28. Brooding #2
“You show up, even when you’re drowning in your secrets and lies. Yet you don’t trust any of us to help you.” He doesn’t raise his voice, and that makes it worse.
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s not enough, Cole.”
“I know.”
“So try a-fucking-gain.”
My fingers wrap around the paper cup, and I stare across the way at her dark windows. “I should’ve told you years ago, Hud. I should’ve told you when she stole the memorial, and I should’ve told you when she came to me with her…arrangement—”
“Blackmail,” he seethes. “Don’t sugarcoat what actually happened.”
I nod. “I didn’t tell you because I convinced myself I was protecting you from what I had to do to get Junie out of debt, and then I didn’t know how to get out of it without putting us all on Natalie’s radar.
Especially because I suspected that the way Anna and Tommy obtained the original loan wasn’t exactly legal.
I didn’t know how to admit to you, or anyone, that I’d failed. ”
“Jesus Christ, Cole.”
“We all would’ve protected Junie from that video, Hud, and you know it. If Natalie realized that, she would’ve gone after all of you too. Can you honestly say you wouldn’t have at least thought about agreeing to her terms?”
The morning is very quiet, and Hudson barely moves.
“I don’t know, Cole. And I never will because we weren’t given that choice.
We’ve been giving you our all while you’ve been creating layers to keep yourself safe since you were five.
But never, not once since the day you walked into that classroom, have you been on your own. ”
“I—I’m starting to see that.”
“Are you?” He stares at me with such intensity I can finally understand why everyone crumbles under his pressure in the courtroom.
“Yeah.”
Hudson’s hand finds my shoulder the same way Nana Mae’s did earlier.
In the small, displaced corner of my brain still capable of registering anything, I finally understand what it is my family does—they fill in the cracks.
They’re the screws that hold my walls up and the hammers that knock them down when they’re no longer needed.
And I’ve missed out on so much by keeping them at arm’s length.
“The check from Meridian last night won’t clear because of Junie’s email,” Hudson says, fully into lawyer mode now. “As your attorney, I was sent a copy of the…claim.”
“Junie chose spite.” My lips curl at the corners.
“Junie chose justice.”
It’s a distinction I needed to hear.
“I’ve already filed for an injunction to release it.
The prize cannot legally be withheld as you haven’t done anything wrong.
Also, she probably hasn’t told you, but The Haven passed the county assessment—Junie was thorough.
With the award money, the books will be balanced by the end of the week.
” When Hud took the bar for both Massachusetts and South Carolina, I thought he was just an overachiever.
Now I understand it’s how he protects those he loves.
“My PI found Devin. As soon as you give the word, I’ll file the paperwork to bring him in. ”
I nod. “I have to tell Nana Mae first, then…do it.”
“You never had to do this alone, Cole. Do you understand that? We each bring a different set of skills to this little fucked-up family we’ve created. All you had to do was ask. The not-asking is what caused all this…harm.”
“I know that too.” I stand and tug at my collar.
It’s like I can’t get enough air. “Everything has changed, Hud. I—I need help.” Fuck, I hate this.
I hate putting everyone in this position.
“I don’t know what Natalie will do now. I made sure I took Junie off everything but the deed to the Brookline house, but you’re right about a paper trail. If Natalie—”
“Give me access to everything.” He’s already typing into his phone. “Every shred of evidence you have. Especially the loans you took out—”
“If I hadn’t taken over the debt, Junie would’ve lost her house.
Her credit wouldn’t have recovered for years.
Her dreams would’ve been shattered because she would’ve pushed, and when it came to light what her parents had done, the way they falsified the loan documents, she would’ve been implicated too—they made sure of it.
No one would hire a forensic accountant with that kind of shit on their record.
She would’ve been held responsible for the defaulted loans, Hud.
Her name was on everything, and she was about to turn eighteen. ”
It’s so similar to what Devin did to me. Hudson must be thinking the same thing because he peers up at me with questions floating in his eyes.
“I think Devin found my files,” I confirm. “He saw what Junie’s mother had done, what I did to fix it, then turned around and did the same shit to me. He had a drinking problem in college, but I thought he had gotten sober. Now, I’m not so sure.”
“We’ll deal with Devin. I just have one question.” A hint of a grin appears on his face. “Are you the reason for Tommy’s missing teeth?”
I close my eyes. “I beat the shit out of him in the back alley of a bar in Southy. No one stopped me, and I’m sure there are witnesses somewhere.”
Hudson shakes his head. “You’re a better man than me, Cole, because I’m pretty sure I would’ve killed him. If you give me access to everything, and I mean fucking everything, I’ll bury him another way.”
Reaching into my pocket, I hand him my keys. “It’s all in the bottom drawer of my desk upstairs.”
“I let Natalie know last night that if she does anything else with the legal documents she has, she’ll be complicit, and I’ll go after her with everything I have. It should at least buy us some time there.” Hudson can be terrifying.
Hudson pockets the keys. He doesn’t hug me. He doesn’t say it’s okay.
It’s not. Nothing is okay right now.
But for the first time in hours, I can almost see the prospect of okay.
Fen arrives around noon from California with a leather duffle bag, a portfolio of crisis-management material he prepared overnight, and the worst expression I’ve ever seen on Fenway Jones.
He stands at the bottom of the stairs I still haven’t moved from. The glare he sends my way tosses a boulder at the guilt that’s been building in my chest.
“You absolute fucking coward.”
Hudson has apparently joined us on the porch because I hear him chuckle behind me.
“Hi, Fen.”
“Don’t hi, Fen me, Cole. Don’t you dare hi, Fen me. Do you have any idea what I’ve been doing for the last twelve hours? Any idea?”
He tosses his duffle onto the ground, grimaces, picks it up, and throws it to the porch.
“I’ve been on the phone with my personal publicist about your fake fiancée while you were being blackmailed by my literal college nemesis over something your fake fiancée’s mother did.”
He takes three long seconds to glare at me.
“I’ve been doing damage control for Junie’s career while you were paying that witch with your own fucking designs and the fucking Mercer parents from hell with your soul.
I’m a crisis communications pro-fess-ion-al and I’ve been crisis managing your girl’s image for six weeks while not knowing an entirely new crisis was happening inside the same room!
You know what that is, Cole? That’s malpractice. ”
Hudson clears his throat, but Fen presses on.
“On you, not me. You committed malpractice on my friendship.” Actual spittle flies from the corner of Fen’s mouth.
“Fen.”
“I am not done.”
“Okay.”
Hudson moves closer. He might expect Fen to take a swing at me. Who knows, maybe he will, but I won’t fight back. Not about this.
Fen climbs one step.
Just one.
“Do you remember the night three weeks after Nolan’s college graduation party?
Do you remember coming in at three a.m. with your jaw clenched and your eyes red, and you wouldn’t tell us where you’d been?
The night that we pulled an all-nighter because we were terrified that you’d do something we couldn’t rescue you from? ”
“Yes.” It’s the nightmare that’s plagued me ever since.
“You’d been erratic for a full week before that night, then you came home with your hands bloodied and swollen, and you wouldn’t tell us what happened.
But that night, the night we all stood watch over you because you were breaking and we didn’t know why, that’s the night Natalie did it, wasn’t it?
The blackmail. This whole fucking mess started that night, and you chose. You. Chose. Not to tell us.”
“Yes.”
It’s also the night I beat Junie’s dad in a back alley.
He climbs another step. “Did you know that the three of us didn’t sleep for days after that?
Each one of us taking turns talking the others off the ledge of what’s happened to our brother.
We watched you lose yourself. We felt you pull away.
We did everything to cling to you, to tie you to us, so we didn’t lose you forever.
We were there. We’ve always been there, this entire time, and you never once said a word.
You absorbed the cost of their shitty decisions when it was always a price we could’ve afforded if we’d paid it together.
Don’t you get that, you giant fucking asshole? ”
Where Hudson is calm and composed, Fen is full of emotion and fiery to a fault.
Two explanations for the same hurt that I caused.
He takes another step, then flops down dramatically next to me as though he’s already expended all his energy. “You let us love you wrong for years, Cole. We were loving you wrong because you didn’t trust us to love you whole.”
Fenway wraps his arm around my shoulder and hangs on tight. Hudson sits on my other side.
“We’re here now,” Fen says. “And this time, we’re going to erase all those years of fuckups.”
I’m not sure where Fen’s going, so I stay silent. He could be planning a literal attack or ordering takeout…it’s just that hard to tell with him sometimes.
“What’s the plan?” Hudson asks.
“Protect Junie with everything I have and hope that someday she might be able to forgive me.”