Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
Tav
By lunch, Amara was still at Con’s apartment. After lunch, Holden’s eyes began to droop, and when Amara suggested taking him back to her apartment for a nap, Con suggested he use the spare bedroom.
Holden was asleep before his head hit the pillow, and we left the door open a crack, so we’d hear him when he woke up.
From outside the door, I stared at his little face slack in sleep, barely able to believe that I had been able to play with him this morning, talk to him, make him laugh. This was a dream come true.
When I finally left the doorway, I entered the kitchen to find Amara and Con once again in some weird stare down with each other. “You two okay?” I was nervous. I needed them to get along, and I knew Con was trying, but he was also Con. And Amara was still wary. Of both of us.
“So what’s the plan here?” She crossed her arms over her chest and addressed her question to Con. “I have a job. I can’t just shack up in an apartment with Holden for an indefinite amount of time.”
“You’re on a short-term leave with pay.” Con’s hands were in his pockets, and he might have looked relaxed to Amara, but he wasn’t relaxed to me.
“I have done work with your firm, so I talked to your boss. I have hired a temp to fill your position for now. She will do a serviceable job until you can return to your position. Holden’s preschool is on its spring break for the next week, so his absence won’t be noted.
His jiu jitsu instructor is aware that Holden will miss this week’s practice. ”
Amara’s face was getting redder and redder the long her spoke. Finally, she sputtered. “You can’t be serious.”
Con was so very serious, and he said so. “I am.”
She turned to me, and I could see the anger there, and a flare of protectiveness. “Is he this controlling with you?”
“No,” I answered honestly. “He’s only controlling about my safety or my health. Then he takes charge. When I had a concussion, the doctor said no orgasms, so he didn’t fuck me for a week.”
“Tav!” Con’s eyes bulged.
“He didn’t get off either,” I explained to my sister, knowing she’d get it. We used to always be open with each other about sex. “Like in solidarity.”
Con was losing it. “Jesus fucking Christ, Tav. This is your sister and—”
“No.” Amara held up a hand. “I’m glad you told me that, Tav. It makes me like him more.”
Con’s jaw dropped, and I felt a smug satisfaction that we shocked him. I raised an eyebrow, and his gaze shifted from Amara, to me, back to Amara. “So this is the way it’s going to be. I’m outnumbered.”
I felt a flutter in my chest as Amara laughed, but the sound choked off on a sob so quickly that my head spun. Her head ducked, and she pressed a sleeve-covered hand to her mouth. “Shit,” she whispered. “Sorry. Normally I’m not so… emotionally fragile.”
I stepped to her side, playing with the ends of her hair the way I used to do. “It’s okay. What happened? Did something upset you?”
She waved her hand. “Yeah, this. This upsets me.” Her head tilted back until our eyes met.
Fresh tears clung to her bottom lashes. “I felt so alone these past five years, like I lost an arm. I had Holden, but I didn’t have you.
The anger I felt toward you burned off in six months, and then it was just an ache.
But I didn’t know where to find you. How to get in touch with you.
” She smacked my chest. “I didn’t even know if you were alive!
” A sob shook her shoulders. “And I’m sorry.
The guilt is tearing me apart. I never should have gotten involved with Dennis. This is my fault—”
“Dennis was a manipulator.” Con spoke up swiftly. “You were, what, nineteen when you met him? And he probably love-bombed you. He made you feel special. He was charming when he wanted to be, and you were not the first woman he’d conned. You wouldn’t have been the last either.”
She wiped her sleeve across her nose and sniffed. “You knew him?”
“I grew up with Devlin. I knew Dennis since he was a teenager.”
“Oh,” she whispered, surprised.
Con’s mouth was tight. “I have wanted to blame you many times for how Tav’s life has gone, but I know what Dennis was capable of. I should have taken him out myself.”
She jerked at that, and seemed to wait for Con to apologize, or at least smooth over the implication that he should have killed Dennis himself. But Con meant what he said.
“Mar,” I cupped her face in my hands and swiped at her wet cheeks. “We can talk about the last five years. But I can’t do the what ifs. What’s done is done, and I need us to be able to start new now.” My chest felt tight. “Can we try that?”
She lifted a hand and placed her palm over one of mine. Her eyes closed briefly. “Yeah,” she whispered. “We can try that.” She smiled at me. “Holden got to see the gym. Can you show me?”
I nodded, happy to have something to do.
Con excused himself to make some calls, and I grabbed Amara’s hand and showed her the gym.
Then I gave her a tour of the apartment, happy to see that Con had replaced the sheets on the bed.
It didn’t even smell like cum there anymore, so maybe he’d sprayed something in the air. Con thought of everything.
After the tour, Amara and I sat on the couch watching reruns on the Food Network and making plans on places to take Holden together. We made lists of museums and amusement parks. He was about to turn five that summer, so we discussed a theme and location for his birthday party.
We didn’t talk about the elephant in the room. We didn’t talk about Devlin. We didn’t talk about why we couldn’t leave the apartment. For an afternoon, we had no commitments other than enjoying each other’s company.
The entire afternoon felt surreal once Holden woke up from his nap. I gave him rides around the apartment on my shoulders while he squealed and yelled for more. I let him eat all the chocolate ice cream in the freezer until Amara told me no more or he’d puke.
He loved calling me The Gavel, and the name didn’t hurt like it did when I used to remember it.
Amara told stories of my competition wins, and Con finally emerged from his office to join us for dinner, looking weary but happy.
We ate pizza, and I drank a Diet Coke so I could burp half the alphabet to Holden’s utter delight and Con’s disgust. Well, he acted disgusted, but I thought a part of him found my talent impressive.
Later, Amara sipped a glass of red wine, her legs tucked up under her as the sun set.
Holden snoozed on the floor with a blanket wrapped around himself, having fallen asleep where he dropped.
Con’s phone rang, like it had all day, and he excused himself back into his office, leaving Amara and I alone.
Her eyes gleamed in the low light, and her cheeks were flushed from the wine. She wiggled her cold toes under my thighs, and I made a big deal about how they felt like ice blocks, just like we used to as kids.
“Tav?” She placed her empty wine glass on the coffee table.
“Yeah?”
“I think I need to know.”
I leaned back with my arm across the back of the couch. “Know what?”
“I think I need to know what Devlin made you do. Only as much as you’re willing to tell me.” She nibbled her lip. “I don’t want you to relive the trauma, but I also think I need to understand who you are now.”
I was someone different. I was Tav, but a different form, and she must have sensed that in me.
I did want her to know. So I started from the beginning, from the moment Devlin found me after Dennis’s death and held me for a week.
I didn’t tell her the worst of what he did, but by the time I made it past that, she was already weeping.
After glancing to make sure Holden was still asleep, I got into everything else.
The fighting, the jobs that ranged from driver to intimidator to clean-up crew.
The things I saw, and the things I wish I hadn’t had to do.
I showed her some scars and ran through a few injuries.
I told her everything, because I had always told her everything.
She was the first person I came out to. She knew when I lost my virginity.
An app hookup with another fumbling teen named Garrett.
And I knew when she lost hers. Sophomore homecoming to Luke Mannon.
And I told her more about Con, how we met, how I couldn’t stay away, how he refused to let me lose myself to this life.
And that was how Con found us later after I’d unloaded everything, Amara crying in my arms on the couch while we both rasped emotional apologies to each other.
Con nodded at me over her shaking shoulder and made to leave us alone, but she must have spotted him out of the corner of her eye. She tore herself out of my arms and hurdled the couch. He froze as she launched herself at him and wrapped him up in a tight hug.
Con went very still, eyes pleading for my help from over the top of her head, but I only smiled. “Thank you,” Amara said, the side of her face pressed against the buttons of his shirt. “Thank you for all you’ve done so that I only lost five years with Tav, and not a lifetime.”
I expected Con to thaw a little bit at her gratitude.
While he didn’t like hugs, he did like honesty.
But instead, her words seem to make him tense even more.
Amara didn’t seem to notice as she clutched him tightly and soaked his shirt with her tears.
He turned his head away from me as he brought a hesitant hand up to pat her awkwardly on the back.