Unforgivably Broken (The Broken Series Book Two) (11 page)

I tried to take in his words, knowing he was right but still feeling the dread at having to say the words, of having them judge me… or who I used to be.

“Just be honest. That’s all you can do. The paperwork you got to get jobs here is good but it’s not worth lying about on something like this. If you lie and get caught, Zane could lose his son.”

I was shaking my head before he finished speaking. No. It wasn’t worth it to lie. I would just tell the truth. He was worth it.
They
were worth it.

“They’re worth it,” I said in a small voice. I swallowed and the sound of the dryer buzzing from down the hall broke the heavy silence that was becoming more weighted by the moment. I would have to tell them. I needed to tell them first, before I filled out any papers. If Zane wanted me to leave the house so my past didn’t complicate things for him legally, I would. I would do whatever it took to help him get his son, no matter what the cost.

They were worth it.

I
had expected Lizzie to flip out when I told her I had contacted a lawyer and she hadn’t disappointed. Even though she was told to stay calm and monitor her still too high blood pressure for the sake of her baby, she proceeded to scream and even throw a few punches. Her reaction, while completely over the top, was proof that somewhere deep down, she did care about Conner.

I still didn’t feel guilty for fighting for him.

I’d left her while she was still in a rage but at least she was home safe and hopefully she would have time to calm down.

“Hey,”
Lili’s soft voice floated into the bedroom and I glanced up from the screen of my laptop, blinking as my eyes adjusted to the darkness in the rest of the room. I looked over, seeing Conner’s sleeping form in his bed before I slipped off my own and moved toward her.

“Hey yourself,” I said, bending down to kiss her softly. “Are you sure about the
—”

“Yes, Zane.
The couch is fine.” She cut me off, her voice still a whisper as I closed the door behind me. I turned back to face her, my mouth open to speak but the look on her face brought me up short. She was pale and fidgeting, twisting her fingers as she glanced back down the hall.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, immediately reaching for her
. She stepped back quickly, looking almost panicked.

“No. Don’t. I…” She glanced over her shoulder again and closed her eyes, seeming to steel herself before she spoke again. “I need to talk to everyone.
In the living room. Will you…” She gestured toward Paige’s door and I frowned at her, unsure what was going on.

“Pix
—”

“Please, Zane? Please just… let me do this my way?”
she asked, her expressive eyes pleading.

“Okay.” I nodded, turning toward Paige’s room. Whatever was bothering
Lili, she needed space to handle it and I was willing to respect that.

I knocked on Paige’s door, waiting for her to reply before I opened it. She was
lying across the bed on her stomach, her laptop open in front of her.

“Hey,
Lili wants to talk to everyone,” I said, nodding my head behind me toward the hallway, letting her know I needed her to come with me. I expected her to huff or complain or start cursing but she just frowned and nodded, closing the laptop and following me down the hall.

Lili
was coming from the other direction and she gestured toward the living room. I didn’t argue. If she was more comfortable in the living room for this discussion, then what did it matter? Kas and Tish followed Lili and when Tish met my eyes, I saw the warning in them. He knew Lili was about to say  something important and what he knew, he worried about. He apparently also worried about my reaction.

Tish took his normal spot in the recliner with
Kas on his lap and Paige took one end of the couch. I sat in the middle, hoping Lili would sit beside me but she didn’t make any move toward it. Instead, she stood at the archway of the living room, clearly uncomfortable and trying again to gather her courage. None of us spoke and as the silence stretched, Lili’s obvious apprehension began seeping into me.

“Okay,” she said finally, nodding as she looked at the window behind me and toward the front door before releasing a long breath. “Okay. I… I know that since Zane is going to fight for Conner, all of us living here will have to fill out forms for a background check.” I felt my eyes widen at
her words. Was that what all this anxiety was about? “I don’t care. I’ll do it, but… but there are things you should all know and you should hear them from me.” She paused, looking around but not really meeting anyone’s eyes. She let out another long breath through her lips and knotted her fingers together in front of her.

“My birth name
is Kylee Camden. As you figured out a few days ago, I have a twin sister named Kaitlyn. Our parents…” she trailed off, looking so uncomfortable with this entire conversation that I wished I could tell her to stop. I wished I could, but my own fucking curiosity was overruling the need to protect her right now.

“We came from money. The kind of money that didn’t know what life was like without money. My grandparents were wealthy. My great-grandparents…” She waved a hand and sighed. “They wanted a baby.
A
baby. One. Actually, they didn’t really
want
a baby so much as need one to keep up with the circle of friends that they surrounded themselves with who were all procreating. They never made us feel like one of us was unwanted or anything like that, but they didn’t really raise us either. That’s what nannies were for. They just… threw money toward any activity they could put us in that would keep us out from under foot.” She was pacing now, her eyes on the carpet as she spoke.

“When we were three, we started tumbling and ballet. By six, we were the top of the class in all of our activities. That’s what happens when your parents pay for extra lessons to keep you busy. By eight, it was obvious where our loves were. Kaitlyn was good at dance but she loved gymnastics and she excelled at it. I was great at both but my heart was in dancing. I could lose myself completely in the beat of any music and it was all I wanted to do. But they wouldn’t let us quit either activity because they kept us busy.” She backed up to the wall, making
Tish spin his chair to continue looking at her as she slid down to the floor. Her hands were shaking as she pushed her hair back, clearly building to something. The moment she said gymnastics, I knew Hunter Davis would have a part in this story.

“Until our gymnastics coach offered them a way to make that our entire lives. He told them that we were good enough to get into elite gymnastics but it would mean we would have to drop out of school and train eight to ten hours a day. It was their
dream come true.” She gave a derisive laugh as she looked down at her hands in her lap. “I didn’t want to give up dancing. I never fought with them about anything but I fought them on this. I wanted to dance. But I was nine. Naturally, I had no choice but to do what my parents wanted.” Lili was quiet for a long moment and I couldn’t tell if she would continue… if she could. She drew her knees up, crossing her ankles and curling in on herself where she sat against the wall. I glanced at Tish, who was staring at her with a look of concern and I knew I wasn’t the only one who could feel her dread. Every breath I took felt laced with it.

“Within just a few years, we had risen to the top. Not just in our gym, but in the nation. We started competing worldwide and when Kaitlyn and I both placed at Worlds, there were whispers of the upcoming Olympics surrounding us. We were
in the top of our game.” She stopped again and her breathing seemed labored. My own sped in response to the terror I could see in her eyes as she stared at the blank television screen. She wasn’t seeing it. I wasn’t even sure she was really
here
anymore.

“I was trying to up my difficulty on the bars by adding a few more release moves to my routine. It was something I worked on all the time. The rule was, if you stayed late, you stayed in the practice gym and one of the assistants had to stay with you. I stayed a lot. There were five assistant coaches in the gym and one of them was one of our top male gymnasts. He was basically the male counterpoint to Kaitlyn and
I. He had just as much Olympic talk as we did.” When her voice trembled, I knew where she was going with this. My blood ran cold and I wanted to lift her from the floor and tell her she never needed to think about this again but I could see by the empty look in her eyes that she wasn’t just thinking about it, she was reliving it.

I nearly jumped when Paige shifted beside me, my eyes moving to her. I’d completely forgotten she was here
, she’d been so still. She stared at Lili and wiped her face along her sleeve. It was only then that I saw the tears on her cheeks.

I took a breath, surprised at the ragged sound it made in the quiet moment. Paige’s eyes found mine and the pain in hers was more than I could take. I shook my head, unsure why or how my body was making the movement without a command from my completely worthless brain.

“He was spotting me, staying close, and trying to help me through the steps of the new release. Coach didn’t expect me to have it ready for the next competition but I was always pushing myself. I always wanted to be better and because of that, I got frustrated when I struggled.” She took another breath and I could see her entire frame trembling as she continued to stare unseeingly across the room. “I yelled at him because when he reached for me, I’d get nervous that I wasn’t going to make it and I’d tense rather than finishing my twist. The next time I tried it, he stayed back and I hit the mats. Hard.”

I saw her eyes starting to glaze and I wondered for a moment if she was going to cry. I didn’t want her to go any further. She didn’t need to. We understood. I wanted to tell her to stop but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to make my mouth work.

“I coughed as the wind was knocked out of me and screamed in frustration. I knew it was late and I would have to call it quits soon. The next thing I knew, Hunter was standing over me.”

I heard
Kas sniffling, though she tried hard to hold it in. I glanced over and Tish, who I’d never seen cry in my life, had the back of his hand pressed to his mouth, his fingers clenched in a fist as he fought his own emotions.

I felt… numb.

Until I didn’t anymore.

Blood suddenly pounded through my skull, causing my ears to ring as my fingers clenched. The floodgates had been opened and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t manage to close them again. I squeezed my hands together in my lap, my eyes focused solely on them as I tried to count slowly, something, anything to keep myself calm.

“I trusted him,” Lili’s voice was barely above a whisper and my hands trembled in my lap. I looked up, watching her intently, waiting for the first sign she was going to break down. “By the time I realized what he was doing, he had me pinned. I couldn’t move. He was too strong—” her voice choked off on the word. I wanted to move, to lift her and take her away but she continued before I could force my body to cooperate. “I begged him not to. I pleaded and cried and asked him to stop. But he didn’t. When he was finished, he just left. He just left me laying there staring at those fucking ugly florescent lights on the ceiling.”

My entire body felt wound to the point of pain. My jaw ached and I blinked, trying to focus my eyes on one thing, anything but
Lili. Looking at her made it impossible to think. I had to count. Keep counting.