Page 24 of Gorgeous Misery

“You want the truth?” I ask her. “Or you want me to be nice?”

She takes a deep breath. Lets it out. “Truth, please.”

“OK.” I swallow hard and set the brush down on the coffee table. “The moment you got out of my truck that first time my heart hurt so bad, I wanted to grab you. Tie you up, chain you to the door and just keep you forever.”

She doesn’t respond. Just stares at me with those blue eyes.

“But it was a purely selfish hurt. Because Lauren was still very small and even though things were easier, I wasn’t sure I could do it without you.”

She actually laughs. “I was ten, Nick.”

I smile back, feeling a lightness inside me for the first time since Chek was killed. “I know,” I admit. “But even though you didn’t know anything about babies—you couldn’t change a diaper, you didn’t know how to make a bottle, and it took you a month before you even picked her up—it wasn’t about you taking care of her, right? It was about you taking care of me.”

She scoffs. “I was ten.”

“I know.” This time it comes out with a little frustration. “But you got me through. And I have often wondered if you hated me for all the times I stole you away from Chek over the years.”

She studies me for a moment, perhaps giving herself time to choose her words carefully. Then she says, “You didn’t steal me. He gave me to you.”

“Right. But I asked him for help. And if I hadn’t—”

“If you hadn’t asked for help…” Her face goes solemn and sad. “Something bad would’ve happened.”

I know she’s right, but I have never admitted this to myself before now. I was twenty-two when Lauren was born. I was four years into a lifelong prison sentence with a Central American drug lord called Matias and my completely insane secret brother. I didn’t know about Santos’s plan back then. I thought I was on the run with my baby daughter. And Lauren would not stop crying. She was only a few months old and that moment when I stepped out of my truck on the airstrip and closed the door of the truck, and her wailing was muffled by the pouring rain—I can still remember the relief. It was an all-encompassing sense of relief.

Wendy Gale rescued me that day because something bad was gonna happen if I didn’t get help.

But it was a reluctant rescue. She was only nine years old, but Wendy has a confidence to her. The kind of confidence you can’t manufacture. The kind only people who truly give no fucks about what others think of them can possess.

And Lauren could feel this. She was different immediately. Girls need girls. That was my takeaway that morning on the airstrip. I was a good dad for the short time I had with Lauren. At least, I think I was good at it. I grew into it. But girls need girls and Wendy was what Lauren really needed that day.

“Anyway,” I say. “I missed the fuck out of you, Wendy. I don’t think I have ever actually expressed how much I needed you that day on the airstrip or how thankful I was every time you came back to us.”

She looks down at her hands, which are playing with a piece of frayed denim from her too-big shorts. “Is that why you’re here today?” Her eyes lift up to meet mine. “Is this some kind of debt thing?”

I’m shaking my head no before she even finishes. “No. That’s not what this is.”

“Then what is it?”

I smile nervously. “I dunno. I’m not sure. I just don’t want you to be alone.” I put up a hand because she’s about to say something back and what I just said came out wrong. “That’s not what I mean. I don’t think you’re gonna do something stupid or hurt yourself, Wendy. What I mean is, I can’t stand the thought of you being alone right now.”

She presses her lips together and for a moment I wonder if she will cry. I have never seen Wendy Gale cry. And she doesn’t do it now, either. But she does swallow hard and say, with fake lightness in her voice, “Well, they’re all dead now. No one’s coming to get me.”

She’s referring to the Company elite. The Untouchables.

They weren’t so untouchable in the end, were they?

So she’s right about that. No one’s after her.

“Yeah.” I nod. “You know that’s not what I meant either. I mean… us. Ya know?”

I didn’t mean to say that. Not that way. She’s seventeen. But that’s not the reason I want to discourage any thoughts of something more between Wendy and me. She might not be a legal adult in the eyes of the law, but Wendy Gale was never a child.

But again. Not the point.

She is hurting right now and the last thing she needs is me sending weird signals. So I add, “I mean… you’re all I have left, Wendy. No one sends me cards on my birthday. Everyone I love thinks I’m dead. You’re the last bit of family I have.”

This is one hundred percent the God’s honest truth, but Wendy is not swayed.