Humiliation, hot and prickly, beat against her cheeks. She wanted to run, to hide, but she refused to give into the old feelings. Instead she’d pick at that scab and prove once and for all that it couldn’t hurt her anymore. That Ford couldn’t hurt her.
“Then I heard the giggles. They were quiet at first, barely tickling my consciousness. Then they got louder and louder until they pierced whatever schoolgirl dream haze had enveloped me.” She raised her gaze back up, needing to see Ford’s face as she told the worst part, the part that made bile rise in her throat. “Pulling back from the boy’s arms, I looked around. What felt like a hundred pairs of eyes stared back at me from other students who had been hiding in the next aisle over and had peeked over the top of the shelved books to watch.”
All of the old emotions, the hate and anger and betrayal, clogged her throat, forcing her to take a breath before she could go on to tell Ford about the final blow.
“‘See, guys, I told you,’ the boy who’d always been nice to me said. ‘She’s a butterface, but if you can ignore how she looks above the neck, she’s got a hot bod to enjoy.’ Then he’d laughed. When I burst into tears, he handed me the shirt I’d so naively taken off and asked me why I couldn’t take a joke.” Even today the memory stripped her bare and raw. “Up until today, that had been the worst moment of my life, burned so firmly into my mind that even the vaguest memory of it made me want to puke.” She inhaled a deep breath and forced herself to go on, to deliver the final fuck-you. “But this moment of finding you looking through the box my brothers had left, after you’d said all those pretty words? That’s worse. You want to know why?”
“Gina, please let me explain.”
“No. You don’t get to lie to me ever again,” she said, her voice shaking. “Today is worse than that time in the library because this time I knew better—and I let myself hope anyway. So tell me, did you find anything interesting in there that made it all worth it?”
Ford’s broad shoulders flinched. Then, he turned and faced her. “Gina, please—”
“Oh come on now, there has to be something in there.” She strode into the kitchen, powered by some kind of righteous fury she didn’t have control over. “Let’s have a look.”
She stopped at the counter next to him and pulled the first item out of the box. “A chipped porcelain horse. I gave this to Paul when we were kids because he wanted a horse so bad, but that was not in the cards for a Luca kid. He’d cried every night for weeks. It’s hard to want things with your whole heart even though you know you’ll never get them.” A tear slipped past her iron control. She swiped the sleeve of her shirt against her cheek roughly, then sat the horse down on the counter. Next out came a dog-eared book. “Bridge to Terabithia. You’ll have to be sure to put in your report that this has been Rocco’s favorite book since our grandpa disappeared. Well, he died, but we didn’t know that for sure then. But he was old enough to have had at least an idea. Still, he kept up the pretense for me and Paul for years. He was a horrible big brother that way.” She laid the book down and reached in the box and pulled out a heavy scrapbook. “Now this is probably the most devastating piece of evidence of all. A family photo album.” She plopped it down on the counter and flipped it open. It was filled with all the silly casual pictures that every family had. Christmas mornings. Birthday parties. Vacations. Lazy Sundays. Graduations. “As you can plainly see. I am a Luca. That’s me there. You can tell it’s me because even as a baby I had a schnoz for the ages.” She slammed the album shut. “So my brothers left me a box with a family album, a chipped porcelain horse, and a beloved kids book. What’s that going to get them? Ten years behind bars? Fifteen? Because I look at that and I figure they’ve got to pay for…”
She looked at the items on the counter, and her legs stopped working. Stumbling back, she reached behind her for one of the kitchen chairs. Ford got to it first, yanking it out for her. She collapsed onto it.
“Are you okay,” he asked, cupping her face and forcing her to look up into his eyes. “What do you need?”
“The box. Is there a letter?” She could barely get the words out through the emotion blocking her throat. When he didn’t move fast enough, the panic took over. “The box! A letter! Get it!”
He grabbed the box off the counter and reached inside, pulling out a piece of lined paper folded in half. She wanted to cry out. She wanted to scream. She wanted to pretend that damn piece of paper wasn’t in Ford’s hand—but it was and she knew what that meant. Her brothers were gone.
Her hands shaking, she took the letter from Ford and opened it.
Gina,
We told you we were just waiting for the right time to start over. Seeing you with Ford made us realize that you were finally ready for us to make the break. Tell your boy that if he breaks your heart, we’ll find out somehow and come back to break his knees. Sorry we couldn’t stay and say goodbye, but you know this was the life we’d chosen and there are some folks who might want to have a few words if they’d known we were leaving. No need to worry about us though. We’ve been saving up to get out for some time. We were just waiting to make sure you’d be okay, and now we know you will with Ford by your side.
Love ya sis,
Paul and Rocco
P.S.
Your boy did as much as he could. Go easy on him.
They’d finally done it. They’d been talking about leaving Waterbury for years, but it always seemed like just talk. But it wasn’t. They’d done it. And the whole time they’d been waiting for her to heal, and she hadn’t realized it because for so long she wouldn’t even admit to herself that she was wounded.
All that talk of accepting reality, of being alone, it had been her shield, her defensive wall, because no matter what she said, she still saw herself as the world did. She was guilty of the biggest lie of them all—lying to herself. Well, that stopped now. From this day to forever, she was going to mean it when she said she loved herself just the way she was, with or without anyone by her side. She owed her brothers that much. Hell, she owed it to herself.
Butterface was dead.
She was Regina fucking Luca, successful businesswoman with friends, a home of her own, and a life that she loved.
Her heart hurt, and she had no idea if that was from missing her brothers already even though they drove her nuts, or from a bittersweet happiness that they were finally getting their dream. She folded the letter and handed it to Ford.
“Here you go.” She had no idea how she managed to keep the tremble out of her voice, but she did. “You have them dead to rights on threatening a police officer. Good luck finding them. They’re in the wind for good.”
Ford took the letter, opened it, and gave it a quick read. The sympathy in his eyes when he lowered it and looked at her was a punch in the gut. Good thing she could take a hit.
“And what the fuck were they talking about when they said not to blame you?” Fury and hurt swirled around inside her like a tornado of misery. “What did you do?” she asked, agony burning the inside of her throat.
He held his hands up, palms forward, as if he was trying to show he meant no harm. “I tried to help.”
Help? He thought getting rid of her brothers was helping? The need to lash out, hurt him as much as she ached, made her heart slam against her ribs hard enough that she was surprised they didn’t crack.
“Why does that sound familiar?” she practically screamed at him, no longer even able to pretend to be calm. “Oh yeah, I remember the last time you tried to help. Only in this case instead of me worrying you were steering my clients wrong, you forced my brothers to leave.”
“No.” He took a step closer. “I just told them that their line of work wasn’t good for their health.”
“Why, because you were going to throw them in jail? After all, you had signed up for hazard duty by pretending to like me.”
“You know that’s not true.”