Chapter 53
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Heaven, hell. Some days they’re mirrors of one another.
Especially if you live in Manhattan during rush hour.
—StellaNova
“My uncle did what?” Austyn’s fury is palpable. Before I can answer, she pulls out her phone and sends a text.
“Who were you messaging?” I ask wearily. It’s only been a few hours since Austyn let herself into my apartment
“My mother. I told her under no circumstances was she to share she’s on her way here.”
I glare at her. “Austyn?—”
She shrugs unrepentantly at having shared the information with her mother. “Would you have kept it from Helen if it was my mother lying in that hospital bed?”
I can’t lie. “No.”
My best friend leans over and clasps my hand. “You’ve been there for me for the best and worst times of my life. Let me return the favor. Mama won’t go see your mother until the end, but you’ll have her nearby for support.”
I stare at our entwined fingers, remembering when I met the girl who lived a few houses away in Kensington, Texas and knew she was going to be my best friend. At the time, Austyn was dressed in torn jeans, Converse Chucks, and a T-shirt that proclaimed she loved Brendan Blake. Her long hair was in a mass of braids which was pulled away from a face with fierce blue eyes. Her first words, after asking my name, were, “ What kind of music do you like?”
I nodded down at her T-shirt and her smile burst across her face. “That’s a good enough place to start.”
“What about you?”
She cocked out a hip and grinned—something about her very attitude, those eyes, and her smile vaguely familiar but then I recall Mama pointing out Austyn’s mama the other day. I brushed aside my musings as she said, “Want to come with me to a concert at the park? It’s Founder’s Day.”
I stared at her blankly. “What’s Founder’s Day?”
She grabbed my hand. “It’s only the most relaxed day around this prissy town. Say you’ll come with me, Fallon.”
I grinned at the exuberant pixie and dragged her behind me as I shouted, “Mama? I’m going to Founder’s Day with a new friend.”
My mother came to the door. “Oh, hello. I’m Fallon’s mother.”
Austyn held out her hand and introduced herself. “It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Brookes. I’m Austyn Kensington.”
I sputtered, “Kensington? Like where we’re living?”
She shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”
If she didn’t want to make hay over the fact this celebration was about her family, I wasn’t about to. “Is that cool, Mama?”
“Sure, sweetheart. Just be home by supper.”
Austyn waved to my mother before pointing to a field at the end of the street. “If we go through there, we can cut through my Gramps’s yard. He won’t mind and it won’t take us long at all to get to the town center.”
“Cool.” Along the way, I found out Austyn’s mother was at work and this was the first summer she wasn’t “Tethered to one of her uncles’ hips.”
“What does your mama do?”
“Now? She’s a doctor.”
“She must be super smart.”
“She’s so much more than that.” A shadow flits across Austyn’s face before she stops walking and faces me, hands on her hips. “Listen, let me just get it out there. I’m bullied a lot.”
Anger boiling beneath my skin sets my cheeks flaming. “Why?”
“Because the ‘good’ people of this town think it’s an outrage that Dr. Paige Kensington had a baby when she was seventeen and wouldn’t name the father.” Austyn’s body language dares me to say a word about her mother but something inside me relaxes.
I blurt out the first thing that comes to my mind upon hearing Austyn’s tale of woe. “You don’t have a dad too?”
“Seriously, Fallon, I…wait. Too? What happened to yours?”
“Car accident.”
Austyn hooks her arm in mine and we resume walking. “How did you end up here?”
“Mama got a job in Austin...hey. Were you named after where you were born?”
She groans. “Can we save that story for another day?”
I grin. “Sure.” I’m about to say more when we approach an enormous barn. Coming to the side, my voice whispers, “Whoa.”
She winks, completely irreverent. “That’s what we say to the horses.”
“Austyn, do you have to check with someone before you’re friends with me?”
Her dark brows wing upward. “Fallon, I love people for who they are, not what they have nor what they do.”
Coming out of the memory, I find Austyn’s concerned face with her now infamous rainbow hued hair flopping forward. “What were you thinking about?”
“The day we became friends. The things you said to me.”
“Which part?”
“That you love people for who they are, not what they have nor what they do?”
Austyn swears ripely.
I’d let Austyn read the years’ worth of texts between myself and Ethan before I told her what happened. It gave me time to go shower and wash the slimy feeling of being dirty off my skin. Pulling my knees to my chest, I lower my head and sob.
Austyn scoots closer and murmurs, “Men are assholes.”
Sniffling, I manage, “Not all men. Just your uncle.”
She amends her statement. “Uncle Ethan is an asshole.”
“Promise me you won’t tell him about why I did this.” She hesitates. I turn ferocious eyes on her. “Promise me, Austyn.”
“I promise…until after.”
“Fair enough.” Following a long silence, I whisper, “I gave up my pride in an attempt to save my mother’s life and lost the man I love.”
“Then I just have one thing to say to you.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s the same thing you said a long time ago.”
My head cocks to the side.
“Forgive me for paraphrasing, but the situation calls for it.”
I wait while she clears her throat. “You’ll be fine. You want to know how I know? Because no matter what, I’ll be right by her side. Fallon doesn’t need fame or fortune. She just needs love to heal. She’s been my best friend since we were fifteen.”
Tears fall down my face unheeded as I recall the words I said to Austyn’s therapist when she was hospitalized after the car accident. I can’t speak. “Let me not forget my favorite.”
Swiping madly beneath my eyes, I push out, “What’s that?”
“You fell in love with a douchebag. Someone you’re better off not having in your life.” Then her mask of evil fades, leaving her just as devastated by her uncle’s actions as I am. “He’s going to regret making you hurt, Fal.”
If only I thought he would care. Instead, I lean forward, wrap my arms around my best friend, and rely on her to help replenish my strength since all of mine was depleted.