Chapter 11 #2
Stevie throws up her middle finger and pretends to uncap it as if it’s a lipstick container, drawing her middle finger around her lips, and then pretending to put the cap back on when she’s done.
When Jo barks out a laugh, I point at her. “You too.”
Her mouth snaps shut, just as Stevie whines, “I’ll tell you what I’ve been hiding if you give us even the tiniest detail.”
“What else have you been hiding?” I ask point-blank.
“You first,” she says.
I cut her off right there. “Fine. Julian and I fooled around in a bar bathroom in Montana, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.”
They both stop what they’re doing and look at each other, speechless.
The truth is, this isn’t the life I left.
My sisters and I weren’t close. Not like this.
We had our childhood together, growing up in the same house, and living with our mom and Birdie was something we shared.
It shaped us differently. Three and a half years ago, I barely made it to family dinners, never mind late-afternoon schmoozing and shoe swaps.
It’s been seven months since I wandered back here, and I promised myself long before that, if I ever saw them again, I would make our time together count.
Maybe that means leaning into the things I want instead of trying to fit a mold that I’ve long since outgrown.
They both haven’t said anything. “You’ve seen him,” I say, blowing out an exaggerated breath. “How am I not supposed to have fantasies about him? I mean, have you seen his hands?!”
Both slack-jawed, they instantly start laughing in agreement.
“I fucking knew it.” Stevie carries on cackling. Her demeanor changes seconds later, though, from sheer excitement to something far more dangerous, like one of her brilliant ideas is brewing.
I flap my fingers forward at Jo. “You two can fight over the Choos. Give me the boots. I'll pour drinks tonight, but from behind the bar, not on top of it.”
They both look at each other again like I’ve just shared the world’s most incredible news. This time, I’m the one chuckling. To be fair, they’ve been trying to get me back behind the bar since I quit very aggressively the week before I submitted for graduate school.
“Now, start talking, Stevie. What have you been hiding?” I prod.
“Okay, maybe hiding was overselling it, but I did see your guy when I dropped off Nash at The Rackhouse. It’s like a boys’ club over there with Jameson staying too.
” She opens the refrigerator, looking for something.
Pulling out a jar of olives, she opens it and plops one in her mouth.
“He totally slipped about another missing person case.”
My stomach sinks at hearing it, and it has me wondering if it’s connected to what I stumbled into at the bar the other night.
Stevie adds, “There are so many, and not a single lead. I could dedicate an entire podcast season just to missing persons in our county alone. Like, what the hell is in the water here?”
“Limestone,” I deadpan as I open the doors to my wardrobe.
“Obviously,” she says, knowing her fair share about whiskey. Limestone in the water here is one of the many things that makes Tennessee whiskey so damn smooth.
“I get the runaround any time I ask about cold cases. And don’t get me started on the sexual assault rumblings on your beloved university campus.”
“What sexual assault rumblings?” I ask, snapping my attention to her fully, stopping from looking through my display of shoes.
“Don’t get her going on this,” Jo whispers loudly. “She won’t stop.”
“It’s only rumors at this point, because our county sheriff’s department isn’t doing shit about it.
Any of it. It grinds my gears.” She pops another olive into her mouth, then flops onto the bed.
“Give me something good to focus on instead, Wynnie. I’m dying for a little hook-up story, some juice to keep my spirits up, please please please tell me the details of this bathroom tryst? ”
“Are you hormonal?” Jo asks her with a quirked eyebrow.
“All the fucking time,” Stevie groans out dramatically. “I’m living my best life in a loving, platonic marriage. I’ll take what I can get.”
Stevie and Theo’s relationship has always had gray lines and curious roots, but they stay together and would go to bat for each other in a minute. When she’s ready to talk about it, I know she will.
“Here,” Jo says as she tosses me the boots. “Can I ask you another question?”
I glance up at her as I sit to put them on. “You can.”
It’s one of the deals we made when I came back—to ask before asking. Stevie blows past remembering that one most of the time, but Jo doesn’t. She stared at the scar along my side in horror after the Summer Solstice party Birdie had thrown and I told them that they could ask.
“News flash,” Stevie interrupts. “That was more dessert than brunch, but I’m not mad about it.
Here. If we’re staying in the same place tonight, then it’s a sleepover, and sleepovers equal matching pajamas, or being naked, depending on the parties involved.
" She laughs, throwing a wadded-up ball of pink plushy fabric at my head.
I stand up, and without thinking, take off my shirt, but before I’m able to shed my pants, they’re both staring at the jagged, protruding scar.
It isn’t pretty, and it never would be, but it’s healed.
The phantom pain happens less often now—the memories of how it was made never truly leaving me, but muting more as time goes on.
“What happened, Wynnie?” Stevie asks as tears track down her cheeks. I hate seeing her like this—both of them crying over something I didn’t want to think about ever again, let alone talk about.
I clear my throat to hide the emotion that’s threatening to surface. “If I share this, it stays with us. Only us. I don’t want Mom or Birdie knowing any of it—not until I’m ready.”
They look at each other, silently agreeing that they can do that—keep a secret if it means making sure I’m okay.
“We promise,” they say in unison.
And they’ve kept it. My sisters know what I survived, that the monster I escaped is dead and that meant it was safe for me to come back home. But they didn’t know where I had been while I healed. They didn’t know that it took me so long to come back.
“You said Montana, so that means you met him while you were . . .” Her question drifts off.
“Healing,” I tell her. They couldn’t know about Hideaway.
It’s the one place that has to stay out of the conversation.
There are still people there, because it isn’t safe for them anywhere else.
“I was working at a bar. We flirted and he showed up a couple of months later, and we fooled around in the bathroom.” I smile, thinking about how that makes me sound—so out of character with who I used to be.
Or maybe it’s more like me now. I wasn’t Wyn when I was with him.
At least not the one everyone in Rumor knew.
“But I never thought I would see him again.”
“But he’s here now,” Jo says.
“He found you,” Stevie says, like it’s romantic.
He said he looked for me, and while I want to believe that, I know I’m not what brought him here. “What if that’s not the entire story? What if it was a strange coincidence that brought him here, but I don’t want it to be?”
Jo furrows her brow. “There’s always more to every story, Wyn.
You know that. And I’ll remind you of one very important truth.
” She looks at Stevie and then back to me as she raises her chin.
“You’re a Crowne, Wyn. We believe in what we want.
If you want to flirt and have fun, be serious and fall hard, or just forget it all, then do it. What’s stopping you?”