I tipped my head to the ballroom. “Harmony and Charlie fell in love in there. I’m going to start my book on Monday, but I only have half the story.”
“Yuck,” she replied.
“Yup,” I agreed.
She turned to the room. “Are they talking?”
“No.”
“Ulk,” she replied.
“Yup,” I agreed.
We sat there, both looking into the room.
“Can I tell you something?” she asked the room.
Oh shit.
I wasn’t a huge fan of her tone.
Even so.
“Anything, honey,” I answered.
“Something really bad happened to me a while ago.”
Yeah.
Shit.
“I guessed that,” I said gently.
She looked at me. “I got raped at my flower shop.”
I closed my eyes, opened them, there were tears I would not shed, but they were there, and I whispered, “Chassie, baby.”
“After, I did something really stupid.”
Three years of healing.
“Nothing is stupid.”
“After it happened, I went to Battie.”
My body wound up so tight, I thought it would snap.
“I was…in bad shape,” she continued. “Bleeding and stuff.”
Battle didn’t tell me that.
“I refused to go to hospital,” she carried on. “He and Mrs. Pattinson cleaned me up. I closed my shop. Battie had to pay back a ton of money because I pulled out of contracts for events I agreed to do. I stayed in London for a long time with Battie. Then Tempie came to get me and brought me home. And I’ve been here since. I haven’t left…until Glastonbury.”
I nodded, fighting very hard to tamp down my response to Battle opening the door to his bloody, violated, beautiful, dainty, frizzy-haired sister who he adored (rightfully so) beyond reason.
God, it was testimony to how much he loved her that he didn’t leave her to Mrs. Pattinson in order to go out and commit murder.
But what he eventually did was even further explained.
