Chapter 25
Twenty-Five
Grady
“You define you.”
Viola Davis
“What the fuck, Grady?” Brenda yells down the phone line.
She knows what happened here. I couldn’t very well hide it from her, even if the press hadn’t already found the information like the fucking bloodhounds they are.
“She’s okay, Brenda. She did exactly what she needed to do,” I say, but how do I explain such an impossible situation?
“Regardless of what a good job she did, Paige shouldn’t have even been in that situation,” she says. “This is ridiculous, I should rescind the offer. She’d be safer with me, obviously.”
Fuck. My. Fucking. Life.
Mom said this would happen. She warned me yesterday before they left for Portland that when I told my ex, she’d use it as more leverage. But, again, what the fuck am I supposed to do about it? Brenda is her mother; I can’t keep the important events of Paige’s life away from her.
“Don’t you fucking dare, Brenda,” I say, trying really hard to keep my anger from spilling over as I pace my front lawn. “She’s safe, she’s proud she was able to help a friend, and I’ve already scheduled an appointment with a therapist. It’s a lot, but I’m handling it.”
“A friend,” she says snidely. “She’s more than that, isn’t she?”
“Is that what this is really about? You’re mad I’ve met someone new?
” The utter audacity of this woman. Brenda is the one who cheated on me.
Brenda is the one basically ready to sell her child to me for a new man.
Yet, she’s mad I’m in love with someone.
“Do I need to remind you of how we ended up in this situation to begin with?”
“We’re in this situation because you,” she starts to accuse, but stops herself. After a heavy sigh, she continues, “I don’t want to fight, Grady.”
That’s a lie. She does want to fight; she always wants to fight. Only, she hates it when I bring up that she was fucking around with Carter for five goddamned months before I caught her.
“She should be here, Brenda,” I say, much softer now. “We both know it. She’s happier here than she is in Portland. Not because of you or even me. It’s her home. Please don’t take that away from her.”
“Three days. That’s all the more time I’m giving you.” With that, she hangs up on me.
“Fuck,” I curse too loudly.
“Everything okay?” Lou stands on Irma’s front stoop, small suitcase in hand.
What the actual fuck is happening to my life today?
“Where are you going?”
“Portland,” she says, staring at her shoes. “For Luke’s shoot.”
“Lou, surely, that can be postponed.” There’s no amount of makeup available to cover up the wounds she’s carrying. It hasn’t been forty-eight hours since her showdown with that monster.
“I have to go.”
“You can barely see out of your left eye. It’s not safe for you to be driving,” I say, but it’s a stretch. We both know it.
“I’ve made up my mind,” she says, defiantly raising her chin.
“That wasn’t me trying to tell you what to do,” I say, stepping closer, my hands raised. “I would never do that. I’m worried about you, is all.”
“I need to do this,” she says.
“Listen, if this is about him getting out of jail, that’s going to take a few days, at least. They’re dragging their feet for us,” I say.
Between me, Jerry, and Sam all calling in favors, we’re doing our best to keep things tangled. The longer he sits in jail, the more time the prosecutor has to come up with the right charges. It helps that he epically violated the protection order.
“Besides, the whole town is behind you, Lou. He’ll be chased out as soon as he leaves his jail cell.”
“It’s not only that,” she says, a weird look passing over her features. One I haven’t seen before and can’t read. “I need to clear my head. Put it back on straight.”
“You can’t do that here?”
“No,” she says so quickly, I flinch. “That’s not how I mean it, Grady.”
“How else could you mean it?” Is this my fault, somehow?
When I got the call from Paige, barely able to get all the words out before she burst into terrified tears, I thought my heart was going to pound out of my chest. I couldn’t get here fast enough, the guilt of not being here to protect them both was enough to damn near paralyze me.
Thank fuck for Sam keeping a cool head and driving us back here like a bat out of hell.
The truck wasn’t even in park when I jumped out and was faced with the worst decision of my life.
Find Paige or help Lou. My heart split in two.
The first thing I saw was Lou deliver a hard right hook to that fucker’s face. I saw the blood, second. Her blood. My fists balled up, but again, Sam jumped in. Telling me he had it and to go find Paige.
Maybe he knew that I’d have ended up in jail if I’d gotten my hands on the man. It’s hard to weigh the potential consequences of your actions when you’re seeing nothing but red rage.
But what if she’s holding that decision against me? What if, once again, I don’t measure up to the expectations of the woman in my life. I didn’t save her. I couldn’t.
“Did I fuck up?” Four words that float my biggest insecurities in the air between us.
“No, Grady. No,” she says, finally seeing me. “Here in Stowaway, I’m Lou. The survivor who found space to heal in the most down-to-earth place she could find. Away from here, I’m Louisa Moreno. Supermodel, victim, extravagant, and fabulous. I need to figure out how to be both.”
“You can’t do that here,” I repeat, but without question, this time.
If I’ve learned anything about this woman, it’s that she can be as stubborn as me when her mind is made up.
I hate that she’s doing this. I don’t understand it, but I can’t stop her.
I don’t believe her, though, either. “There’s more to it, isn’t there? ”
“I heard you on the phone,” she says, her lip trembling slightly as she looks off into the distance, toward the property she’s put an offer on. “You haven’t told me what’s going on, but I know you were close to getting custody. She saved my life, and I may have ruined yours.”
“Lou.” She looks at me, her name still on my lips, expectation in her eyes. A heavy cloud of sadness blankets us. I can’t fix her. She has to do that herself. “He did this, not you.”
“He wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t,” she says.
I can’t deny it, it’s true. I’d never blame her, though. Nothing about this is her fault. She knows that. In the same way I know that Brenda’s cheating wasn’t my fault.
Still, we carry the burden.
I hate that I have to let her go. I hate that I have to trust she’ll come back. My heart really did splinter. Lou now carries half of it with her.
Lifting her suitcase from her, I load it into her truck. Then, I shove my hands deep into my jean pockets so that I don’t hold her so tight she can’t leave.
“You’ll let me know you get there safely?”
“I will,” she says, my pain reflected in the tear that spills from her eye. She’s cried so much since she’s been here. A tear for every star in the sky. I hope to never see another shoot across her cheek.
“I love you, Lou Moreno,” I say, hoping the words tattoo onto her skin so she’ll never forget. Me. Stowaway. Or the dreams we’ve been building here.
If I never see her again, I hope she remembers.