This is a no-win right here. Don’t tell him shit and lose our friendship if he ever finds out. Tell him, and he gets obsessed, never gets any closer—because I’m not fucking a pack of sister-wives to get that info—and he tries to kill himself again.
I need advice. I need Ray’s advice. JD and I don’t see him together that often. Holidays mostly. But I know Ray takes care of JD like I do. He watches out for JD as best he can. And he lets me know when I need to step in. Ray will know what to do.
I get in the Jeep, start her up and then pull out of the garage and head north.
A few minutes later I pull into the garage and park on the top level. Cut the engine… and sit. I have no clue what I’m doing. Why the fuck did I let this shit get so far along without having an exit strategy? What if Gabriel is lying?
And then a thought pops into my head.
A traitorous thought that derails my whole night.
What if Ray is somehow involved?
I’m waiting on the couch, wide awake, when JD comes through the door at ten minutes to two. He immediately smiles at me.
“Whatcha doing?” he asks, plopping down next to me. His smile is contagious, but in my head, all I see is the destroyed man in the first entry of the video diary.
I manage to give him a weak smile back. “Waiting up for you. I didn’t want to miss you. And I didn’t know where you wanted me to sleep.”
JD shrugs. “We can sleep in my room. But Ark won’t come in and join us. So we might as well hit the sack in his room. That way he can’t avoid us.”
“Why would he want to?” I’m genuinely interested. Plus, this is a whole lot better than talking about JD’s dead girlfriend.
“Ark’s not into this shit, ya know?”
“What shit? Sharing?”
“No,” JD laughs. “He’s down with sharing, obviously. But sharing isn’t a real relationship. If we want him to be in a real relationship, we gotta talk him into it.”
He’s serious.
I lean in and hug him, but he pushes me back. “I need to shower first. Get the smell of that whore off me.”
“Oh,” I snort. “Mood-killer.”
“Yeah, well, three more nights and we are done. I’m retiring from acting and going strictly into acquisitions.” And then he pats my leg and gets up. “I’ll meet you in there in ten minutes. Go get naked.”
I watch his sexy ass as he walks off to his side of the loft. My heart has this little ache in it. Not for myself—for once—and not for the best friend I probably lost. Or the sadness that comes when I think of my parents and what they must be going through.
But for him.
And for us.
Because I want more than anything for this to be real. And it can’t be real. How can it be real when all three of us are lying? I don’t know what Ark’s lie is yet, but clearly JD is not over what happened to his girlfriend and baby. He never mentions the baby in the video diary other than that one promise to find out what happened. And the only conclusion I can draw from that is it hurts too much. It just hurts too damn much to speak the words.
How can I fix this? How can I make these men mine when they have this shared sad past?
Find me, the voice in my head says. Find me and you’ll find out what really happened to Marie.
I want to believe her. That girl in my head who sounds an awful lot like Janine. I really do. But I’m not sure JD can handle the truth.
My fingertips go to the raised scar on the back of my neck. If Marie had this brand, I know what happened to her. I know what happened to her baby, too. The same thing that would have happened to mine.
Of course, mine would’ve been folded into the flock because I was one of Gabriel’s wives. But Janine… her baby didn’t have the pedigree to be kept. I was only granted this privilege after they found out who I was and Gabriel claimed me as his. For every one of us on the inside, there were dozens of girls on the outside, who just ended up dead and their babies sold to a long list of couples eager to buy, regardless of how the child came on the market.
That word in my mind makes me gag.
You were part of a baby-selling ring, Blue.
No. I shake the thought out of my head. I was a prisoner, like Ark said. They locked me in a cage for four months when they first found out. That’s how they kept me in the months after it was determined I couldn’t conceive. Every night they came and took me to the lounge. And every night I had a flock member to please in any way they wanted.
I was not one of them.
But I’d be lying if I said I believed that. Just like JD is lying if he thinks he wants to put this behind him. Because when Gabriel came to me and offered me a deal, I took it. I made that YouTube video and lied to the world. I signed the contract. I let them brand me.
“Blue?”
JD’s voice startles me so bad, I let out a whimper.
“Blue?” He comes over to me, still sitting on the couch, in the exact same position as when he left. “What’s wrong?”
I can’t lie to him. I can’t. Not after all those hours I spent watching him bare his soul to a camera called Marie. But I can’t tell him the truth either. At least not that truth. “I miss my parents,” I say instead. “I miss them so bad.”
“Where are they?” he asks, sitting down. He’s naked, just a wet towel wrapped around his waist.
He smells like soap and shaving cream. He smells like a fresh start.
And then I realize he doesn’t even know who I am. Ark never told him. I figured they’d be talking about me all night, but clearly not. “Canada,” I say, unable to tell that story again.
He just leans over and puts his arm protectively around me. And that small gesture is what seals the deal. I hug him hard because it feels so good to have something in common. I’m running from my past. He’s running from his. And the two of us are clinging to each other. Sharing our regrets and shame.
“Wanna go to bed now?”