Page 79 of Outlier

“Can you teach us to weld too today, Mikey?” Hayley said in a small voice, and despite the tension in the air, all eyes went to her.

Hayley was still finding her feet with speech after being silent for so long, and she hardly ever spoke with this large an audience.

“Vicky’s been through a lot, love,” I started to say gently. “I think–”

But Vicky gave me a squeeze and cut me off.

“Of course he can,” she said. “He promised to teach me as well.”

I looked down at her face, and her hopeful eyes looked back up at me. And there you go. This woman who’d been assaulted yesterday, who’d just had an emotionally draining family confrontation, who by all rights should still be in bed—she wanted to learn to weld.

How I had ever thought her a rich, snobby ice princess was totally beyond me.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll teach the three of you.”

That prompted squeals from both the girls and an excited smile from Vicky.

“But the rest of you can bugger off.”

Chapter 26

Are you trying to kill me?

Vicky

I stared at my phone.

To be honest, I couldn’t quite believe it. In the immediate aftermath of what Darrell had done to me, one of my first thoughts was how my mother and sister would make me pay. I imagined the barrages of texts and phone calls.

When it happened two years ago, they’d made threat after threat—so many, that eventually, I’d flinched every time my phone even vibrated. But now… nothing.

Because Mike had simply tapped a few keys and blocked them. And then when my aunt rang me a few days ago and went off on a rant about how I’d betrayed the family and upset my sister, how she knew I wasmentally deficient,but that that was no excuse, Mike had simply plucked the phone out of my hands, hung up the call, and then blocked her too.

But I was on edge. I wasn’t ready to believe that it could be as simple as that. Or that I was allowed to disconnect from my family.

It had been drummed into me for so many years how lucky I was to have a family that tolerated me at all. So blocking themwas anxiety-inducing, but I knew that actual contact with them would be worse.

And anyway, I was happy at the cabin.

Mike had shown me and the girls how to weld. This involved Mike swearing excessively and commiserating about how he wished he had a girlfriend and nieces who wanted to go shopping on a Sunday instead of burning his workshop down—an unfair assessment in my opinion, as we were all very careful with the blow torch, and only set something on fire thatone time.

Then when the girls went home, he phoned Felix.

Apparently, I wasn’t working for the next week, and I was staying with Mike at the cabin.

The thought of not working had never occurred to me. I hardly ever took time off. I told Mike in a very matter-of-fact way that I’d carried on working after the last assault despite my silent panic attacks.

This did not seem to reassure Mike; in fact, judging by the slashes of colour that appeared high on his cheekbones and the angry scowl he directed my way, it may have inflamed the situation.

“Well, you’re not bloody well working next week,” he’d told me, followed by a stream of curse words of different varieties.

Seeing as it seemed very important to Mike, and I did feel a lot safer at the cabin, I agreed.

And, despite the trauma of the weekend, this last week was the best week I had ever had in my whole life. Better than the week I made my first million. Better than the first week I moved into my own house where I could keep my space safe and free from clutter.

Better than anything.

We’d had an argument the second night, though. Mike had promised to teach me fellatio after six more dates—and I’d been counting.