Page 71 of The Right Kind of Wrong

Blake leaned a little closer, her head above Maisie’s. In unspoken agreement—one that Monroe could finally understand—they kept their voices low, making sure not to wake her.“I wouldn’t put it past them. I heard that Noah tried to play it off in the moment, but he was mad as a hornet walking back to his truck.”

Monroe smiled at that. “Good. A taste of his own medicine.”

Somehow, Blake’s voice grew even softer. “I really appreciated it, you know. The way that you stood up for me. Most people wouldn’t put themselves in the Duvall family’s crosshairs like that.”

Warmth spread through Monroe even as she tried to play it off. She was nobody’s savior. “I never liked Noah. And once I learned about everything he’s put you through, it seemed well worth it. Plus, what’s he going to do to me? This town doesn’t employ me, and I don’t care whether his band of merry idiots think I’m cool or not.”

“I think you’re cool,” Blake whispered, barely audible above the music playing over the credits. “No one’s ever really shown up like that for me before.”

Monroe lifted a skeptical eyebrow, ignoring the weight of Blake’s admission. “I find that hard to believe.”

Blake was genuinely the most likable person she’d ever met. She couldn’t imagine people not falling over themselves to both be her friend and to help her if the chance presented itself.

“That I think you’re cool or that no one’s ever done something like that for me?” Blake asked seriously. “Because both statements are one hundred percent true.”

Monroe groaned. “We’ll just have to agree to disagree on the first one. And as for the second one . . .” She paused, considering her words. “From where I’m sitting, this town hasn’t been very good to you.”

“It used to be.” Blake looked at her with sad eyes, the hurt clear in her voice when she said, “My parents loved that I was with the Noah Duvall. My sister loved that her husband had an in at work. My friends loved that, if they didn’t have the nicest home in town, at least someone they knew did. Sometimes, I think that people only put up with me because I was with Noah.” Blake was quiet for a beat before she said, “Now that I’m no longer Blake Duvall, I wonder if I became invisible tomorrow, whether anyone would notice.”

Anger and sadness mixed in Monroe’s gut, threatening to turn into a toxic gas that spread over this whole town, suffocating it.

These fucking people. Social climbers, every last one of them. And not a spine to be found.

“I’d notice. And I’d very much miss Blake Bettencourt.” This wasn’t about her, which made it easier to do exactly what she’d been thinking about earlier, though not for the same reasons. She ghosted her fingers across Blake’s cheek in hopes of soothing her sorrows. “You’re not invisible to me. You never have been, Blake, whether you were with Noah or not.”

Blake let out a quiet chuckle. “Sure.”

Monroe hated seeing how beaten down Blake was, especially at the hands of the very people who were supposed to build her up.

“I had the biggest crush on you in high school,” Monroe admitted, knowing that she was blushing. But she was doing this for Blake, she reminded herself, which made the squirmy feeling in her stomach slightly more bearable. “Denny was even teasing me about it the other day.”

The look on Blake’s face was akin to wonder and amazement, and Monroe very much liked being the cause of it, even if it made her feel anxious, too.

“Now I’m the one who finds that hard to believe,” Blake said softly, her dark eyes trained on Monroe in the dim lighting, the room hazy and soft all around them.

Monroe bit her lip, deciding to be honest. Why, she couldn’t be sure, except that, put most simply, she didn’t want Blake to think for even a single second that her own power—her own sense of self—had ever been tethered to someone like Noah Duvall. “You were just always so . . . nice.”

Blake rolled her eyes even as she kept them on Monroe. “Gee, just what every girl wants to hear.”

Monroe rolled hers right back and sat up straighter. She put her elbow on the back of the sofa so that she could lay her head against the palm of her hand. Blake needed to actually hear this. “In some ways, I was lucky in high school. No one expected anything of me, especially after they knew that I was Dean’s sister, but I also wasn’t a person who became a target for bullies. I was mostly left alone. To use your word, invisible in a lot of ways. And when you move through the world that way, you get to notice things that people don’t realize they’re showing you. Who’s hateful and hurtful. Who’s only putting on a show when the ‘right’ type of people are around. And”—Monroe looked Blake in the eyes again, imploring her to understand—“who’s a person like you.”

Blake mirrored Monroe’s position. With her movement, Maisie also shifted, so that her head was on Blake’s lap. Monroe was about to suggest she could carry Maisie to bed when Blake started stroking the little girl’s hair. Monroe suddenly found herself jealous of her niece, not that she’d ever vocalize that.

“A person like me?” Blake whispered, glancing down at Maisie to make sure she was still sleeping.

Monroe tried to figure out how to explain it. She settled on, “From here to New York City, it feels like everyone has an agenda. Social climbing. Politics. Games. Obviously we weren’t friends, but unless your game was ‘being kind to everyone,’ then you weren’t playing one. You treated the lunch ladies and the teachers and the cool kids and the losers the same from what I could see. And trust me, I saw a lot. It’s part of what makes me able to do what I do.”

“And what is it that you do?” Blake asked, clearly wanting to turn the conversation away from herself as a gentle blush rose on her cheeks.

“I interpret the world by watching it. By accepting what it is and sometimes imagining what it could be. In the art world, it’s called a point of view.” Even though being vulnerable made Monroe’s stomach clench, she wanted to be, for Blake. Not that she’d dig into the why too much. One step at a time, she figured. “We didn’t have a lot growing up. Not enough, in a lot of ways. I didn’t have a phone with the internet or new clothes. I wasn’t good at sports.”

“I beg to disagree,” Blake smirked, clearly thinking about Noah’s drop into the dunk tank last weekend.

Monroe smiled, too, warmed by Blake’s reaction. She’d never said that she was quite as kind as the woman across from her. “Well, I was never going to play a team sport. Let’s put it that way.” She waved her hand. They were getting off topic. “Being nice doesn’t make you weak. You, Blake Bettencourt, are a force in this world. And I won’t say anything too hokey like you’re ‘a force for good’ or anything like that, but the world is a tough place. Tougher for some than a lot of people will never understand. And it means something that there are people who don’t want to make it any tougher. Even when you were at the top of the pyramid and it would have been easy to step on anyone below you, just to feel that thrill.”

She could tell that Blake found that idea wholly unpalatable, given the way her lips rolled inward. Finally, she said, “I wouldn’t find that thrilling. It would make me feel sick more than anything. I hated how Noah sometimes treated other people. And I hated that I turned a blind eye to it for so long.” Blake’s stare bored into Monroe. “Would a kind person really do that?”

“You aren’t a bad person for playing the hands that you were dealt in life, Blake. And if you pick apart every single decision that you’ve ever made, you’ll never move forward.” It was advice that Monroe was much better at giving than taking.