The Broken Sister (Sister #6) (33 page)

“Who am I telling? Tommy’s brother, who doesn’t want this to be true but is coming to grips with it… or my boyfriend? Who am I telling, Tristan?”

His head jerked up at her quiet, but stern question. He stared into her eyes. She didn’t cry. She didn’t flinch. He suddenly ignored everything, what he should or should not do or be or act. He simply fell to his knees, kneeling before where she sat, her hands clasped in her lap in the chair beside him. He put his hands on hers and looked up into her eyes, which were wide with shock at his sudden close proximity. “You’re telling your boyfriend. If you’ll still have me. I swear from this day forward, I will never keep things from you. I will protect you from anyone and anything that wants to hurt you, especially my brother. I believe you, Kylie. Please tell me about what Tommy did to you… and tell me as your boyfriend. And then, maybe you can find it in you to forgive me, and believe
me
.”

She licked her lips and then nodded slowly. “I had a thing for him. A crush. It was supposed to have been harmless and fun. I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend or a husband. I just enjoyed liking him. You know the feeling? Of seeing someone from a distance and feeling that thrill? I liked going to parties and anticipating if he’d be there. I had no expectations of him noticing me. I mean, he was Tommy Tamasy. I knew what that meant. This is a small enough college I understood the social hierarchy and where I fell on it compared to him. But it was a distraction. I didn’t think it would harm anything, or change the course of my life in any way.”

Her hands grew cold as she spoke. He gripped both in his as he stared at their clasped fingers. He glanced up at her. “It shouldn’t have.”

“I remember talking to him that night. I was so flattered. I thought I might pass out. I thought maybe for that night he was into me. That was okay with me. That’s what’s so stupid about this entire thing.” She raised her eyes to him, eyebrows lowered, perplexed, and her lips compressed in a flat line. “All he had to do was ask. I wanted to have sex with him. That night. Right then. All he had to do was ask me. Why? Why didn’t he just ask me? I just don’t understand
why
it even had to happen.”

It was extremely hard to listen to her. To comprehend this night two years ago that occurred between the woman he now knew and fell in love with and his little brother. He could clearly picture every part of her story as she described it. Kylie and Tommy talking, smiling, flirting as people moved and undulated around them. Drunk and loud and fun. A college party.

And all Tommy had to do was ask her to have sex. Tristan gripped her hands in his. He pushed gently on them to get her to lift her head to meet his gaze again. “I don’t think we can understand. He’s sick. Not you. You didn’t do anything wrong. He did. He decided rape was a fun way to spend the evening. I don’t pretend to know why. Okay? I can’t understand why for you. I hope you realize drugging someone and forcing sex on them while they are out of it isn’t something I’ve ever contemplated, wondered about or desired. It disgusts me. But not you, okay? You don’t disgust me, you never have. Tommy does. When I think of you...” He drew in a deep breath and lifted his hand to cup her chin. “When I think of you lying there, at Tommy’s will, unbeknownst to you, his victim, it makes me want to go hurt him. I don’t know how to fix this. I want to. I want nothing more than to fix this.”

She shook her head. “You can’t fix it. You just learn to live with it.”

“Did you?”

“I think I’m starting to. I was messed up from it at first. It was so odd. To know my body had been used in ways I could not recollect. It was kind of like trying to recall the memory of when my dad left. There was nothing concrete to remember or grab onto as a point of reference. I knew that I’d had sex, yet nothing about it was in my memories. I felt dirty and used, yet I couldn’t name one thing he actually did to me. I don’t know what Tommy looks like naked or what he did to me that night. It makes the potency of the experience somehow altered. I don’t think I understood until about now that I am allowed to call myself a rape victim. And it took Cadence to teach me that.”

Tristan shook his head over and over. His voice was hoarse when he whispered, “Is there any way you could forgive me?”

She nodded slowly. “Yes.”

So simply and so easily Kylie spoke her forgiveness. His gaze caught and held hers in a pleading, almost desperate prayer. “Believe in me again?”

Her hand crept up from her lap to rest over his hand that still held her face. “Yes.” It was a whisper, a near breath of air she spoke. He closed his eyes and shook his head. “You are the kindest person I know. I don’t deserve it; your forgiveness or your trust.” His eyes opened and he found her sad gaze on his. There was so much pain. Tommy. Kylie. His brother. Her rapist. He didn’t know the first thing about making sense of it all. He just knew how he felt about the girl before him now.

“What if I want you to have both? My forgiveness and my trust? What if I still want you?”

His eyes fluttered open. Her hand tightened over his. “I was there too, Tristan. I felt everything between us, and unlike the rest of my life where I doubt and I’m unsure, I know what was between us. I know you speak the truth how you felt about me. And more, I know you aren’t like Tommy.”

Her words released something in him. His body fell and he buried his face against her lap and wrapped his arms around her thin, small back and waist. He clung to her. Something about her trust, her belief in him, changed something deep in him. She didn’t think he was like his brother. The relief was sharper than any other feeling he’d ever had. The guilt he felt over what his own brother and then grandfather and then he had tried to do to Kylie was thick in his heart. But for her to release him of suspicion of being that evil. That bad. She didn’t even ask him. She just knew he wasn’t a rapist. It was an odd feeling to be on his knees clinging to a girl who he
needed
to hear didn’t think he was a rapist.

That she didn’t hesitate to forgive and believe in him humbled him. He didn’t know how desperate he was to know she didn’t think he was capable of such evil. Because he wasn’t. He knew that as much as he knew his own name, and that he loved this girl he clung to desperately.

He lifted his head and started to draw her head to his own but stopped, hesitating. “Can I kiss you?”

She smiled. “You don’t have to ask me. You don’t have to treat me as fragile or broken. I’m no different than the girl you first kissed against my door. I’m perfectly well and fine and
unbroken
when I
choose
to be with the man. And I choose you.”

He leaned in and touched his lips to hers. Gentle, sad, consuming, their lips touched. Her hands crept up to hold his face and brushed up into his hair. He released her and pulled her to him so he could hug her full against his body. Standing up, he supported her against him. “Are you going to tell me now, you might forgive me, but there’s no way we can be together? It’s too complicated? It’s too wrong? It’s too—”

She pushed her fingers over his mouth to shut him up. “No. I’m not. Tommy isn’t going to determine what I am in my life ever again. If you choose to let him determine who you can be with, I can’t stop that. But for me? No. Will it be easy? No. Obviously. You are going to lose your brother and possibly the rest of your family. I have no idea how they’ll react. I’m going after your brother, so that could be something you can’t stand or deal with. Maybe you’ll lose your job. I don’t know. What I do know is it won’t be my fault. It’s his fault for doing it to me and putting me in this position. But I am willing to try if you are.”

“I’ll stand by you. No matter what. I’ll be with you. Fuck my family.” He said it easily, quickly, and without reserve.

She stood up on her tiptoes and gently kissed his mouth with a sad smile on her face. “It won’t be that easy.”

He sighed. “I want it to be. But whatever happens, I don’t want it to determine
us
.”

“This will tear you apart. And possibly us.”

“I know. But no more than what was already done to you. I can handle it, Kylie. I can handle it if it means I am with you.”

“Even if you lose everything that matters to you? Your family? Your brother? Your job?”

He wrapped her tight in his arms. “You’re what matters to me. And if it were anyone but my own brother, I’d want to cut his fucking dick off and stuff it into his mouth. The thing with it being my brother? I still want to. It’s not okay with me. It’s never okay with me. I’m with you. No matter what. No matter where this leads.”

She closed her eyes and leaned into him. “I think I love you too, Tristan.”

After all this, the most impossible of situations to be in and of all times, Kylie finally responded to his declaration of love. A short laugh escaped his mouth, which was shocking seeing as how a half hour ago he’d felt like he might never smile again.

“I might quite possibly love you too, Kylie McKinley.”

She smiled up at him and all he could do was smile back.

TRISTAN WAS AT HIS filing cabinet slogging through the endless correspondences as he sorted what was worth taking and what was worth leaving. He had a box at his feet with what he wanted. There was a knock at his office door. He glanced up and there was his grandfather.

Ellis looked as if he’d aged a decade. Suddenly old, fragile, arthritic, and confused. He walked in stooped, as if his body was bending to the weight of the world. He walked to the window like he usually did and stared out.

“What are you going to do?”

He’d sent his notice to his grandfather via email before he and Kylie had even left this office yesterday. He’d stayed with her until about an hour ago when he’d finally come in to clean out his stuff. He feared he might be locked out, but all his keys still worked and no one stopped him. There was a strange, dark pall over the office. Half the staff was missing. He wasn’t sure quite why. Did they know?

“Start my own business. I won’t take any of Tamasy’s clients, but I do have my own personal contacts I’ll be tapping.”

“How will you pay for it?”

“Bank loan. Like most every other new start up.”

“From scratch then?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think you can do it? You’ve never had to be poor. You’ve never had nothing. You don’t even know how to do the job you want to start a company in. You were never a worker.”

“I know I can do it. I’m good at knowing the product and managing others. I have knowledge and I have the motivation, whether you want to admit that or not.”

Ellis shook his head. “You’re the best manager I’ve ever seen at this, I just always wanted you to be better than you first thought you could be.”

“Where is everyone?”

“I gave them the day off. I didn’t want any scuttle going around. People will talk with you leaving…”

He stared at his grandfather’s bent, stooped body. His black suit as pristine as ever. His neatly combed thin gray hair. Tristan’s heart felt heavy. He loved this man.

Quietly he said to his grandfather’s back, “He did it. Tommy did it to both of them. I don’t know if there are others. But he raped at least two woman. I can’t pretend that didn’t happen.”

“You don’t know that. It’s their accusations against his. He said, she said. You don’t know that he did that.”

“You don’t think it’s impossible he did, however. You’d never believe it of me, but you really don’t not believe it of him.”

“I—”

“I know what you’re going to do, Grandfather. You’re going to try and do damage control about this, especially if Kylie goes after Tommy. I think she will. Know this, I won’t let things be covered up. She deserves justice for what was done to her. A girl almost killed herself over it. No more, Grandfather. It ends now. Or at least my part in it, what I can control. I am ashamed of us for what we’ve done to them.”

“Your grandmother would be turning over in her grave if she could see what this family has become.”

“Yeah, well, she should be.” Tristan stared at his grandfather’s back. “Tara, and now me. Maybe you should reevaluate your morals, and your ambitions. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t pretend anymore I don’t know the difference between right and wrong. Then there is the wrong that Tommy has done. You usually convinced me it was for the good of the family and the company and our image, but what about the victims? What about those who can’t fight us? I’m ashamed at my part in Cadence’s suicide attempt. We bullied her and bought her off. We had no right. You sent me after a rape victim to try and use her. I’m done, Grandfather. I’m done.”

“So you’re against us then?”

He sighed as his grandfather turned and stared at him. “I’m not, but if you choose to see it as that I can’t stop you.” He grabbed the box at his feet and then his briefcase. He glanced around. There wasn’t much more he needed. His entire professional life was one box. It didn’t matter. Not anymore.

“She’ll never prove it.”

His grandfather’s parting words stopped him dead in the doorway. Tristan glanced back over his shoulder. “Thank you for saying that, for making it easy for me to walk away. She thinks this will tear me apart, being pitted against you and Tommy as you fight her. It won’t. I don’t condone rape, nor can I be around anyone who does. Goodbye, Grandfather.”

He slammed the door and for the last time walked down the hallway of Tamasy Industries. The only thing he took with him was his box of mementos, a few files, and Reese, his secretary, who gladly followed him like in some dramatic scene from a movie. But really there was only a handful of employees there to see him walk out.

He thanked Reese outside the building and promised to contact him the next day and they’d get started… somehow. Other people started new businesses, why couldn’t they?

He went straight to Kylie’s studio. She opened the door when he knocked and drew him inside as he set the stuff down and leaned over it with a pronounced, too long, and exaggerated pause. Her arms encircled him from the back and she leaned her head against the center of his back. He held her hand to his chest and kissed her palm.

“Did you see him?”

“I did. He’s sticking with Tommy. That’s okay, I expected him to.”

“It’s not okay. But what about your parents?”

He turned and took her hand and led her to her bed, where he sat down and pushed her hair back off her shoulder. He shook his head. “They won’t be a factor in our life. They aren’t like Tracy and Donny.”

Her eyes were large. “I’m sorry, Tristan.”

“Don’t be. Actually, all this has got me thinking, there is one family member I’d like you to meet, hell I’d like to meet… Do you think you’d go with me to find her?”

“Tara?”

“Yes, my sister.”

“Of course I would.”

He slid a chunk of her hair between his thumb and index finger. He pushed it behind her ear. “I think she’d like you. She might even give me a chance because I’m with someone like you.”

“Someone like me how? Like all messed up?”

“No, Kylie. Because you are someone genuine, real, honest, kind, sincere, sweet, funny, and someone who I love.”

She smiled softly. “What about your job? Everything you’ve worked for?”

“I’m not that old. I can start over. It’s nothing, Kylie. I am actually already getting ideas and getting energized. I’m not kidding you, I’m actually pretty good at what I do. I think I can make it on my own merit, and even more since Reese came with me. You wouldn’t believe the wealth of information that man holds. He’s my ace in the hole.”

She grinned.

“What?”

“I love that you love your male secretary.”

“He’s my male administrative assistant, and he’s more valuable than I am at this, I swear. But it’s pretty encouraging that he believes in me enough to come with me. You’d be surprised how much he made at Tamasy Industries. I can’t match that for a while, but he came anyway. Mostly, I can’t believe you believed in me.”

She shrugged. “I talked to
my
parents today.”

He took in a deep breath. “And what did they say? I can’t imagine it was good.”

“They were shocked, yes. But they’ll come around. You have the most work to do with Donny, but I think you can handle it.”

Her smile was quick and easy and something released in his stomach. He’d been a quivering knot of guilt, anxiety, and nerves for the last week, and especially yesterday. Seeing Kylie smiling at him, in fun, with ease and faith was something he didn’t think was possible.

He grinned back. “Do you think I could maybe stay here for a while? I can afford the rent here, but I can’t afford my own.”

“You can stay, but you pay half the rent. You don’t support me. We’re not doing that.”

He nodded. “So… Donny, Tracy, and I are renting the apartment? He’ll love that.”

She nodded. “Oh, he’ll definitely make you pay. If not financially then otherwise.”

“Are you sure? I can obviously find another arrangement.”

“Are you asking to move in with me for convenience or for good?”

He sighed. “If I said for good, would you think it was too soon? Too crazy? Too wrong?”

“I think all of the above. But then… our entire relationship is kind of based on that premise.”

He stared into her eyes. “I love you.”

“I would hope you do after all this.” Her smile matched his own; happy, bright, in love, but also kind of sad. There was an element of sadness that tinged their smiles, their relationship, and their love.

But Tristan knew being with Kylie was better than not. So sad and happy were part of it. Just as they were kind of entwined in her. Just as all the bad made everything good shine that much more brightly.