Page 102 of Avenged By Lov

My phone rang, and I looked down to see Mandy’s picture lighting up the screen.

“Hi!” I said, purposefully keeping my voice light.

“Hey right back. How’s Violet?”

I wasn’t sure who’d told Mandy and Leena about the accident, but they’d both spent a good portion of the last few days texting and calling us to make sure we were okay. To make sure Violet was healing and that I wasn’t going off the rails. I was trying to let them mother me in a way I’d refused before. My mother was dead, and my father was never going to be my father again, but these two women were able and willing to step into the spaces my own parents had left behind. I’d just never let them. I’d always considered it an obligation I’d have to return, a loan I’d have to repay.

The pieces of me Truck had opened to the world and brought out of the shadows had finally realized that Mandy and Leena didn’t want me to repay any of it. They simply wanted to help me, and it was high time I finally saw it for what it was. A gift. A gift that didn’t come with strings. It was a gift of love as much as it was a gift of a home. They truly were one of my five good things.

“She’s getting grouchy,” I told Mandy, but I didn’t say we were both grouchy. That we were both healing from things that couldn’t be seen.

“Vi? I don’t think I’ve ever seen that girl unhappy for more than twenty seconds.”

Which was the truth, but lately, Vi had shown a wider range of emotions than ever before. She was older and wiser, and yet, not. She was angry with me for Dad and Dawson and more, but she also needed me, and maybe it was that need she was frustrated with. She was, after all, a normal teen, wanting to show they were strong, independent, and adult enough to make their own decisions about their life. I was struggling with how to let her be all of that and still keep her safe.

“How are you?” Mandy asked.

“Me? I’m fine.”

“Is this your normal fine, which is really I’m-just-hiding-all-my-pain-so-you-can’t-see-it fine?”

I couldn’t help the small smile that appeared on my face at her words. I wasn’t fine. I was still battling the physical pain on a daily basis, and now I was battling my emotions, too.

“I’m going to be okay,” I told her and hoped that would be the reality.

Mandy sighed. “Fine.” She drawled it out sarcastically and then changed the subject. “I was wondering if you could go by the house on Friday. Randy says he’s close to being done, and there are some things he needs approval on. I told him you could sign for me.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.”

“Is that even legal?” I asked.

She laughed. “Leave it to you to ask a billion questions before agreeing to anything. Yes. Can you please just go?”

I felt bad for making her doubt for one second that I’d do whatever she needed. “Of course!”

“Okay. Thank you.”

I hung up the phone, looking around the room that was immaculate and clean because Jada’s family’s housekeeper kept it that way. I wanted to be back at the Victorian where there was always the clutter of those who lived there, but I ached to be back at a cottage with a garden I’d grown and the man who’d stolen my heart. I wondered if the garden was dying now without me to look after it. Gardens needed love and care to grow as much as water and food, and for some reason, the thought of the things I’d planted dying a slow death made me cry.

Truck

I HOPE YOU’RE HAPPY NOW

“Who knew this heart could break

This hard

Or love like ours could fall apart,”

Performed by Carly Pearce w/ Lee Brice

Written by Brice / Jacobs / Montana

Dawson was back to playing videogames on the couch. He couldn’t really work with the broken ribs and a hand bandaged until it could barely bend. When I asked how he got the cut on his hand, he said he wasn’t sure, but he thought it had been when he’d cut the seat belts to get them out of the car that had been filling with water.

He’d retreated back into the sulky Dawson who’d first come with me to New London.