Chapter 7 I feel like if cicadas are allowed to sit in a tree and scream, I should be allowed to, too. -Creole to Audric AUDRIC I was drinking a beer, watching Webber's wife dance excitedly with her newest best friend, the flight attendant from hell, when Webber himself came up and took a seat next to me. "Going a little hard tonight, aren't you?" he asked. "I have no reason not to," I answered as I thought about why I hadn't been able to go hard lately. I was raising a child. A child that I now knew the parentage of and should definitely tell the father. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! I'd never been so mad in my life. Mad at Laney. Mad at the situation. Mad at Laney's parents. Mad at everything and everyone. Well, everyone but the one that I probably had the second most right to be mad at. The woman who was trying really hard to appear like she was enjoying herself but wasn't. "Drinking for all the time I've missed out the last two years," I said stiffly. I felt more than saw Webber's face turn to survey me. "What's wrong?" he asked. I shook my head. "You just got married. I'm not laying my troubles at your feet when you should be enjoying yourself and forgetting everyone and everything but her." He snorted. "Yeah, because that's going to make me not want to know what's going on." I shrugged. "I..." "Audric." He paused. "Or should I call you Audi?" I blew out a disgusted breath. "Definitely shouldn't go there." Apollo sat down on the other side of me, and he leaned forward as he stared at the same two women we were. "How do you know the flight attendant?" Apollo asked. I turned to look at him. "Why do you ask?" He tapped his lip for a few seconds before he said, "I don't think I should tell you." I narrowed my eyes. "Apollo, I've known that woman for close to three-quarters of my life. She was Laney's best friend." He nodded. "Just because she was Laney's best friend doesn't mean that you know anything about her." To be honest, he was right. I didn't know her nearly as well as I thought I once did. "Hung out with her every day through fourth grade. I wouldn't exactly say that we were best friends, because that was what Laney and her had. And Laney and I had. She was just the common denominator between us. But I know her family. Know her mom. Know she lost a child. Even babysat that child for her when she had to work." Apollo seemed to hesitate for a few long seconds before he said, "Looked into that douchebag of a pilot. Heard y'all's conversation. Knew that she was lying because no way would you go there with your wife's best friend. So I wanted to know what was going on." I scrubbed a hand down my face. "Laney was only my wife on paper. Don't think poorly of Creole because she was Laney's best friend. Creole and I had just as much of a romantic relationship as Laney and I did." There was a long moment of silence and then, "Fuck, that makes so much more sense now. I heard you discussing a few things with another club member, and I wasn't sure if I was supposed to act like I knew or not." I rolled my eyes. "Apollo, you know more about everyone's lives than even we do sometimes. Plus, we practically invite you to dig into our lives. You can speak freely with me about anything you want to." "Okay, good," he said. "So since Creole was sexually assaulted, I decided to do some digging into Kory. I didn't like the way he cornered her in there. Took up..." I held up my hand. "Whoa. Wait. What do you mean sexually assaulted?" He looked at me in surprise. "When she was seventeen. You said y'all were..." I closed my eyes as horror washed through me. Everything started to make sense. Her actions. How she reacted our senior year. How she pulled away. How she was pregnant and wouldn't tell anyone. How she had trouble connecting with her own child. How Laney came over and cried when she told me Creole's son's name. Fuck. Jesus fuck. I was finding it hard to fucking breathe. How had I missed this? How could I have been so blind? I scrubbed my face. "Does it show in her records who did it?" I knew that he'd dug deeper once he'd found out about the rape. Rape. Goddammit. Only thinking the word made bile rise up in my throat. "Rapist was never found, technically," he said, "but there's a boy who unenrolled from the school a few days after she reported it." My mind was reeling, trying to remember who'd left our senior year abruptly. There was only one and... "Who?" I asked. Jordie Goodwin. "Jordie Goodwin," Apollo echoed my thoughts. I clenched my fists and tried to breathe. But I was finding it really hard to. I'd witnessed the two of them together at a party at Laney's place. Had I... No, it couldn't have been. Surely not. "What's her file say about the day it happened?" he asked. And the horrors just kept coming. "Happened at a party. Some senior splash day or something. All of the seniors went to a party after their senior splash day at school..." Apollo kept talking, but I'd heard all I needed to hear. No more words were necessary. Walking up the back staircase, I searched for a place to disappear for a little bit that wasn't crowded with people. I'd had a long day, and the last thing that I wanted to do was go to a party at Laney's house. But Laney would've guilt tripped the hell out of me, so I chose the lesser of two evils. I went to the party, but I'd spent the last hour trying to find a different place to hide. Someone always found my hiding spot, and I would have to search for a new one. My next hiding spot was Laney's parents' balcony. I was going to slip into their room and lock it, then go outside and hide, hoping no one would find me. I'd just popped the door open on their parents' room-using the code that only a few of us knew-and came to a dead stop when I saw Creole and Jordy on Laney's parents' bed. I took one look at that mass of curly hair and disappeared as fast as I'd entered. I didn't take note of anything else but the fact that the room was occupied. "Shit," I grumbled as I turned around to look for somewhere else to hide. And preferably die of mortification and other things that I refused to admit to myself. "Why did it say Jordy removed himself from school?" I asked, knowing he would've checked. "Because he was moving to Alaska for some military training camp. He actually went, too. Court ordered. But on a different charge. He'd been accused of anger issues multiple times prior to his latest arrest that led him to court that in turn sent him to that camp. The night of the party was his last night in town before he was sent off to Alaska for a year until he turned eighteen," Apollo said. "He assaulted two police officers and tried to use daddy's money to get it fixed. When that didn't work, the father offered up the military school. The judge accepted and the cops agreed to it as well. He was shipped out the next day after she reported it." Throughout the entire explanation, Webber had remained quiet. Until then. "Where's this Jordy guy now?" Webber asked. "The military. Flies Blackhawks for the Army," he answered. "In pretty good social standing, according to his records." I didn't give a flying fuck if he was a goddamn pope somewhere helping the poor and giving up his life's savings. If he'd done this to her, there was no goddamn way that I was going to let it go. The only problem was, I needed to talk to her about it. And that made my beer threaten to uproot itself from my belly. "What else were you going to tell us when you sat down, Apollo?" Webber asked, really pushing me. I didn't think I could handle anything more. "Kory is a closet stalker. He looks up her Facebook and Instagram accounts every five minutes. Or he would if she had social media. He types her name into his search bar every day," he explained. "I got worried, and I wanted to make sure that you kept playing along with the boyfriend thing. Maybe he'll back off. Also, I changed your Facebook and Instagram photo to a picture of you two from tonight." I glanced over at him. "We didn't take a photo together." "You kind of did." He shrugged. "I changed it because he's already looked up your social media. He found your business page." I rolled my eyes. "He'll find a bunch of nothing." "I know, which was why I put that personal picture of you two up as your profile picture on your business page," he said. "How would that relate to plumbing in any way?" I wondered. Not that I cared. I barely ever got on there. My front office ran the page and updated it from time to time to make it look like the business had a social media presence. "You're a family business. You have a kid and a new girlfriend. People eat that shit up." That was another thing. In for a penny... "That's another thing I need to talk to you about, Webber, but I'm going to wait just a bit longer," I said carefully. I knew that I needed to let everything hang out there. Maybe they could help me figure out this situation while I figured out other things... Other more scary, life changing, I have to fix it now, things. Not that the Cakes/Lottie thing wasn't important. It was. But fuck. I needed to talk to Creole first. I found her on the beach overlooking the ocean. Molokini Crater could be seen on the edge of the horizon, and I wondered if she'd ever been out that far to visit the area. Or if she just flew in and flew right back out. I knew that today was out of the norm for her when she flew. I had no doubt in my mind that she didn't have many friends, and her going to a wedding like this was likely the first one she'd ever been to besides mine and Laney's. I sat down beside her, giving her plenty of space now that I knew why she needed that space, and said, "Have you ever been snorkeling there?" Het brows furrowed. "Snorkeling where?" I indicated the crater with a tilt of my head. "There." "No." She shook her head. "Your house is beautiful." "It's not my house," I said. "This one is a friend's." A friend that I'd met in the Army. We'd bonded over both of our grandfathers having died during the attack on Pearl Harbor. "You have a friend with a place like this?" she asked, looking over her shoulder at the house. "Yeah," I said. "Both of our great-grandfathers died in the attack on Pearl Harbor. We hit it off during boot camp. Found out that we had a lot in common. His house was passed down to him from multiple generations ago. His great-grandfather, like mine, had lived here his entire life." "Where's your place at?" she asked. "North Shore," he answered. "On the Big Island." "Ahhh," she said. "I'll bet those taxes are insane." "You have no idea," I grumbled. "It takes Dad and me paying the taxes combined to make it." "Why keep it?" she questioned. I smiled. "My great-grandmother and grandfather loved the place. My great-grandmother still loves to visit it, and she doesn't have much longer to live, so we'll keep it at least until she passes. From there, we'll make the decision. We love the house and the location, and I'm sure they'd pay fifty times what it's worth to get it due to its location, but it's right here deep in my heart. The island. I don't want to let it go." "You have the money now, Audi," she pointed out, once again using my nickname that I hadn't heard in years. "Laney left you millions." She had. Laney dying had left me with her entire trust fund. That trust fund had three hundred and fifty million dollars in it. But... "It's not really mine. I'm going to make sure that it goes to Lottie when she's old enough," I said. Her eyes came to me. "Are you going to tell him?" I looked up at the sunset that was lighting up the sky and said, "When we're back. Morally, now that I know, I won't be able to keep that from him. He already had one of his children kept from him for her entire life. I'm not adding another." "You didn't know," she pointed out. "That was my fault, I guess." I snorted. "No, that was definitely Laney's fault. I can't believe that she would do something like that. Not tell us." Us being myself and Cakes. It was obvious that she'd told Creole knowing that Creole wouldn't share. Thinking of why Creole hadn't shared once again set off that chain reaction of guilt, bile, and horror swirling through my system. It was one thing that I didn't think I could ever get over. But I had to bring it up. I had to let her know... I had to make sure she knew that had I known what had been going on that night, I would've never, not ever, left her. "Creole..." I said as a dolphin jumped out of the water in the distance. "I need to tell you something." She glanced at me, and the sound of the waves pounding up against the molten rock ceased to exist once our eyes met. "What?" she wondered. I looked away, studying the waves that were swirling around tumultuously between the layers of rock, knowing I couldn't say what I needed to say while looking in her eyes. "I didn't know," I said. "What?" I could hear the confusion in her voice. "I didn't know. About that night. About you." She went so still that I was forced to look over at her, and what I saw had nausea once again swelling in my belly. "You didn't...there's no way you couldn't know!" she hissed. I scrubbed at my face. "I have a buddy who's really good with computers." "I know who he is," she snarled, pissed as hell. She had a reason to be. "He was snooping. Because of that douchebag Kory. He wanted to know his story, and so he got to looking into him, and found out that he was borderline stalking you. Looking you up obsessively on the internet multiple times a day. Making sure that he was always put on the same shifts as you. It concerned him, so he looked further. And he told me today what happened to you. But at first, he thought I knew, too. But I swear to you, on my life, I didn't know." When I finally got the courage to look up at her again, she was crying silent tears, staring at me like I'd just shocked the holy hell out of her. "What...how? You walked in. He was restraining me. I was fucking crying. He had his hand over my mouth!" Bile surged up my throat, and it was a very real possibility that I was about to throw up in the sand. "I saw your hair, and I freaked the fuck out and left. I didn't look at anything but your hair," I promised. There was no mistaking her hair. It always drew my eyes first, it was so beautiful. Never once had I looked at her and not immediately been drawn to her wild, curly hair. "I..." She paused. "I don't..." "It's what I see first, always," I told her. "I see your hair first. No exceptions. That was why, that night, when I saw your hair..." "You saw my hair, and someone on top of me, and you left," she murmured so quietly I could barely hear her over the crashing sea. "I was wrecked," I admitted. "Once upon a time, I thought you'd be mine. I thought I could convince you..." But that was the day that I realized that I would never call her mine. "Jesus," she said. "All these years I blamed you." I squeezed my eyes shut. I knew she had. She had a reason to. I should've protected her. I'd been there. I'd left her there to her fate. "Was it Jordie?" I asked. She mewled, and I wanted so badly to pull her into my arms. "Yeah." "Fuck."