Chapter Fourteen Mary
Chapter Fourteen
Mary
Five years ago
When the phone rang for the fifth time in an hour, I shoved it under my pillows.
In retrospect, I probably should’ve planned better.
But everything happened so fast, I barely had time to think.
It wasn’t like I could just hang around after that stunt my parents pulled.
Ready or not, leaving right then and there had felt like the only choice.
Storming upstairs and slamming my door would’ve made me look like a brat.
Driving cross-country made me look like I meant it.
Now, though, as the motel air conditioner rattled and spat out another puff of vaguely damp “cool” air, I wondered if maybe there was a middle ground I’d missed.
The place Sam found online was called the Sunset Traveler’s Lodge—though “lodge” was generous.
Two double beds, floral bedspreads with cigarette burns, and a faded print of Mount Hood hanging crooked over the TV.
The carpet was thin enough to feel the concrete underneath, and the air smelled faintly of Pine-Sol and old smoke.
Still, we were only twenty minutes from the headquarters of the North American Wilderness Academy—close enough that we could see the mountains rising in the distance when we pulled into the parking lot earlier that afternoon.
Sam had pressed her forehead to the car window and just breathed, like she was already home.
By the time we crossed the Florida state line, my parents had put the deep freeze on my credit card.
I half expected them to report my car stolen, too .
. . but that hadn’t happened as of yet. And, luckily, they had no access to my checking and savings accounts.
I didn’t have enough cash to sustain us indefinitely, but there was enough to keep a roof over our heads for a while if we stayed in more modest accommodations.
For me, this room was a stopgap. For her, it might as well have been freedom.
“You could just turn it off, you know. Or better yet, get a burner,” Sam suggested casually, like this was totally normal advice.
“A burner?” I echoed with a disbelieving laugh. “What am I? A spy? Is the CIA tracing my movements via satellite too?”
Her expression barely shifted. She shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe. Your folks certainly have the connections.”
“Sam, I think you’ve been watching too many movies,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“You sure?” she countered, tone light but with a shadowy edge underneath. “You really don’t think there’s some kind of tracking app on your phone? That Terry and Doug aren’t watching some blinking, green dot labeled ‘Mary’ on a map right now?”
“You think I’d let them anywhere near my unlocked phone?” I shot back.
She tilted her head, giving me that streetwise, seen-too-much look of hers. “Please. You telling me you bought that phone yourself?”
An image of the silver-wrapped iPhone box under the Christmas tree last year popped into my head. “Well, no, it was a gift. But I set it up from scratch.”
“I don’t know,” she drawled.
Living in close quarters with someone for an extended length of time wasn’t easy, and a few of Sam’s quirks were starting to get on my nerves—like her constant skepticism.
“What?” I huffed, unable to hide my irritation. “What are you getting at? Just freaking say it already!”
Her mouth curled at my choice of words. “You can’t even curse when they’re not here, can you?”
I threw up my hands. “Fine. You want cursing? Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuckity fuck. There. You happy?”
Something in her expression changed, and she tilted her head to one side, as if seeing me for the first time. “Why, Mary Langston,” she drawled, “are you a . . . virgin?”
I cringed, winced, and blushed simultaneously, inadvertently revealing the truth—though I did my best to deny it anyway.
“None of your business,” I gritted out.
She sat up on all fours, crawling to the side of the bed so she could sit with her feet on the floor, directly across from me.
I had yet to master as permanently impassive an expression as my sister had, and every emotion played out across my face like a movie screen.
Sam knew that all too well, and right now she wanted a front-row seat for the show.
“You are!” she exclaimed. “Oh, wow! You really are ‘the Virgin Mary’! That’s . . . That’s so—”
“What?” I jumped in before she could finish the insult. “Pathetic? Sad? Lame as hell?”
She pulled a sheepish face. “I was gonna say ‘refreshing,’ but it sounds like maybe you’re a little sensitive about it.”
“Right, because you’re so worldly,” I muttered—immediately regretting the statement as I recalled her comment from that night in the car when she alluded to having been sexually abused. I rushed to correct the offending statement. “Oh, God, I’m sorry, Sam. That was so insensitive of me . . .”
If she was pissed off or hurt, she didn’t show it. Instead I got a single-shoulder shrug and a long, slow blink—another one of Sam’s dramatic trademark maneuvers. It was jarring to look so much alike but be so fundamentally different.
“Whatever,” she replied nonchalantly. “Sex is no big deal. But trust me, the longer you wait, the more disappointed you’re going to be.”
“Yeah? And why’s that?” I asked—again regretting the knee-jerk response as soon as it was out of my mouth.
I didn’t want to know.
But I did.
No one had ever given me any of the nitty-gritty details.
“Because it’s not like you see on TV or in the movies.
And it’s not even close to that shit you read in your romance books,” she informed me, gesturing with her chin toward my paperback on the nightstand between us.
“It’s not all that wooing and flirting. It’s not sweet or romantic, so you can just forget about those ‘book boyfriends’ you fall for.
You’ll never find a man who’s commanding but not stalkery, fiercely protective but not overbearing, or ridiculously handsome and independently wealthy—but who picks plain Jane over slutty Sally every time.
Oh, yeah, and that part where they know your body better than you do and can give you orgasms for days?
Total and utter bullshit. Those guys don’t exist outside the pages of a trashy romance. ”
I glanced down at the book with its well-worn spine.
The mythical man she described was exactly the one within those pages—dark, brooding, possessive, adoring.
He was, in fact, a pretty accurate rendering of the guy who starred in all my fantasies.
Before I could comment, she spoke again, her voice quieter and uncharacteristically serious.
“Sex isn’t pretty, Mary. It’s about power and aggression.”
“Sam,” I started slowly, cautiously, “did someone . . . Were you raped?”
My twin stared at me for a long beat.
“No, Mary,” she said softly. “No one tied me up or held a gun to my head, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“No one has to hold a gun to your head for it to be rape.”
“Will you please just stop using that word?” she asked, growing agitated.
“Which word, Sam? Rape? Because that’s what it is when you don’t consent. Or when you’re too young to consent. Or when the person has power over you and you don’t feel like you have any choice but to comply—”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, will you just quit it with the sexual harassment training course already? It wasn’t rape. I was not raped. I was involved with an asshole who made me think he actually cared about me, that he maybe even loved me, then he took everything from me.”
“What do you mean ‘everything’?” I press cautiously.
“My choices. My power. My heart. My soul.”
It sounded like rape to me, but I didn’t want to agitate her anymore.
“I’m sorry,” I said, softer, holding her gaze.
Her expression turned confused. “What have you got to be sorry about? You didn’t do anything.”
“I’m sorry that it happened to you—whatever it was. It must have been awful.”
“Could we please just not?” she asked, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands. “I just—I’ll maybe talk about it sometime, but not today.”
Just like that the facade shifted, and for the briefest of moments, I got a glimpse of the real Sam.
She was a child, really—a little girl who’d been playing dress-up in the oversize shoes of a grown woman for far too long.
She was tired and fearful, distrustful and jaded.
But underneath it all was the tiniest glimmer of something that looked like hope.
I could work with that. I could be the one she could trust and lean on.
I would proudly bear the mantle of her hope if for no other reason than it was painful to see the echoes of her past reflected in the face that we shared.
It was too close, too much of a reminder that it could have just as easily been me.
“Well, I think you’re a badass,” I told her softly, then lightened my tone with a grin. “I mean, look how far you’ve come—living in the lap of luxury!”
Totally deadpan, I gestured to the green-carpeted, wood-paneled room around us as my twin watched, her eyes narrowed on me, trying to assess how serious I was.
At last she scoffed and rolled her eyes, giving me a half smirk in the process. “Yeah. This is”—she picked up a corner of the brown-and-orange bedspread she was sitting on—“so retro chic.”
Hearing the muffled buzz of my phone under the pillow, I pulled it out, powered it off, and tossed it across the room.
“Come on,” I said, getting to my feet. “Let’s go find me a spy phone.”
She laughed, and for the first time, it felt real. We felt real.