Aerie

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I sobbed all the harder at the sound of Tate’s voice, at the betrayal in her tone. Canaan was on the other side of the couch from me, staring at me, probably wishing he’d never met me, probably wishing he’d never touched me. And Tate…god. What a way to find out.

“I’m sorry,” I gasped. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“How could you?” Tate asked, rounding the couch to crouch in front of me. She was…so angry. So hurt. “I don’t understand, A. Why would you…how could you keep that from me? How could you do that? That was…it was a life! A person!”

“Don’t you think I know that?” I screamed. “I’ve thought about that every single day for the last three years of my life!”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Tate whispered.

“I couldn’t. I just…I couldn’t.” I lifted my eyes to my twin’s, saw tears in her eyes, trickling down her face. The hurt, the betrayal, the confusion, the anger…it was too much. “How much did you hear?”

“Enough.” Tate stood up, turned away. “Too much.”

“I can’t tell the whole story again.”

“You don’t need to.” Tate crossed her arms, still facing away from me. “You had a secret affair with Lex Landon, a man twelve years older than you, who was married—a fact you could have looked up on Wikipedia, by the way.”

“Right, because you’ve Googled everyone you’ve ever fucked.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Then what is the point, Tate? That I’m a slut because I had a forbidden, torrid affair with an older man? We could talk about the number of guys you’ve fucked, which I guarantee is more than anyone else in this room—”

“Watch your mouth, Aerie!” Corin snapped, having just entered the room.

“You stay out of this, Corin!” I snapped back. “This doesn’t involve you.”

“Guys, that’s enough.” Canaan stood up, moving between Tate and me. “Tate, why don’t you and Corin give us a minute, okay? Everyone’s upset, tempers are flaring, and we’re not going to help anyone if we’re all upset.”

“My twin sister had a fucking abortion and didn’t tell me! How am I not supposed to be upset about this?” Tate shouted. “Why don’t you stay the fuck out of this too, Canaan? This is between Aerie and me.”

“It’s actually not, Tate,” Canaan said with a touch of anger in his voice. “It’s between Aerie and me. She was talking to me. You were eavesdropping.”

“We came down the stairs and overheard her talking,” Corin said, stepping toward his brother. “We weren’t eavesdropping.”

“Sure as fuck seems like it to me.” Canaan crossed his arms over his chest, staring his brother down.

“You have something to say to me, Cane?” Corin demanded.

I shot to my feet, putting myself between them. “STOP! Both of you, stop. All of you stop. Everyone just…just…shut the fuck up!” I felt panic rifling through me. “You guys aren’t supposed to fight. Neither are we, Tate. We’re twins, you guys are twins. What the hell is happening to us?”

Corin let out a ragged sigh, running his hands over his face. “Shit. You’re right, A, you’re absolutely right. What are we doing, right now?”

I couldn’t handle any more. I was still reeling with the renewed agony of having finally told my secret…to Canaan, no less, whom I was beginning to fall in love with. My sister had overheard, and now the secret was really out there, because even Corin knew, now. Everyone knew.

It was all too much. Too fucking much.

“I—I…” I turned to Canaan, clutching at his shirt. “Take me home, please.”

He just stared at me. “Home? Where’s home, Aerie?”

“I don’t know! Fuck, I don’t know! I don’t have a home. Nowhere is home. This isn’t, New York isn’t—” I backed away, but he had my arms and wouldn’t let go. “I just…I need to be alone. I need—I need…”

“Mom is at Grandma and Grandpa’s, so you can’t go there,” Tate said. “Mom will know something’s wrong after one look at you, and I really don’t think she could handle this news right now. She’d have an actual heart attack.”

Baxter and Evangeline came down the stairs, then, and I burst into tears at the sight of them. I didn’t need them to see me like this, and I wondered if they’d heard my story, too, and the thought sent me into an actual panic attack. The kind of panic attack where I was hyperventilating, gasping for breath, heart palpitating, dizzy, and a flood of emotions cascading through me.

I felt soft, warm hands on my face; Evangeline was talking to me, but I couldn’t hear her. Canaan was behind her, and Tate, and Corin, and Bax…

I shook my head, tried to pull away, and Eva wrapped an arm around me and guided me…I don’t know where. I was disoriented, dizzy, stumbling, faint. Crying. I felt a strong arm supporting me, Canaan’s arm. I clutched him, held on to him just to stay upright.

Voices.

A bed underneath me. Faint female perfume.

Silence.

Sweet, blessed silence.

A hand, stroking my hair. Braiding it. Evangeline, sitting on the bed beside me, humming softly.

I couldn’t stop crying.

Canaan wasn’t here, and I was glad, because I wasn’t sure I could handle him right then.

Evangeline just kept fiddling with my hair, kept humming, her presence a soft, calming, soothing balm.

Eventually, my breath steadied and I got a handle on my tears; I blinked through the haze of tears and realized we were in Baxter’s room.

I looked up at Evangeline, trying to get myself under control, but I was still shaking and shuddering through the aftershocks of sobs. “Why…why are you here? Why are you doing this?”

“Sometimes we just need a friend. Not a sister, not a man, just…a friend.” She finished braiding my hair, and I sat up; she took my hands in hers. “I’ve never really had anyone I could call a true friend. There’s literally no one back East I even miss. No one has called me, or emailed me, or texted me, or asked where I was.” She smiled at me. “I need a friend, and so do you. So…here I am.”

“Tate and the boys are really the only people I’ve ever trusted or felt close to, and now things with them are all so tangled up and messy, I just…I don’t even know what to do anymore.” I glanced at her. “Did you hear what I was saying?”

She shrugged. “I heard some. It’s none of my business, though.”

“When I was eighteen, I had a secret affair with an older married man, a pretty famous one, too. He got me pregnant, and I had an abortion.” It was a little easier to put into words, this time. “I kept the entire thing a secret from everyone, until just now, when I told Canaan…and my sister overheard.

“I’m falling in love with Canaan, but I don’t know how to tell him, and I’m scared to be in love…I don’t want to be in love—scared isn’t the right word, actually…I’m outright terrified. I especially don’t want to be in love with him. Canaan and Corin have been my best friends—and really my only friends my whole life, same for Tate. So it’s…it’s really complicated. But it’s already complicated now, because Cane and I have slept together, and Corin and Tate are together and in love, and we almost made things even more complicated a couple months ago by mixing up partners, but we didn’t, thank god, and now Tate is pregnant with Corin’s baby, and everything is even more fucked up.”

“Wow…that’s…a lot,” Eva replied.

“Bet you bit off more than you can chew, huh, Evangeline?”

“Call me Eva,” she said, “and no, not at all.” What are you going to do?”

“I have no idea.” I shook my head and shrugged. “I really don’t. It’s tempting to just stay in here and ignore all three of them for a while.” I looked around and said, “You guys need your room, though, huh?”

She shook her head. “I guess you missed part of the earlier conversation. Bax and I are going to look for an apartment in this area, and you and Canaan are taking this room. It just makes more sense.”

“But…” I hesitated. “I’m not sure I’m ready to move in with Canaan. I don’t even know what we are, or what he feels, or anything.”

“That does complicate things.”

“Yeah, exactly.”

She shifted on the bed, putting her back to the wall, and I moved to sit beside her. “Why don’t you want to be in love, and why not with Canaan?”

I sighed. “I want to say it’s complicated, but it’s not, really. I was in love with the man who got me pregnant, and he was just using me for cheap, easy sex. The moment I admitted I was falling for him, he ghosted, but not before making sure I knew he’d been married the whole time. It was an intentional knife in the back. When I found out I was pregnant, I confronted him with it, and he flat-out told me to get an abortion.”

“What a jerk.”

“No shit, right?” I sighed. “Maybe I wasn’t ever really in love with him. I don’t know. It sure as hell felt like it at the time. I’ve thought about this nonstop, and I realized I couldn’t have really been in true love with him because I knew nothing about him. It was just sex. He hid the fact that he was married, that he was cheating on his wife, and that I was the other woman. I’ve always sort of…shied away from getting emotionally involved with men since then. I’ve…I’ve sort of avoided men in general, actually, except when I start to need…you know, sex. I don’t know. The whole thing is fucked up. I’m fucked up.”

“We’re all a little fucked up about something, Aerie. I let my dad control me my whole life. I’m a spoiled brat with zero life skills or work experience of any kind.” She giggled and leaned close. “And I’m honestly worried Bax is turning me into an actual sex addict.”

I giggled with her. “God, I know the feeling. There’s something about these Badd brothers, I think. They have a way of turning us women into mindless sex addicts.”

“You too?”

I nodded, stifling a laugh. “It’s so bad. It’s part of the problem, honestly. Am I crazy to think it could be love I’m feeling for Canaan? I thought I was in love with Lex Landon, and look where that got me.”

Eva stared at me in surprise. “The older married man was Lex Landon?”

I nodded. “Yes. The one and only. Unfortunately, as a real human being, he’s a piece of shit.” I sighed. “At least, he was to me. I know I should have done more in terms of making sure what we had was legit, but it was young and it was so fun, secretive and forbidden and sexy. That was all part of the attraction, I realize now, looking back. But it was empty, and meaningless, and it was never going to go anywhere, and I should have been wise enough to know that. But I wasn’t. And now…” I groaned. “He’s a sexual predator, that’s what he is. A cheater, a liar, and a total scumbag. I was an impressionable, gullible eighteen-year-old, and he took advantage of that, and then discarded me like so much garbage.”

“He’s the garbage, not you.” Eva shook her head, visibly upset. “You were so young! God—men like that, who take advantage of girls like you were, then, they just…they make me so mad. It’s so wrong, that your story is, sadly, all too common. And the fact that you’re still hung up on the rejection of it all, and not just the way he victimized you? Even still you’re…you’re feeling the stigma of that.” She shook her head. “No, stigma isn’t the right word. I think the rejection hurt you worse than you realize, and you’re putting that fear of rejection onto your relationship with Canaan.”

I nodded, but I couldn’t breathe, because her words were so, so true, and it hurt all over again. “I thought we had something, I thought—I thought maybe…I thought Lex at least cared about me, at least a little bit. I think I knew, deep down, that he didn’t love me. But…when he ghosted on me, and then showed up with his wife…” I shrugged, unable to put it into words.

“It cut you to the core. And when he told you to abort the pregnancy, it…” she trailed off, shrugging.

“It broke something inside me, I think,” I finished.

“Right, and that’s totally understandable. But here’s the thing, honey. Talking about this, getting out, so it’s not a secret anymore…that’s the first and biggest step toward healing. You were victimized by an older man. He’s a predator, nothing more, nothing less, and you were the prey. You can’t blame yourself for that. He didn’t reject you, he used you, and threw you aside when you’d served your purpose for him. That’s on him, babe, not you.”

Eva ducked her head, staring at the blanket between her crossed legs.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about this stuff, lately, and Bax and I have had a lot of really brutal conversations trying to keep things open and honest between us. In some ways, we didn’t want to come back here and try to be a couple around all of you when we still only barely knew each other. So we took the time we needed to learn about each other. Which meant both of us opening up about a lot of things. Such as that I now have undeniable confirmation of the fact that my father never really loved me. I believe my mother loved me but only insofar as it suited Father’s plans. Thomas…well…that part at least is obvious—I was only ever a means to an end for him.

“So when I came here to Ketchikan on my own and met Bax, I leaped—somewhat recklessly, I might add—into a relationship with him. But really letting him love me? That’s going to be harder. We knew we had these strong emotions for each other, and we knew we had a crazily intense physical connection, but the kind of love that allows people to…to really be together, in terms of a healthy lifelong romance—a real marriage…well, that’s a little different.

“It’s easy to have sex, easy to say we love each other, but sometimes he wants to take care of me, and I don’t want to be taken care of because that’s all I’ve ever known, whereas for Bax, he’s always been totally independent and has never had anyone to take care of, never had anyone that needed him. So…there’s a disconnect there.”

I blinked at her. “That’s…um…are you sure you’re not a relationship counselor? Because that’s…it’s the most self-aware statement I’ve ever heard.”

Eva blushed and shrugged a shoulder. “Like I said, we’ve spent a lot of time over the past few months trying to figure out how to have a meaningful relationship. And I know to a lot of people Baxter comes across as this big, brutish, hard-headed, hard-fisted monster who thinks only about things like football and working out and whatever…but he’s actually very sensitive and very thoughtful. At least, he is with me. He’s also surprisingly articulate and intelligent.”

I glanced around the bedroom. “When Cane and I first came in here we were somewhat surprised to see all these books,” I admitted.

“So was I, my first time in here. I think he intentionally allows people to make assumptions about him. It keeps people away. He’s only ever been close to his brothers, and I think he has a hard time forming relationships with anyone, male or female. I get the sense he wasn’t really buddy-buddy with the guys on his football team, and I’ve never known anyone to call, text, email, or visit him. Except his brothers, and now me. He keeps everyone away.”

“Why do you think that is?”

She tipped her head to one side. “Well, this is mostly conjecture, and it’s just between you and me, right? The boys’ mother died when they were very young—you’ve known them your whole life so I assume you know this?”

I nodded. “She died of brain cancer, I think. It hit hard and fast, took her within a matter of weeks after the diagnosis.” I let out a soft breath, thinking. “We were…ten, I think? It really messed everyone up. It was so unexpected, you know? Like, Mrs. Badd was…I barely remember her, but she was just this sweet, kind, beautiful woman. She absolutely adored the boys. And then suddenly she was sick, and then Corin and Canaan told us she’d been diagnosed with brain cancer and was going to die soon, and then, bam, she was gone. It was devastating for Tate and I just because we knew her and loved her—she was like a second mom to us. For the boys?” I groaned. “There are not enough words to explain how hard it was on them—on the whole family, in fact. It messed them all up.”

“Exactly,” Eva said. “All of them in different ways. Their mom dying has left terrible emotional scars on all eight of them, and for Baxter it manifests itself as an inability to form relationships with anyone except his brothers, who have been the only people he’s allowed to love and accept him. I understand their dad didn’t take his wife’s passing very well.”

I laughed, a bitter sound. “How could he? Mr. Badd was always…well, Bast reminds me of him a lot, actually. Big, burly, gruff, sort of hard to read, but once you get to know him he turns out to be a sweetie, under that bear-like exterior. Mr. Badd was like that. He’d always been a fixture behind that bar, for as long as anyone in this town could remember. His dad, the boys’ grandfather, had worked at the bar, ended up buying it from his former employer, built the apartment above it, and he and Mr. Badd ran it together until Grandpa Badd died in…the eighties, I think? That was when Mr. Badd changed the name to Badd’s Bar and Grill, and moved his wife and Bast and Zane into the apartment. So, my point is, Mr. Badd ran the bar basically by himself until Bast was old enough to help. So anytime we’d show up to play with Canaan and Corin, Mr. Badd was back there behind that bar, sipping a glass of something, watching sports, shooting the shit with the regulars. But when their mom died, Mr. Badd…he shut down. Gave up. All he knew how to do was drink and work—and usually both together—from open to close. Bast became the other boys’ de facto parent. Doing laundry, getting everyone to school on time, lunches, all that. I remember it all, at least, until our Mom married Bob and moved us to Manhattan.”

“So Bax’s mom died, and then his dad checks out of his life…” Eva trailed off meaningfully.

“Psychologist says…abandonment issues,” I said.

“Exactly.” She looked at me carefully. “We all have issues. Like I said earlier, we’re all messed up about something. It may not be my place to say this, but…I think you need to give Canaan a chance. You can’t let past hurts and fears keep you from enjoying what could be a life-changing relationship. It’s worth it, Aerie. It really is.”

“What’s worth it?” I asked, even though I knew what she was getting at.

“Love. I left my former life to be with Bax. Everything I know, literally, even my clothes. I am completely on my own, penniless, disowned by my family…no college, no career, no home, no friends.” She held up a hand to stop my interruption. “It’s terrifying, Aerie. It’s utterly terrifying. What if this doesn’t work out with Bax and me? What if he turns out not to be the man I think he is? What if there’s something wrong with me? What if I’ll never learn how to trust him, how to let him love me? What if I never find anything meaningful and worthwhile to do as a career? What if, what if, what if—I’m full of them. They run through my head all day, every day.”

“And being with Baxter is worth all that?” I asked, my very doubt and skepticism rife and obvious in my voice. “No bullshit, Eva.”

“No bullshit?” She met my eyes, and I couldn’t help but see—and envy—the sincerity I saw there. “Absolutely. I risked everything to choose Bax, and I have no regrets. Doubts and fears that will take time to sort through, yes, but regrets? No.”

“Why? How?” I whispered. “I don’t get it. I mean, Bax is great, but…to leave behind everything you had, everything you’ve ever known, for a man you knew, what…weeks?”

She laughed. “Not even. Like I said, what I’ve done is…on the surface and by all accounts, it’s totally nuts. Crazy, reckless, foolish…choose your word. It is absolutely all of that. But…it’s right. I just know it in my blood and bones. Baxter loves me, and I love him. Not to say this is going to be easy, that there won’t be times I will feel regret, but it will be worth it. I just…I know it.”

A shuddering sob escaped me. “I’m envious. I don’t think I’m capable of that.”

“Of what?”

“Of that kind of bravery, that kind of…gamble. That kind of assurance.”

“There’s no reward without risk,” Eva said, after a brief pause. “That’s a truism I heard my father say a thousand times in reference to politics and business. I think it’s true in life as well, Aerie.”

“I don’t doubt that, but…I just don’t know if I can do it. I’m too scared.”

“Of what?”

“God…everything! Being rejected again. I don’t think I could survive it if I told Canaan I was…if I told Canaan that I’m falling for him. It would just wreck me beyond what Lex has already done to me.”

“You don’t think Canaan would be worth it?”

“If anyone could be, he is.” I ducked my head. “But I’m too afraid to find out.”