Page 106 of A Real Goode Time
“I’m not entertaining any negative what-if scenarios, Lex. I’m a virgin. I’m in love with Rhys. I can’t be with him right now. All that being true, I have no interest in thinking about what I would do in some fictional or hypothetical future that doesn’t involve Rhys. For right now, I just want to figure out what my life looks like.”
She nodded. “I respect that.” A silence, and then she smirked at me. “How do you feel about going dress shopping?”
I sighed. “I hate wearing dresses. Are you going to make me wear some stupid frilly bullshit that makes me look like I’m wearing a tea cozy?”
Lexie leaned toward me, fake angry disbelief on her face. “Have youeverfucking met me?”
I laughed. “Good point.”
She wiggled her eyebrows. “Now that you’re here, and you got here on your own, you have no choice but let me spoil you with Myles’s money.”
I stared at her. “I’m afraid to ask what that means.”
“It means you, Mom, Cassie, Charlie, Poppy—if she ever gets her ass here—and all the other women of the Badd clan, are boarding a jet Myles has chartered for us, and we’re flying to LA where he’s hired an A-list glam squad to give us all makeovers, followed by forty-eight hours at an exclusive spa resort for massages and all that spa shit, then a designer with an Italian name I can’t pronounce is going to put us each in dresses that cost more than some houses. And then, once we’re all done getting the ever-loving hell pampered out of us, we fly back here for the wedding.”
“Really?”
“Would I make up something like that?”
“It sounds like a fairy tale.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I love Myles for who he is, and I’d love him if he was broke and homeless. But him being who he isdoeshave its perks. Which includes him dropping a couple hundred grand like it’s nothing so all my girls can get pampered in style.”
“He’s that rich?”
She snorted. “Babe. He invests eighty percent of his earnings and lives exclusively off of a single endorsement stream. He owns entire buildings in Dallas, Nashville, and Manhattan, has stock in several super successful companies, and owns the rights and royalties to all his music, which he publishes himself under his own record company.” She snapped her fingers. “Oh yeah, it’s like that. My man isset.”
I laughed. “Your man. Never thought I’d hear you say that.”
She didn’t laugh. “Wanna hear something even more shocking? I’m his woman. There’s not a single thing he could ask of me that I wouldn’t do for him—except be with anyone else or share him.”
“Wow. It’s like that?”
She nodded. “Just like that. For life.”
“How does it feel?”
“To be in a relationship like that? To be his, and him be mine?”
“Yeah. That,” I whispered.
“Awesome. Scary as hell, but worth it.” She blinked hard, and my tough as nails, never-cries sister was crying. “He saved me. Rescued me from me. From a destructive, toxic, dead-end life. I’m in therapy, Tor. Every week, for an hour, I video conference with a therapist in San Francisco about being the victim of long-term sexual abuse, and it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.” She tilted her head. “Well, the best-best thing I’ve ever done was jerk off Myles backstage at that festival. Because I’ve not spent a day apart from him since, and I never will, but therapy is making me a better person, helping me finally and truly heal from years of trauma.”
“Years?” I asked.
“Yes, years. But it’s over, and there’s no point rehashing it. If you have specific questions, I’ll answer them, but I’d honestly just as soon let it lie. You know about it now, and you know I’m getting treated for it.”
I touched her arm. “Thank you for sharing. There’s nothing I need to know that you’ve not told me. I’m just glad you’re finding your way to okay.”
She hugged me. “Awesome. Now let’s go have Papa Lucas make us breakfast. He makes the best spinach and cream cheese omelets I’ve ever had.”
“Papa Lucas? Mama Livvie? It’s weird.”
“It’s not weird, it’s family.” She laughed. “Okay, it’s a little weird. But it’s family, and families are weird.”
The next twenty-fourhours were a whirlwind. The guys were in frenzy of macho packing—apparently they were going on some hunting, whiskey drinking, gun shooting, manly-man version of our girls’ trip, and thus everyone in the entire clan was running around like crazy people, trading clothes and gear, making arrangements, figuring out where kids were going and who was watching whom and when, and figuring who was managing the bars and…I was exhausted just watching it all.
And, in the middle of it all, Poppy showed up.