Chase finally breaks and asks, “Why? Just tell us why you left like that.”
I can’t hold his gaze but when I slide my eyes away it’s to meet Rex and Luke’s and that’s just as bad so I look out over their heads and try for a nonchalant shrug.
“It was just time for me to move on. Find out what the world had to offer outside this county.”
“Bullshit! Bull-fucking shit, Rain. We’re not leaving here until you tell us the truth,” Rex snaps at me so I snap right back.
“You wanted me to choose! I was never going to do that. I loved each one of you so damn much that I would never be able to choose just one of you.”
My voice breaks a little at the end of that but what Chase says next has all the blood draining from my face and has me reaching for the banister to steady myself as I go cold as ice.
“So, what? You were just going to play the whore for us all, was that the plan?”
The words are almost a perfect echo of what his father said to me ten years ago so I bite out at him through clenched teeth.
“Nice to see the apple fell exactly where he dropped it from his tree.”
I ignore his stunned expression when Rex comes at me again.
“No, instead of sticking it out and finding a way to make something work between us all, you ran like a fucking coward!”
The alcohol is buzzing in my veins and making me reckless. I know it, can feel it but it doesn’t stop me from yelling back.
“Fuck you! You have no idea how hard that was for me. I was hardly even eighteen, scared out of my mind. Run out of town with nothing but a pack on my back and no one to count on. I left here alone, with nothing, and had to face a new everything! It was fucking terrifying but I did it. I made it work. So, fuck you and your coward bullshit. You know nothing!” I roar out and rear back when he laughs.
“There she is, finally!”
I shake my head. “What are you talking about?”
“You showed up here a beautifully polished shell of a woman with no spark, no fire. I was starting to think my Stormy girl was gone for good but look at you. Hair wild just the way I love, thunder-clouds in your eyes, snapping with destruction and curse words flying. I knew you were still in there!”
All the anger drains out of me leaving me weak with exhaustion and I shake my head once more. I look to Luke who hasn’t said a word out loud but has been screaming at me with the pain in his eyes and Chase who’s staring at me like I’m a puzzle he can’t quite piece together and then back to Rex before turning and climbing the last two steps and yanking the door open.
I look back over my shoulder and tell them all, “You’re wrong. That girl died the minute I walked away from you all.”
And then I step inside and shut them and the world I once knew out.
Chase
The three of us are sitting at the old kitchen table as the sun starts to push away the darkness. Rex and Luke pass the bottle of whiskey back and forth between them but I just stare at the glass I poured but never drank from. I can’t get her face out of my head. The way she flinched and went pale when I implied she’d be our whore.
“Nice to see the apple fell exactly where he dropped it from his tree.”
Fuck, fuck! She basically said I was just like my father. A man she knows I, we, hated. I’m nothing like that bastard, nothing! I hate that she thinks I’m like him, that she could ever think that.
“Something’s not right. It doesn’t add up,” Luke says quietly. “Did you see her face? When you said she’d be our…did you see the way she paled? It was like she saw a ghost.”
My head snaps up to spear him with a look.
“Nice to see the apple fell exactly where he dropped it from his tree.”
Luke starts nodding like he’s following the same thread of thought and looks to Rex.
“Go back, back to the last time we saw her. What happened that day?”
Rex tosses back what’s left in his glass and reaches for the bottle but I swipe it out of reach, causing him to snarl.
“We went over it a thousand times after she left!”
