39. Loren Hale #3
“Lily didn’t need to be good at anything,” I tell him.
“Her mother passed over her because she was my friend. I was her future.” The heir of a multi-billion dollar empire.
Her mother concentrated on Daisy, on Rose, who could be more successful in other facets.
But Lily—her worth centered on a guy. Me.
And I think, somewhere in her head, she believed it herself.
That she would never amount to anything more than pleasing other men.
That she was destined for a life less than her sister’s.
Daisy frowns. “I thought Lily just got a pass since she was kind of average at everything. I’ve always been jealous of the freedom she gets.”
I nod. “Lily thinks she should be grateful for the freedom too.” That’s why she has trouble admitting to herself that she’s been hurt by her mother. She could have been suffocated like her sisters. And she wasn’t.
But there should have been a happy medium between what Lily had and what Daisy is now enduring.
I pause for a second, these words some of the hardest to produce.
“Your mother outwardly loved you, Daisy, and you, Rose,” I say looking to each of the girls.
“Even Poppy was showered with this type of overbearing maternal affection. And Lily…she was denied all of that. She was like the runt in the litter.”
Rose’s eyes glass like she may cry. I’ve never witnessed tears from her.
I always imagined that they’d ice over. Her voice, however, is strangely stoic.
“I didn’t realize…” She shakes her head.
“My mother wanted the two of you to become a couple. I knew that, but I blamed you more for taking my sister away from me. I didn’t realize that she really had nowhere else to go. ”
Well that kind of makes me feel like shit. She makes it sound like I was Lily’s only option. “She could have stayed home.”
“She would have been alone, Loren. I was barely around because of school and ballet.”
And then a wave of guilt just annihilates me. “Yeah, well maybe she should have been alone. Look what good it did being around me.” I shake my head, running my hands repeatedly through my hair. My leg starts to jostle in anxiety .
“You didn’t do this,” Rose tells me. “Our mother should have told her that she loved her for something more than being with you. She could have found her something to do, something to achieve.” A dream, a passion, a hobby, a fucking sport.
Sex became all of those things for Lily.
And I never stopped her. Not once. I was so consumed with my addiction that I didn’t care what the hell she did, as long as she was breathing at the end of the night.
As long as she was by my side—my best fucking friend.
“You don’t understand,” I mutter. I led her here. Unknowingly, I brought her to this place in her life. If I never even existed, she would have received that love from her mother that she craved.
“Then tell me.”
“You don’t get it.”
“Loren—”
“She slept in my bed!” I shout, my eyes welling. They burn so badly. “I let her sleep in the same bed as me. Okay, this wasn’t Dawson’s Creek . I never kicked her out after we hit puberty.”
Rose whispers to Connor, “I don’t understand the correlation.”
“Dawson and Joey stopped sleeping in the same bed together in the first episode. She said that he was old enough to get an erection.”
Rose looks back to me. “You didn’t have sex with her every night, did you?”
“No, but?—”
“You can’t compare your life to a television show.” The fact that Rose is defending me does not entirely help. I’m used to her tearing me down, not building me up. I keep waiting for someone to thrash me with their words, with their feelings. With hate. I deserve that pain. It’s my fucking fault.
“You don’t get it!” I’m on my feet somehow. “I could have stopped her. I should have walked her down that road every night. I should have done something .” Instead I gave her a bed to sleep in, a place to fill her vice.
“Loren,” Rose starts.
“Stop,” I say, placing my hands on my head, these thoughts swarming me in a tidal wave, the guilt so unbearable on my chest. “You should hate me,” I tell her.
“I deserve that.” I nod. “I broke your sister.” My face contorts in pain, a hot tear escaping.
I want to punch something. To go run until my heart stops, until the breath just leaves me cold and dry.
No one says a thing. They wait for me to collect my bearings.
My breathing slows, and I rub my face. When I drop my hands, I say softly, “I wish I could take it all back.” I want to reverse time.
To walk Lily right out of my house, down the street and to her own bedroom door.
I would tell her that it’s okay if her mother doesn’t love her because her sisters do.
And she doesn’t need to avoid her house by being in mine—that she shouldn’t keep searching for love in sex because it will only leave her empty and miserable.
I should have told her all of these things, but I didn’t know any of them back then. And I was too goddamn drunk to care.
“It’s not your fault,” Rose says. “You were a kid. We all were.”
“And you have a shitty fucking father,” Ryke adds.
“And no mother,” Daisy says.
“And you were an alcoholic,” Connor concludes.
It’s like they’re my conscience, and yet, they’re only my friends. For the first time, I have them, and I feel tears build at the words that I never thought I’d hear.
It’s not your fault. Yeah, I’m getting there. I can believe it one day, I think.
I have weathered the most painful answer. I can manage any others now.
I look to Daisy.
“Next question.”