Chapter Twenty-Three
Reagan
I understood why he was angry with me.
It was hard not to see his side, to believe he had some valid points.
Lo, despite her firmness in the meeting, had been quick to remind me via text message that should I have any second-thoughts, she could easily slip someone else in, that they could get to work on trying to gain Michael's attention.
She made it clear that her people were trained to handle situations such as these, and that they would be able to separate themselves from the situation.
But that I likely would not be able to do that.
That there could be long-lasting psychological trauma I would need to deal with after all was said and done.
I didn't disagree with that. I wasn't naive. And I wasn't completely lacking in self-awareness.
I was perfectly aware of the fact that this was going to be one of the hardest things I had ever done, that there would be a part of me that would forever be scarred from it. That there would be quite a bit of therapy in my future.
That said, I was already in therapy. I was already hurting. I was already trying to heal from past trauma.
Yes, this would pile onto all of that, but it would pile on in a good way, it would bring some closure to the first issue, even if I needed to seek out closure for the new one I would inevitably be creating.
I would struggle, I knew. But in that struggle, I would manage to right a wrong. I could give my sister justice. I could expose the evil of a man who wore the face of a good one.
If there were other victims out there—and Lo highly suspected there were because Michael was the sort of man who had the power and money to get away with it over and over without any word of it ever getting out—then they could get a small bit of justice as well.
It wouldn't be easy for me, but it would serve the greater good.
I wouldn't claim to be brave like Lo and her team. But I could do this. I knew I could. I could slip into a dress. I could go to an event. I could let Michael approach me. I could agree to go to a second location with him.
And I damn sure knew I could hit and kick and scream when his hands started touching me, especially knowing that there was an entire team of highly trained ex-military people who would stop things before they got too bad.
Then, well, it could be over.
At least as much as it could ever truly be over.
It would put an end to my hunt for retribution. It would prove to my family that I was right. It would put a bad man behind bars.
I would be able to start moving on for real.
With Nixon.
I caught him giving me hard looks on occasion when he thought I wasn't looking. I knew it pissed him off that I agreed to this when he tried to talk me out of it. And I knew it was creating a tension between us that shouldn’t have been there. At least not so early on in a relationship.
I tried to keep the two things as separate as possible.
When I was around Nixon, I silenced my phone, refusing to answer Lo and her team until I wouldn't be seen.
I knew he knew we were still in contact, but I think he understood just as I did that we needed this tiny bit of separation if we were going to keep the peace.
Outside of that situation, this dark cloud we were pretending to ignore, things were good. Better, even, than I had anticipated when things finally started to happen with us.
Nixon fit in surprisingly well with my employees who were also the closest things to friends I had. I was welcomed with open arms into the Mallick/Rivers clan. After having sat the women down and telling them the whole story about Nixon and me, they had folded me even deeper into their life.
Before I knew it, I was touring a For A Good Time, Call..
’s Headquarters, Fiona's phone sex business.
In doing so, I got to see Rush at work, looking completely out of place amongst a sea of women, but somehow utterly comfortable with his place there.
I was dragged by an enthusiastic Peyton to her sister Autumn's sex toy store, Phallus-opy, where the two of them filled two bags full of fun things to try out at home with Nixon.
I had been invited to Chaz's, the bar Charlie and Helen owned.
Hunter had helped me draw up a sort of memorial tattoo for Sammy that I was pretty sure I would always be a little too chickenshit to actually get stabbed into my skin, but I appreciated his time and artistic abilities nonetheless, and had gotten his sketch framed for my office.
I'd been approached by Mark, who owned a landscaping business, to handle the “mess” that was my office grounds.
He looked at me like I had three heads when I told him that the wildflowers were intentional, that I was trying to create a bee haven. Still, it was a sweet offer.
I really didn't realize how badly I had been craving the loving embrace of a family until I had them all there. Believing me. Supporting me.
Luis had yet to blow back into town to meet Nixon, and I found myself with a knot of anxiety at the idea of those introductions, knowing Nixon was not typically tolerant of people like my brother—vain, a little shallow, rootless, and lacking anything even hinting at seriousness.
The anxiety was likely misplaced, though, seeing as he didn't struggle to get along with Krissy who was basically a female version of Luis except a sight more grounded. If anything, he found her amusing. And I hoped he would feel the same about Luis.
I didn't tell my parents I was dating anyone new. Our calls over the past several months had been reduced to talks of the weather, Devil Tears, and a recap of all the functions they'd been to recently, and what shows or exhibits they had been to.
It would feel weird to bring up something so personal to them given the obvious tension between us since I had made my accusations, since I had hightailed it out of California—and, for the most part, their lives—nearly two years before.
You're going to have to work on that when all this is done Nixon had advised me one night when I had gotten off the phone with them, walking away from where he was sitting in the living room with Mal happily purring on his lap to have my awkward conversation before rejoining him.
I get that shit is weird now, but when all this is done, you have to repair that. Family is important.
Nixon had very strong feelings on family.
Coming from such a tight-knit one, joining an even tighter one, I understood his stance even if he clearly couldn't grasp the fact that my parents and I never had the relationship that his siblings and he had with their mother before she passed, or the kind he currently shared with Helen and Charlie.
He was right, though, of course.
He so often was.
It was a fact everyone around him found infuriating because he could be rather smug in his rightness.
I, however, appreciated that I could count on him for sound advice, for impartial council when I was too emotionally invested in something to see it from a different angle.
And he was right about my parents.
I was pretty sure once Michael was outed, once they knew I was right, once the resentment I felt at them not believing me had a chance to dissipate, I knew I would have to make a trip back there; I would have to have those hard discussions.
I would need to repair the split. We would all need to learn how to move forward as a family after all we had been through.
It would happen.
But not yet.
First, Michael needed to be brought to justice.
And I was fretting over my dress to wear to the local art opening Lo believed Michael might attend.
It had been longer than I realized since I attended any sort of function that wasn't drinks with my brother and Krissy or Sunday dinners. Both were somewhat informal affairs.
Suddenly, I found something that used to be second-nature to be foreign and frustrating.
"Not the red one," Nixon told me, the first words he'd spoken to me since the text came in, since I told him I would have to go, that he would have to stay home.
We weren't in a fight. Nixon wasn't even freezing me out, giving me the juvenile silent treatment.
He was just processing. And I understood him enough to know that he needed to do so without being pressured, so he could come to terms with things more easily.
The fact that he was speaking to me, especially about something relating to a night he most definitely did not approve of, said he was there. He had come to terms with it.
"Really?" I asked, scrunching my nose at my reflection as I held it in front of my body. "I was leaning toward it actually."
"It's too sexy. Too attention-grabbing."
“You think the white?" I asked, reaching for that one. "More, I don't know, virginal?"
"The flowers," he suggested, jerking his chin toward the pile hanging over the back of a chair. "The blue one with the white flowers. It's... understated. I think that's the route you want to go. If Lo is right and he is into the women he enjoyed watching grow up..."
"Right," I agreed, lip curling. "I'm going to have to burn this after tonight."
"You okay?" he asked, waiting for me to turn to face him. He sat off the end of the bed, gaze on me, shoulders tense.
"I think so," I told him, nodding. "I'm just happy to get this over with."
Though, as it turned out, it wasn't my night.
Michael did show up.
And he did talk to me.
But he didn't hit on me or ask me to meet him anywhere for dinner.
I went home tired and frustrated, to find Nixon already running me a bath full of soapy water, seemingly knowing I felt slimy and achy. He even stripped out of his clothes with me, climbing in, pulling me against his chest, holding me.
I never thought having a steady man in my life would change it so much. I already had a good life. I had a great career, loving friends, a lovely home, a cat that tolerated my presence. I didn't imagine having someone there would change things too much.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.