Stone Princess

by Devney Perry

  “You’re not ready yet, but you will be one day. I’ve never met your father, but I don’t think he’s an evil man. He’s not like Marcus Wagner. Marcus didn’t think he did anything wrong. He felt righteous and justified in his actions. Your father confessed.”

  Shaw stared at the wall behind me, his gaze focused on nothing.

  “I know what it is to have an evil father.” I squeezed his leg. “My father doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong either. He thinks it’s his right to rape his wife and beat his children. Would your father ever have treated you or your sisters that way?”

  “Never,” he said quietly.

  “He’s not your hero anymore, and that’s okay. But he’s still your father, and I can tell you still love him.”

  Shaw gave me a sad smile. “I’m not ready to call him.”

  “Then wait. There’s no rush.” I patted his leg once more, then reached for my coffee, sipping it before it went cold.

  “Is Montana a deal breaker for you?” he asked.

  “This is my home.”

  A home I’d made for myself with a family who loved me unconditionally. A family who’d shown up on my wedding day when they’d hated the groom, but they’d shown up anyway because I’d asked.

  I wanted to live alongside them. I wanted to share our lives, blend them together. I wanted to go to Genevieve’s house when she and Isaiah had another baby and watch their kids while they took a nap. I wanted to have Christmas dinner with Dash and Bryce. I wanted to meet Emmett and Leo for a beer at The Betsy on a random Friday night to talk about nothing and tease them relentlessly for being eternal bachelors.

  “I want it all,” I admitted. “I want you, and I want Montana.”

  “Okay.” Shaw nodded.

  “Okay? That’s it?”

  “Okay,” he repeated. “Then we live in Montana.”

  “What about Los Angeles? What about your career?”

  “LA isn’t going anywhere, and I don’t have to live there to do my job. I’ll need to travel at times and to see my family, but as long as I can convince you to come with me, this can be home base.”

  Wow. My head was spinning, trying to absorb his words. We were talking about our future. A long-term future. Shaw had spelled it out so simply, and now that he’d planted the idea in my brain, I wouldn’t be able to imagine—I didn’t want to imagine—anything else.

  We’d build our life here with my family. Our home base. And we’d fly around the world when necessary.

  “I’ve never been on an airplane,” I blurted. Why that was the most important fact to announce was a mystery.

  Shaw chuckled. “Then you’re in luck, because I happen to own an airplane.”

  “This was not the conversation I’d planned to have today.”

  Shaw took the coffee mug from my hands and pulled me from my seat, wrapping me in his arms. “Whether you said Montana or California or Japan or Antarctica, it wouldn’t have mattered.”

  I pressed my ear to his heart, soaking in the steady drum. “And if you had said it had to be California, I would have gone.”

  “Better stop talking, otherwise I’m going to lock us in the waiting room and make use of one of those couches.”

  I smiled. “I’m pretty sure Dash and Bryce have claimed the waiting room as theirs.”

  “Annnnd I’m never sitting in there again.” I giggled as he kissed my hair and let me go. “I’ll get out of here and let you get to work.”

  “What are you doing today?”

  “I’ve got some calls to make.”

  “For?”

  He winked. “You’ll see.”

  I escorted him to the door, standing on my toes as he gave me an indecent kiss. “I’m going to try and get out of here early so I can talk to Scarlett. Then I’ll come over.”

  “Okay. Call me if you need anything.”

  “I will.” I kissed him again, squashing my habitual goodbye.

  Shaw didn’t say goodbye. I doubt I would have noticed with anyone else, but Shaw’s had always been significant. Refusing to say that word seemed important to him, so I’d stop saying it too.

  He waved as he stepped outside and I shut the door behind him, shuttering at the momentary shot of cold. I cranked the heating fan beneath my desk to high when I returned to my chair, and the day went by in a blur as I made up for missing the beginning of the week. My plan to get off early was thwarted, and it was close to five by the time I had deposits ready to swing by the bank and the mail to drop at the post office.

  I hurried through my errands, and when I got home, Shaw’s truck was in his driveway. I waved, in case he was near a window to see, then went inside to see Scarlett.

  She was in the living room, watching a movie. Her hair was tied up in a messy bun. She wore the sweats I’d brought her last night, her feet bare and curled up under her seat.

  Shaw’s face flashed across the screen.

  A swell of pride puffed up my chest as I sat beside her on the couch. Shaw’s voice filled the room as he spoke to his commanding officer on the screen. “This is my favorite movie of his.”

  Scarlett hit pause. “I’ve never seen it, but he’s not hard on the eyes.”

  She had no clue. Shaw on the screen was sexy. Shaw in his bedroom, holding me, laughing, was ethereal.

  “Where did you disappear to last night?” she asked.

  “Oh, uh”—I pointed toward my bedroom’s side of the house—“I’m dating the guy next door.”

  Though dating felt like too casual a word. I mean, he’d told me today he’d relocate his life to Montana.

  “The guy who was here last night?” Scarlett asked.

  “No. Someone else.”

  She hummed. “You always did get around.”

  “Excuse me?” I blinked, certain I’d misunderstood her mutter. “What did you just say?”

  Scarlett popped a shoulder. “You always had a couple of guys on the hook.”

  “In high school, when I was a confused teenager who was scared and desperate for some attention. Yeah, I flirted with any boy who looked my way twice. But I’ve never slept around. Don’t you dare insinuate I’m some sort of whore. I’ve been with two men in my life.” I held up two fingers. “Two.”

  “This guy next door and my boyfriend? I guess that means we lost our virginity to the same guy.”

  I flinched. When had Scarlett developed such a sharp tongue? When had she learned to hate me?

  “Why are you being cruel?” I whispered. “Because of Jeremiah? He came here. He found me. I didn’t search him out to steal him from you. It was years after I left. Years after you broke up. If you’re here to punish me for Jeremiah, I hate to break it to you, but he humiliated me more than you could ever imagine.”

  And that embarrassment was the best thing to ever happen to me.

  “Whatever,” she muttered.

  “Why are you here, Scarlett?”

  She popped that shoulder again. “I got your texts.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yeah.” She met my gaze. “Every single one.”

  “But you never replied. Why?”

  “I didn’t have anything to say, after you left.” The last three words were so quiet I barely heard them.

  “I tried to take you with me.”

  Her gaze drifted to the floor. “I was too scared to leave.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Scarlett.”

  She stayed silent.

  “I wish I had shoved you in the car and made you leave. I’ve thought about that day a lot. About what I should have done. And I’m sorry that I left you behind.”

  Scarlett pulled her arms around herself, hugging them close. “He went into a rage. He was so angry that you’d left, that I wouldn’t tell him where you’d gone, that he nearly beat Mom to death.”

  I gasped, my hand coming to my mouth. “What did he do to you?”

  “He made me watch.” She lifted her gaze and met mine. “He tied me to a chair in the living ro
om, and other than that, he didn’t lay a hand on me. Not once. Instead, he made me watch as he hit her over and over and over again. Until there was so much blood that even she couldn’t clean it out of the carpet the next day.”

  Tears flooded my eyes and I squeezed them shut, trying to block out the mental image, but I saw it with vivid clarity. I saw exactly what she’d been forced to endure. Except unlike the times I’d been tied to a chair to watch the same horror unfold, Scarlett and I hadn’t been side by side. I hadn’t been there to hold her hand or help get Mom to her bedroom when it was over.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I should have left,” she murmured. “I should have gone to California with Jeremiah.”

  I wiped my eyes dry, summoning strength to survive this conversation. To set the ghosts free. “When Jeremiah came out here, he said that you were still at home. You stayed?”

  She nodded. “I stayed. I went to Dad’s community college. I took the job he got for me as a receptionist at his company. I did exactly what he asked me to do, like always. Jeremiah kept trying to get me to leave, he wouldn’t stop pressuring me, until finally he said he couldn’t stand by and watch me become Mom.”

  According to Jeremiah, they’d broken up over a year before he’d come to Montana. Even after that year, he’d been so angry that she hadn’t wanted to save herself.

  He’d had a front-row seat to the disaster that was our home, but he’d never understood.

  Jeremiah had watched me run and never look back. He’d found me years later, after I’d discovered confidence and self-worth. After fear no longer ruled my decisions.

  But he’d missed the years when I’d been confused. He’d missed the moments of doubt.

  The pain of our youth was intermixed with love. The cruelty was tied to affection.

  Mom was Dad’s toy, but she’d doted on her daughters. She’d hug us fiercely each morning, telling us how proud she was and how special we were. She’d kiss our cheeks and braid our hair. She hadn’t protected us, but she’d loved us as best she could.

  Dad’s love came in the form of attention, and not all bad. If he’d slap me for a mistake, the next day he’d take me out for ice cream. He used to play board games with Scarlett and me. If Hasbro made it, we’d owned it. My favorite had been Clue, Scarlett’s Scrabble. Dad had preferred Monopoly.

  Dad hadn’t been angry every day. Most, but not every. And on those days, the simple joy of playing games had filled our house. We’d laughed. We’d teased. We’d loved.

  I loved my parents.

  And I hated my parents.

  Those two things were hard, even now, to reconcile.

  Scarlett had been afraid to leave because of Dad’s rage. But I suspected she’d also been afraid to leave her home and say farewell to Mom.

  She’d always been the daughter closest to Mom. Scarlett had been the nurse, the first to run for an ice pack or a washcloth to sop up a bloody nose. Scarlett had attended to Mom while I’d cleaned up the physical mess.

  That carpet stain Mom hadn’t been able to remove? I would have scrubbed and scrubbed until the spot was clean, my resentment burning with each stroke. Meanwhile Scarlett would have brushed Mom’s hair and stroked her cheek.

  “Why did you leave?” I asked.

  “Because Mom told me to go.” Scarlett’s fingers fiddled on her lap. “I told her you were getting married and she cried because she knew you wouldn’t invite her. She told me to come and find you. To smile for her at your wedding. I didn’t tell her you were marrying my ex-boyfriend.”

  “Did she know about Jeremiah?”

  “No.” Scarlett had hid Jeremiah from our parents when we’d been kids and apparently done the same as an adult.

  “How’d you leave?”

  “Mom gave me a roll of money that she’d kept hidden away from Dad, and one Sunday morning, I snuck out of our pew at church, saying I had to go to the bathroom. And I never went back.”

  My heart squeezed. Mom must have known what Scarlett’s fate would be if she’d stayed. Either Dad would have forbidden her ever to leave, or he would have found her a man like himself to marry.

  “Have you heard from her?”

  She shook her head. “No. She doesn’t have my number. I offered to give it to her, but she said it would be best if I didn’t. Besides, Dad won’t care that I left any more than he cared that you did. He’s got his favorite punching bag. She might have pushed me out the door, but she won’t leave him.”

  Mom’s love for Dad would be her death sentence.

  “Wait, you left to come to the wedding.” That was months and months ago. “Where have you been since?”

  “Here and there,” Scarlett muttered.

  Here and there? That wasn’t an answer. “How did you get to Montana?”

  “A bus.”

  “Have you been in Clifton Forge this whole time?”

  Scarlett didn’t answer.

  Was that why Leo had claimed to see my doppelganger at The Betsy? It had to have been her. I’d brushed it off as him being drunk, but maybe he really had seen my twin. If she’d been in town, why hadn’t she found me? Where had she been living? How was it possible that no one, other than Leo, had recognized her?

  “What’s going on? What aren’t you telling me?”

  She shifted uncomfortably, refusing to meet my eyes.

  “Scar—”

  The doorbell rang.

  Scarlett jumped, shaking the whole couch. “Is someone coming over?”

  “It’s fine,” I assured her. Who or what was she so afraid of? Was she worried Dad would track her down? “Don’t worry. It’s probably Shaw.”

  “Shaw?” Her eyes darted between me and the screen, where his face was still frozen. “Shaw who?”

  “Shaw Valance.” I pointed to the TV. “The man who lives next door.”

  She blinked and her jaw dropped.

  I left her there, gaping, as I hurried to the door and swung it open, not bothering to check the peephole. Shaw was probably here for more backup.

  “Hey—Jeremiah? What are you doing here?”

  I asked the question, but as his gaze tracked past me into the house, searching, I knew the answer.

  He was here for Scarlett.

  “You need to leave.” Until I had answers, he was not coming in this house. I pushed the door closed, but he shoved a foot inside.

  Then he lifted the gun I hadn’t noticed.

  And pressed the barrel to my forehead.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Shaw

  “Hello, Dad.”

  “H-hi, Shaw.”

  The phone line went silent.

  Before I’d made this call, I’d decided on what to say to my father, but the sound of his stunned, deep voice—a voice that sounded exactly like my own—had blanked my mind.

  “You there?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” I cleared my throat and sucked some oxygen into my lungs. “How are you?”

  “Good. You?”

  “Doing good.”

  “Your sister tells me you’re in Montana.”

  “I am. Looks like I’m going to be moving here.”

  He hummed. “Never been to Montana.”

  “Maybe one of these days, you and Mom can come up for a visit.”

  “I’d like that.” There was a smile in his voice. “I’d like that a lot.”

  “That’d be nice.” My shoulders fell from my earlobes.

  This phone call had become a massive obstacle in my mind. With so much pressure from my mom and sisters to reach out to Dad, I’d built it up to be something huge.

  But it was just a phone call to my father, like the hundreds I’d made before.

  We didn’t have to talk about the past. We didn’t need to hash out why I was still disappointed in him and would be for a while.

  It could just be a phone call to say hello.

  Hello was often monumental in and of itself.

  “How about this spring?” Dad asked.

/>   “I’ll go through my calendar and shoot some weekends over that would work for us.”

  Dad didn’t ask who us was. Matine had likely filled my parents in about Presley too. “Sounds great.”

  “Okay. Good to talk to you, Dad.”

  “You too.” His voice cracked. “Thanks for calling.”

  I hung up the phone and set it aside on the couch, dropping my face into my hands.

  Then I breathed.

  My heart was racing, and I was sweating. A two-minute phone call had drained my energy faster than the one-hour workout I’d done this morning.

  Since I’d left the garage after my visit with Presley, I’d thought a lot about what she’d had to say. I’d thought a lot about what we’d decided.

  Presley wanted to live in Montana, so we’d live in Montana.

  We’d build our life together in Clifton Forge.

  This was home.

  I wanted to share it with my family, and to do that, I had to let go of the resentment I held for my father.

  Presley was right about him. He wasn’t an evil man. Dad’s crime didn’t seem all that important in the grand scheme of life. He’d made a mistake. He’d owned it. He’d suffered the consequences.

  He’d weathered the media storm without a word or complaint, something he wouldn’t have had to do if I hadn’t been famous. He’d never once made an excuse as to why he’d taken that money.

  Dad didn’t deserve a life sentence. He wasn’t Marcus Wagner.

  There’d been a time when I’d wanted to sit across from Marcus in prison, but that didn’t matter now.

  I didn’t give a fuck about Marcus Wagner’s motives. He was as dead to me as he was to Presley. I’d made the movie, I’d uphold my obligations to promote it, and once it was done, I’d simply be grateful that it had led me to Presley.

  I was moving to Montana. Hell, I’d moved to Montana. My assistant would take care of the address changes.

  Presley’s family was here, but I wanted her to be a part of mine too. She’d love my sisters—the four of them would commiserate and tease me relentlessly. My mother would adore her, and my father would cherish a witty, kind daughter-in-law.