"I did not ask you to fix my life. I was not asking for a forensic legal team. I was asking for one of you to come back the next day and say wait. Wait, what did we do. I was asking for one human being to come back and ask. And not one of you came back. Not one. Maybe you really did look at me and see the kind of woman who would do that to you. Do you know what that did to me. Do you know what that did to who I think I am."
Cole had gone the color a man goes before he sits down. Luke was crying again. Ben was staring at the floor and his shoulders were shaking.
"I have rebuilt myself from worse than you," I said. "I have. I am going to do it again if I have to. But I am not letting you stand in my kitchen and look at my mug stain like you have any right to feel bad about it. You do not get to be the sad ones in this room. I am the sad one in this room. Me. You sit down and you take it."
I had run out of breath. I was standing in the middle of the kitchen with my arms wrapped around my own ribs and my bare feet on cold tile and my face wet and my hair somewhere in the vicinity of my head, and I had absolutely nothing left.
It was Cole who moved first.
He crossed the kitchen slow, the way you approach an injured animal that might bolt. He stopped in front of me. He looked at me like there was nothing else in the room, and he said, "You're right. You're right. Come here."
He opened his arms.
I broke.
I walked into his chest and I broke. His arms went around me and Luke was behind me with one big hand pressed flat to the small of my back, and Ben was at my side with his forehead against my temple, all three of them holding me at once in themiddle of Tessa's kitchen while I cried in stained pajamas in three sets of arms.
Cole spoke first.
"We should have been the ones holding you that day. Not him. Us."
Luke, pressed behind me, his voice wrecked: "Let us hold you now."
Ben, whispered into my ear in his rawest voice: "Please let us make this right."
49
Callie
I could not stop crying and I was furious about it. Cole's arms were around me and I was pressed into his chest and I was furious at his chest for being exactly what I had wanted. Luke was behind me, his palm warm at the small of my back, and I was furious at his palm for being warm. Ben had his forehead against my temple and I was furious at his forehead, I was furious at his temple, I was furious at the weight of a man who cared about you pressing against the side of your face when you had spent days deciding he didn't care about you.
I could feel all three of them breathing. The rise and fall of Cole's chest under my cheek, Luke's slow exhale against the back of my neck, Ben's thumb moving in a small circle on my shoulder that he probably wasn't even aware of doing. I was so angry and so relieved that both feelings were occupying the same space in my chest, and they were taking turns, and it was making me cry harder, which I had not thought possible.
They had hurt me and I loved them and I was furious.
"I hate you all a little bit," I breathed, into Cole's chest.
"That's fair," Cole said. His voice was low enough to feel through his sternum.
"And sometimes more than a little," I admitted.
"Still fair," Ben said.
I pressed my face harder into Cole's chest and tried to breathe and mostly just cried some more, and Luke pressed closer from behind, and I thought: this is the problem. Being near them felt too good in a way I had never been able to talk myself out of.
And then Luke snorted. It was a full-on pig-snort directly into my hair, and it was so unexpected that my whole body jumped.
"Did you just," I started.
"No."
"Luke."
"It was nothing." He cleared his throat. "Ignore that."
"Did you just snort into my hair."
"I inhaled a curl."
