Chapter 14 #2
“Time out,” Madi says, standing. She’s snapping the elastic on her wrist—her anxiety is in control now. “Do you know something we don’t, Grey?”
“Only that we’re in need of a reputational rehab.”
Savvy’s snarl makes me chuckle.
“And what better way to do that than with a fairy tale?” I say. “After all, it worked for you and Braxton, right?”
“No.” Savvy digs in her heels—literally and figuratively. She’s widened her stance like a fighter, and sadness hits me hard in the chest. She strikes me as someone who has fought for everything she has, and I know firsthand how utterly draining that can be.
Everything I thought I knew to be black-and-white about this woman turns out to be various shades of gray.
“Braxton and I weren’t trying to kill each other though.” Madi’s gaze darts between Savvy and me, but her smile radiates across the room.
“This has nothing to do with any of you.” Savvy slips her thumbnail into her mouth, and I swat it away. Not only is it disgusting, but she makes herself bleed every time. She gasps, and adrenaline spikes in my bloodstream. I shouldn’t enjoy taunting her this much.
“This is…” She steps back, putting space between us. “I should have anticipated this, but I don’t need you saving the day. I promised myself after Ace helped me that I wouldn’t put myself in that position again. That I would save myself—always.”
“From what?” Madi asks, hurt coating her words. As close as these women are, it’s becoming painfully apparent that Savvy has kept a whole life hidden from those who love her most.
I should hate Savvy for hurting Madi this way. But like all the other times I should find myself hating this woman, the only verb I can grab ahold of is protect.
I have an unfounded need to protect her. It’s the only explanation for why all her faults irritate the hell out of me yet keep me coming back for more. And I blame it on Ace. He had a soft spot for her too. I must have adopted it on his behalf when he passed.
“I—I can’t tell you, Madi. My life before I met you was all kinds of messed up.”
Acid bubbles in my gut. Savannah Monroe has devils on her heels, and she’s unwilling to let anyone in. Too bad for her that’s a boundary I’m more than happy to demolish.
“What do you mean? You can tell me anything.” Madi crosses the room and throws herself at Savvy.
“You’ve seen me at my worst, Sav. Geez, you’re the sole reason I made it through my early twenties.
Nothing you can do or say will ever change how I feel about you.
Is this about the photos? You looked hot in them, by the way. Young and too thin, but hot.”
That’s my thought exactly. Savvy didn’t just look young in those photos that were posted. She looked…fragile. I just don’t know how young or fragile she really was—or potentially is.
Yet.
“Please, Savvy.” Madi is on the verge of tears as she begs her best friend to open up, but I can tell by Savvy’s stubborn stance that she’d rather run through fire than put her friend in the crosshairs of whatever plagues her.
When Savvy doesn’t speak, I take preventative measures of my own. “She thinks she’s going to run away from Happiness to save you all from her troubled past.”
I’ve seen Savvy truly angry, but when she spins on me this time, it’s anger and betrayal that cause tears to well in her beautiful green eyes—and they aren’t tears of sadness. They spit accusations she won’t say: How dare you? It’s not your story to tell. Stay the fuck out of my business.
Too bad for Savvy, I’ve already made her my business.
“No.” Madi gasps. “You… Why, Savvy? Why won’t you let me help you like you’ve always helped me?”
Savannah trembles—the war she’s fighting is coming to a head—and her pain sits heavy and unmoving in the back of my throat.
She casts frantic looks around the room. It’s as though I can see the fight-or-flight response brewing in her mind, and the only reasonable answer she can come up with is flight. She wants to run. She wants to do everything she can to keep her pain from Madi.
I stand helplessly as Savvy’s eyes glaze over and her face flushes. The pulse point in her neck beats faster than a hummingbird’s wings. She sways on her feet, and the tremble in her limbs rolls as violently as ocean waves in the middle of a storm.
My chest roars out to fix this. Save her. Fix her. Love her. But I’m frozen by the fear I see in her eyes. It’s the kind of fear you expect when someone is scared for their safety, their life, and it gives me one tiny glimpse into what she carries with her. The sadness of it all is devastating.
And then, it’s as though she crumples under the weight of her own expectations as she slides to her knees…and cries.
My soul shatters at the sight, piercing skin and slicing through bone. I don’t ever remember a pain so visceral.
This beautiful, stubbornly broken woman destroys my resolve with each tear that slides down her face. I don’t understand it or even appreciate the reactions she pulls from me, but I can’t deny that they’re there, at least to myself.
The day I met her, I thought she was talking badly about my brother behind his back, and I’ve judged her on that perception ever since.
It never occurred to me that she was just like me—looking out for those she loves with little to no regard for her own well-being.
“God, Sav. What is it?” Madi falls to the floor beside her, cradling her in a motherly hug that makes her cry even harder.
“It’s—it’s not what it seems,” Savvy stutters.
I meet everyone’s gaze over Savvy’s head, each person more confused than the last, and then cross the room on autopilot because when shit hits the fan, I’m the one who springs into action.
I reach her in three strides, bend to remove her from Madi’s arms, lift Savvy, and carry her to the sofa, where I sit with her in my lap.
Sage stares at me as though I’ve lost my mind, and perhaps I have because I’m no longer consumed by thoughts of what I’ve lost or how I’ll move on by creating a family of my own. The only thought in my head is getting Savvy back to being my equal, my sparring partner, my own personal headache.
For the first time in over a year, getting a child is not my top priority—it’s my beautifully broken pain in the ass Monroe.
Madi stares at her friend with so much heartache that I look away. Braxton smirks at me as though he’s figured out a secret, but I’m unwilling to entertain him. Instead, I focus on the woman in my arms who’s fighting a battle with herself.
Compromise has never come easy to me, but if I don’t offer her something, we may never find a resolution that involves her and me in Happiness long-term.
“Let me in,” I demand in a voice low, soft, and steady, but with enough control that it breaks through her internal battles.
“Please. We’re in this together now, regardless of how you feel about that.
The only way for both of us and our families to come out of it unscathed is for you to tell me what haunts you so we can blow that shit up together. ”
My words seem to snap her back to this reality, and she scrambles from my lap, but I only allow her to slide onto the cushion next to me.
Braxton stands to give her space. He, Madi, and Sage all pull up chairs to face us.
“Please, Sav. Talk to me.” Fear and love battle for dominance in Madi’s tone.
I’ve never even considered compromising for a woman before, and it shocks the hell out of me as I do it now for Savvy by angling my legs toward her and offering a bit of my past. “My father is a piece of shit, Monroe.
He took the jewelry emporium that had been in our family for generations and turned it into a bloodbath.
He was unethical in his sourcing of diamonds.
He cut corners by going into business with known criminals.
He killed my sister with his neglect because he was more concerned about appearances and crooked loyalty than he was about his own daughter.
“I’ll never wash the blood from his hands off our family name, and that will always follow me. So don’t tell me that my history has nothing to do with the media frenzy stirred up by my choice to remain elusive over the years.”
Her shoulders tremble. If I could imbue her with my confidence, I’d attach an IV myself.
“I’ve been on display but just far enough out of reach that the public has nothing on me, and now, the first sign of scandal in eighteen years, they blow it up as though we’re royalty.
So please tell me how anything you could have possibly done in your past can even compare to my history.
Because from where I’m standing, I’m the one the media is after. ”
She shakes her head with a quivering jaw.
Desperation and fear bleed from her eyes, and I feel it deep in my gut. Savvy opens her mouth, but no words come. Whoever has the power to break my woman this way will meet my wrath. I swear it.
It feels like an eternity before she speaks. “My childhood best friend is paralyzed from the waist down…and it’s all my fault.”
The pain that she exudes hits me square in the chest with sniper-like precision, and the list of ways I hate my honesty-challenged angel is instantly wiped away.
Childhood trauma has a way of allowing you to see the most damaged souls, especially when their pain mirrors your own.