedroom. “I grabbed my phone and ran outside.” And kept running, fumbling out 911 as I crossed the street and darted between two houses, through a gate and into the backyard of the family I sometimes babysat for. “The cops got there five minutes later.”

  “But he was gone,” Austin muttered.

  I nodded. “They found him a few hours later.” Him, but not the duffel bag with my laptop and camera and jewelry box. “He tried to say I was crazy, that it wasn’t him, but…”

  Austin laughed. “You made sure that was impossible.”

  My own laugh surprised me. “Basically, yes. Crushed windpipe…bloody ear.”

  “You and Mike Tyson,” he murmured. “Remind me not to make you mad.”

  I could feel the glimmer move into my eyes. “Consider yourself warned.”

  We stood like that a moment, watching each other, not sure where to go from there. Where did you go? Where did you go after dropping all that messy baggage into someone’s lap—a practical stranger’s at that?

  The wind was whispering down from the mountains, but the stillness gripped me, like so many other times since that April night. The cold came like it always did, a quick whisper from the inside out, taking my breath with it. I spun like I had those other times, hard, fast, this time toward the darkening wall of pine surrounding us.

  “He’s in jail.”

  I stood there, stood there staring at the long shadows slipping and falling around me, staining the bright green with black. “I know,” I whispered. Because I did. I knew. I knew Tucker Cole was in jail.

  Austin stepped closer, his hand gentle against the side of my arm. “Then why do you look like you’re seeing a ghost?”

  I made myself breathe. Then, I made myself look. At him. Because I had to do that, too. I knew that. I had to look at him, at Austin.

  Because there was no one behind me.

  No one lurking in the woods.

  “Habit,” I said, and this time, when I forced the smile, it cracked around the edges. “At first, even after they caught him, I was so sure someone was following me.” To school. To work. My house. “But now I know I was only being paranoid.” Nothing had happened. No one had come after me. “…that it was only my own fear, following me like a shadow.” Just like Dr. Rivers and L.T. promised.

  Austin’s eyes, that dark, dark mossy green, met mine. “But you’re still afraid.”

  Breathe, I reminded myself. Just breathe. “I don’t want to be.”

  His hand, still on my arm. Sliding higher, to my shoulder. His fingers strong…protective. “You don’t need to be. Not when you’re with me.”

  It was hard to imagine we’d only known each other less than a week.

  “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

  It was like everything was spinning, spinning fast and in different directions. From the moment I’d first turned around to see him…

  “Do you remember what you said last night?” I asked him.

  A single brow shot up.

  “By the creek? That if I wanted to step forward, I had to let go of the past?”

  Against my shoulder, his hand tightened.

  “I did it,” I said. “Last night I went home to another party and realized I didn’t want to live like that anymore—that I didn’t have to. So I left.” I lifted my eyes to his. “Because of you.”

  His eyes never left mine. “Give me your camera.”

  I blinked. “What?” It was so not what I was expecting him to say.

  “Give me your camera.”

  He’d asked me that before. Then he’d been a complete stranger. Now he knew more about me than anyone outside L.T. and my therapy group.

  I wasn’t sure what was going on, but did as he asked, extending my Nikon toward him.

  His hands curved around the smooth dark edges. “Now don’t move,” he said, lifting it to his face.

  I watched him take a few steps back, trying to figure out how we’d gone from me moving out of my mom’s house to him wanting my camera.

  “Now say it again.”

  I watched his finger slide to the shutter release. “Say what?”

  “What you just told me, about stepping forward and letting go.”

  The wind whipped stronger than before, sending my hair slapping against my face. Wishing I’d pulled it back like I almost always did, I shoved the long tangles behind my ears—

  “Say it,” he said again.

  And for some reason I did. “I realized you were right,” I murmured, as his finger pressed gently against the button. “That if I want to step forward, I had to let go of the past.”

  Again and again he snapped, while I stood frozen in the fierce swirl of the wind, watching him. It was like standing in a living puzzle, with all these pieces floating around me. I knew they all fit, and I knew they would form a picture—but I couldn’t see it yet…

  His finger stilled—but he kept the camera at his face. Normally this was when I would look away—when I could feel someone studying me. I’d break contact. But in that moment, in that me
adow, where shadows clashed with light, I could no more have turned from him, than I could take back the truths I’d just given.

  Seconds piled up on each other. I had no idea how many, only that the birds kept singing, louder with the approaching twilight. And that the breeze was softer, that my hair wasn’t whipping with the same violence as before. And that somewhere along the line, the dragonflies had come out, and that one now hovered above Austin’s shoulder, much like the one inked against the base of my neck, and that it remained there, even after he moved, finally lowering the camera...

  His eyes. I’d seen it before, burning in my own reflection after a long day of shooting. Residue, I called it. The lingering imprint of what I’d seen through the camera lens. Sometimes the images, the emotion, were etched onto more than film or digital files. Sometimes they seared into me. Beauty, innocence…love.

  Isolation.

  Death.

  But I’d never seen the residue so fresh, in the immediate moments after a picture was taken. So raw.

  And suddenly I couldn’t do it, couldn’t just stand there like nothing was happening while he had my camera pointed at me. I looked away, looked away fast, developing a sudden interest in a broken lupine—

  But then he was there somehow, right beside me, tilting my face back toward his. “I thought we were past that.”

  The wind lashed at me. “Past what?”

  Steady. His eyes were so, so steady. Burning. Burning with all that he’d seen through the camera lens.

  All that I’d let him see.

  “Past you turning away,” he said.

  It shouldn’t have been possible, to want to look away and look deeper all in the same breath. But I did. I wanted to look away. And I wanted to look deeper. And more. I wanted…more.

  “Maybe I’m not used to people looking at me,” I whispered, barely recognizing the hoarse, raspy sound as my own voice. It was like I was being pulled, pulled deeper and deeper into a spell or a dream…

  His hands…when had they reached my face? “Why not? I can’t stop.”

  Everything seemed to still, the breeze, the grass, the flowers, everything but the dragonfly hovering in the curve of his neck and shoulder. “Before that night,” I whispered, “no one did. It was like…I wasn’t even there.”