Then, at the beginning of the month, Caleb had taken her to the clinic for her two-month follow-up appointment and HIV check. The results of the tests were negative, but walking into that clinic again, through the same gauntlet, with Caleb protecting her again, had unlocked the door on her unknown memories, and in the past couple of weeks, they’d tried to cause her damage.
She was discovering that not truly knowing who or what or why or how was a horror all its own. She had the details. She knew what people had told her, the story they’d all put together. She knew why she’d been left at that place and what they’d intended to do to her—what they had already done to her. She knew, too, that the men in charge were dead, and that the Bulls had killed them for what they’d done to her. She knew that Cole, whoever he was, was also dead, also at the hand of a Bull. Eight Ball.
Those were facts. She knew them to be true, or, at least, had every faith that they were. What she didn’t have were memories. She knew she’d been raped, by more than one man. But how many? She knew Cole had dosed her and taken her to that place, but had he been nice to her before that? Had she thought she liked him? She must have been afraid—she’d called a Bull for help, and she would only have done that if she’d been desperate—but what had she seen, or what had happened, by then to have scared her so? They’d shot her up, stripped off her underwear, and hiked up her dress and just laid her there? What had she felt? What had she thought? Anything? Or had they had her so doped up she was gone?
Who the fuck got off on that?
“Hey.” Caleb tightened his arm around her and gave her a squeeze. “You are a million miles away. What’s going on in that busy head of yours?”
She brushed the dark birds of her thoughts from their perch and snuggled closer. Her hand had still been cupping his balls; now she set it on his chest. “Nothing.”
“That’s a lie.” He leaned back to look down at her face.
She met his eyes steadily. “No, it’s not. It’s just an incomplete sentence. The whole sentence is ‘Nothing I want to talk about.’”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I need to work it out on the page.”
“Okay.” He kissed her forehead. “I need to get back to work.”
“I know. Are we playing house tonight?”
“I can’t, Ciss. I’ve got to go home. I’ve been blowing them off too much.”
“Okay.” That was one of the other big things that made the world not-so-perfect between them: Caleb was keeping her separate from his family because they wouldn’t accept a white woman in his life. When he’d told her that, at the beginning of the month, around the same time as her follow-up appointment, she hadn’t known what to think. She still didn’t. It felt like an expiration date on this thing they had.
“Are you ever going to tell them that we’re serious?”
A crease emerged between his brows. He didn’t like her to push him on this point. “Are you ever going to come back to the club?” And that was the third thing between them.
She pushed out of his arms and sat up. “It’s not the same thing.”
“It is. One part of my family won’t accept you, and you won’t accept the other part.”
“My father was murdered in the middle of that clubhouse.”
“My great-grandfather was murdered by a posse of white men.” He pushed himself up to lean on the headboard. “My whole heritage has been under attack by white people for centuries.”
“Not by me.”
“And no Bull alive killed your father. We both have some shit to work out, Ciss.”
“I’m working on my shit. I’m trying to get right with the Bulls. Are you trying to get your family right with me?”
“I am. Grampa is a tough nut to crack, but I’m working on it.”
“Okay. What if he doesn’t crack?”
He picked up a lock of her hair and played it through his fingers. “Then I’ll keep you separate. I’m already split in two, living in two different worlds. I’ll just stay that way.”
Right now, Caleb lived not in two worlds but in three—this cozy domestic fantasy, the Bulls, and his Osage Nation family. If he stayed like that too long, he’d break apart. She saw it, even if he didn’t.
Cecily gave up the argument for now. She sighed and leaned on his shoulder. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
Love was supposed to make you whole.
~oOo~
Cecily folded the silk scarf around a piece of pale blue tissue, wrapped it in a silvery piece of tissue, and slid the bundle into a pale blue bag with a sparkling silver and gold firefly—the logo of La Luciole, her mother’s Utica Square boutique. She handed the bag over the counter with her bright retail smile. “Thank you for shopping today!”
The blue-haired old lady in the classic—and probably vintage—Chanel suit nodded and tottered out of the shop.
That was the kind of clientele this place had always had: the old queens of the oil era, and the trophy wives who’d taken their places. Except for a corner at the back of the store, where her mother displayed more on-trend couture, Cecily had little use for the conservative aesthetic of her mother’s livelihood.
But it paid the bills nicely. Cecily and Clara worked here from when they were little, off the books in the back until they were sixteen, then on the floor during high school. Cecily had also worked most college summers, but Clara had been reluctant to come back to Tulsa from the moment she’d cleared the city limit.
After college, Cecily had halfheartedly continued on—full time at first, until she’d gotten the job at the Ed Center. Now, she filled in when her mother needed help. She could always use extra cash, and her mom paid well.
But it was a study in understatement to say that she was not wired for retail. She was good at it—all the years of basically growing up here had made her an expert—but God, being nice to strangers all day was torture. While they dithered over crushingly important questions like whether the white blouse or the ivory went best with this skirt and while they bitched about sales tax like it was something she’d personally done to them, Cecily plastered on her perfected plastic smile and concocted scenarios in which she strangled them with the stupid fucking blouse.
But the money was good, and she had a couple of weeks between terms at the Ed Center. She got paid for the classes she taught and workshops she led, so downtime was broke time.
When blue-hair scarf lady went out the door, the shop was empty. Tuesday afternoons—past the lunch hour, until about four, when the after-work crowd tried to get a couple of hours of shopping in before closing—were historically slow. Cecily enjoyed the lulls. She could do the things she actually liked to do, like arrange displays and straighten shelves. Quiet, simple, focused work that let her brain loose to think. She wrote a lot during work, most of it in her head. But sometimes, when it was really slow, she stood at the desk and got her journal out.
In her head today, as she refolded a stack of sweaters—it was mid-July and a muggy ninety-five degrees, but that meant fall fashion on display—Cecily wrangled with an image. What she’d told Caleb the day before had been exactly true: she needed to work out her feelings about what had happened, these newly vicious feelings, on the page, in words that were only hers unless she decided they were for others.
How did one describe a thing that was real, that had happened, that had shape and weight and time, that had texture and taste, when none of that was known? It was a fact, but not a truth. A tree falling in the forest, when no one hears.
If a girl falls in the darkness, and no one is there to catch her, is her body still her own?
“Cissy?”
At her mother’s voice right behind her, Cecily flinched. “Hi. Just about done.” She set the newly folded sweater on the stack.
“You were just standing there, staring at the sweater. You okay?”
“Yeah.” But she wasn’t, and her mother had jumped into her brain while it was all aboil, and she found herself ang
ry and agitated. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.” She looked around the shop. “We’ve got the place to ourselves.”
“Yeah, it’s been slow. Why did you fuck Eight Ball?”
Her mother flash-froze and went pale as ice. “What?”
“I know you fucked Eight Ball. Three years ago last Christmas. At least. Why?”
“Jesus Christ, Cecily. Where is this coming from?”
“You’re not answering my question. Or denying it.”
“Because it’s none of your business.”
“You’re my mom, cheating on my dad. How is that not my business?”
Spinning on her high heel, her red hair flying, Cecily’s mother stomped to the front of the store, turned the ‘Open’ sign over, and locked the door. She spun back and slammed her hands on her hips. “You want to have this out? Here and now? Fucking fine. It’s better than the past three years of you pouting at me like a goddamn toddler. You want to know why I fucked Eight? The one time I fucked Eight? Christmas of ’97? Because your father, after ten hard-won years of keeping it in his pants, banged some skank in Nebraska, some no-name slut who left her cheap pink lipstick smeared in his underwear. It had been months since he’d touched me, but he grabbed some truck-stop waitress for a fucking bathroom hump. And he was an asshole about it when I went at him. So that night I was pissed and very drunk, and Eight was sweet, and I needed somebody to make me feel sexy, like somebody could want me. Your father couldn’t be bothered. That’s why I fucked Eight. One time. The one time in more than two decades of marriage that I strayed, and I hate myself for it.”
She stopped, panting and red-faced, and stared across the shop at Cecily. She was still standing just in front of the door.
Cecily still stood at the display of fall sweaters. She didn’t know what to say. Or think. Or feel. Her insides were a howling storm.
“Did you do the math, Cecily Leanne? For ten years, your father was faithful to me. In almost twenty-five years of marriage. Before that, I never knew what he’d bang when he was on the road.”
Unable to confront the thought that her father had not only cheated but done so habitually, Cecily focused on the thing she could grasp. She took hold of a piece of a truth and lashed out with it. “I knew it was an act. This huge performance of grief. You didn’t love him.”
If the words hurt her mother, she didn’t show it. Her voice was quiet, and calmly sad. “I did, cookie. I loved that man every second that I knew him. Even when he broke my heart and ripped up my insides. That’s why I put up with it for so long. Everything else with us was good. He was a great father, and a great friend, and we had a great life. I loved him like he was a piece of me, or I was a piece of him. I still love him as much right now, and my heart’s been nothing but broken since I lost him.”
“I thought he loved you. I know he loved you. He wouldn’t—no. You’re lying.”
Her mother came toward her, but Cecily backed off. If she were touched right now, she would burst into flame.
Stopping a few feet away, her mother said, “No, Cecily. I’m finally telling you a truth I tried to keep far away from you so it wouldn’t hurt you. But you’re right—he did love me. I know he did. He just couldn’t keep his dick where it belonged, not until I got the courage to tell him I’d take you girls and go if he didn’t stop. Then he stopped. Until you were both in college. He started up again after that, and I thought that would be the end of us. I thought he loved you two more than he cared about our marriage, and he’d only stayed faithful until you were old enough that I couldn’t take you away. But after that Christmas, I told him I was leaving. He didn’t want us to end, and he stopped again. We were good again after that.”
It was so much worse than she’d thought. So much worse that it couldn’t be true. “No. I saw you with Eight. I never saw Daddy doing anything like it. You’re lying. You’re trying to make me hate him, but it won’t work. You’re a lying cunt!”
Her mother’s hand flashed out and crashed across her cheek. Cecily staggered back, clutching her sore cheek in both hands. Never had her mother, or her father, struck her. And never had she said such a thing to her mother. She’d said it to hurt, to make her mother hurt enough that she’d stop saying these things, these things that were true but couldn’t be, that made no sense, had no meaning.
Now, the woman who’d given her life stood before her, tears slipping down her cheeks, but her expression was not sad or remorseful. Resolute anger lased from her blue eyes. Like Cecily, when her mother was hurt, she got angry.
“I am your mother, and you will speak to me with respect.”
“Fuck you!” A stupid response that came like a reflex.
Her mother made a quick move like she meant to strike out again, and Cecily couldn’t hold back another flinch, but the blow didn’t come. Instead, she set her hand gently on Cecily’s arm. “You’re so angry because you know it’s true, Cissy. You can’t run from the truth like Clara does, and you don’t want to face this truth. You always lash out when you want to turn away and can’t.”
“It’s not true. That’s not Daddy. He wasn’t like that.”
Now her mother had both hands on her, stroking up and down her arms. Taming her. “Cissy, your Daddy was a complicated man. But he will always be who he was to you. That will never change. The man you knew, the memories you made together, nothing can change those. He was a damn near perfect father. It’s one of the things I love best about him, how much he loved you and Clara and how easily he showed it. But he wasn’t my father. He was my husband. He was a different man in my life than in yours. Our relationship was different.”
“I can’t…Mom, I don’t know where to put this. I don’t want to know this.”
Her mother’s arms slid around her, pulled her into a hug, and she didn’t fight it. “I know, baby. I’m sorry.” Tears made the words twist and break.
“Did he know?”
“About Eight? No. Your father would have killed him if he’d known, and there was no reason to tell him. It happened one time, because I was drunk and hurting, and we were both sorry afterward. I’m so sorry you saw what you did. I’m so sorry it’s been between us, and that it happened at all.”
Weariness settled over Cecily’s head and made her too heavy for her bones to support. Her knees buckled, and she let gravity have her. Her mother held on, and they both landed clumsily on the floor, their embrace unbroken.
“Don’t think you can only love someone who never lets you down. People hurt each other. We all do shit we regret, we all hurt each other, even when we would never mean to. You have to make room for forgiveness, too. For the people you love, and for yourself, too. It’s okay to be angry, cookie. But don’t let it eat you whole.”
~oOo~
If a girl falls in the darkness
And no one is there to catch her
Will she ever land?
Her hair whips up around her face
Dead branches snatch and snag
But no one is there
Not even she.
She falls and falls
And
Caleb opened the sliding glass door and came out on the patio. He’d come in from a shift at the station and gone straight to her room for a shower.
He’d brought his guitar, and he had the gig bag hooked on his shoulder now. That was a thing about him she hadn’t really known, how well he could play guitar. He did so beautifully, in a range of styles, and had a lovely soft baritone voice. His taste seemed to run to a folky sound. Cecily liked that, too. Her musical tastes were pretty eclectic. About the only thing she couldn’t stand was opera. But she preferred anything she liked to have good, meaningful lyrics.
She’d been sitting at the table, writing on loose-leaf lined paper, trying to put the chaos in her head down in ink. The confrontation with her mom that afternoon had ended with a warming between them, a restored understanding. But the things she now knew about her father were so foreign to what she’d known, it wa
s almost like the crack house all over again. So much of her life was in darkness.
Setting his gig bag on one of the normal-size chaises, he came over and stood behind her chair. She moved a blank sheet of paper over what she’d been writing. The first time she’d done that, he’d had his feelings hurt, but now he understood. Her words were only for her until she decided they were for someone else.
She’d let him read some stuff, and had been pleased when he’d understood. Not always exactly what she’d meant for herself, but he’d found a meaning for himself that made sense to her, too. He wasn’t a great critic, and didn’t know how to give feedback when something didn’t resonate for him, but when he liked something, he told her why. If he didn’t understand, he asked questions. He was a good audience, and she was able to let him into her head this way.
Stand (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 7) Page 17
