Dad comes into the living room, looking stern. “We have a situation.”
“What?” I ask.
“Sarah is sayin’ Landon raped her.”
“What the fuck?” my brother cries out. “How dare she? Dad, we had sex. Consensual sex. I told her no, but….” He turns to face me. “Ask any of my friends, and they’ll tell you how she is when your back is turned.”
“She’s not like that!” I want to scream the words, but they come out weak. My Sarah slept with my brother. How could she?
“Stop it!” Dad raises a hand. “It’s a good thing Hughisn’t in town. I talked to Porter, and he’s going to talk to her. I’ve talked to Sam, and he’s going to make sure Sarah doesn’t go around blatherin’ lies.”
Even her father doesn’t believe her. Sam Kirk adores his daughter, but even he….
Dad puts a hand on my shoulder. “I know you love that girl, but she’s trash. You stay the fuck away from her before she accuses you of something.”
His phone rings at that moment, and the screen says: Porter Montgomery. He’s the deputy. Dad and he have been buddies since they were kids.
“I have to take this. I need you both to be Mercers. We speak as one family.”
Despite my father’s warnings, I went to see her the next day. I had to. By then, the whispers were already spreading.
Ten years ago, I’d been a boy, terrified that my brother would end up in jail because of my girlfriend. She had to be lying; anything else was impossible to believe. And blood is thicker than water, isn’t it? How could I believe the girl I loved over the brother I was raised to follow?
So, I didn’t.
And now Kaz’s questions were haunting me.
“Let me ask you somethin’, Cade. You ever think maybe she wasn’t lyin’?”
The wheel creaks under my grip. I shake my head. No way.
Landon’s got his flaws, but he isn’t a liar. He isn’t capableof…that.
By the time I pull into the drive, the house is dark. Only the porch light glows, catching the familiar lines of Blue Rock’s ranch house—solid, weathered, the kind of place that looks like it’s been here forever and will still be standin’ long after I’m gone. It gives me comfort.
Tillie meets me at the door, purse slung over her shoulder. “Evie’s asleep. Ate her dinner, took her bath, went down easy.”
“You’re a miracle,” I tell her, and I mean it.
She gives me her no-nonsense smile. “You pay me to keep the world from fallin’ apart, Cade. Now go in and check on her since you’re dyin’ to do it.”
I chuckle and see her out, lockin’ the door behind her. Then I pad down the hall to peek in on my girl.
Evie’s curled on her side, thumb tucked in her fist, Dolly the stuffed cow clutched tight under her chin. The nightlight casts her face in soft gold, and for a moment, I just stand there, my breath caught under my sternum.
People say she looks like me, and she does. But sometimes I catch flashes of Jeanine—the curve of her cheek, the stubborn set of her mouth when she sleeps.
Jeanine. We’d never been in love. But I put a ring on her finger, tried to build something solid out of shaky ground. I didn’t know then, but she didn’t want this life. I’d been a conquest—to get the boy who Sarah Kirk was with,‘cause she was so smug about it, according to Jeanine.
She seemed all right for the first few months of her pregnancy, thrilled to be married and delightedto be carrying my child. But once she gave birth, the complaining began.
Then there was the fact that she wasn’t interested in Evie at all.
I thought it was postpartum depression, but…it was just who Jeanine was.
I did my best to anchor her.
I failed.
