Forgiven: The Nash Brothers, Book Two

by Aarons, Carrie

  He crosses the room to where I motion for him to sit at my station because I can’t seem to make words come out of my mouth. Lily’s father has had the same high and tight buzz since he got out of the military years before I was even born, and I could do that cut in my sleep.

  Even so, he holds up a hand before I pick up my razor. “Don’t cut me and keep it even on the sides.”

  My teeth grind together as I try not to take my clippers to his eyeball. Prick. First, he walks into my shop to try to intimidate me, and now he’s telling me how to do my job?

  I start buzzing, the sound drowning out the silence as I try not to rush to get him the fuck out of here.

  “So, Bowen, how’s life?” The smug bastard grins at me like we’re old pals.

  “It’s good,” I say tightly.

  He nods, and I have to anticipate the movement of his head so as not to fuck up the cut. Grantham knows this, too, because he smirks. He’s challenging me on purpose.

  “Some people have been talking … saying you’ve been seen around town with my daughter?”

  Fuck. So that’s why he came in here, to see if I’m honoring my end of the deal. Not only does he want to throw his weight around, but he’s trying to warn me off.

  It’s more condescending that he can’t just call her Lily. As if I have no association with her, as if we don’t know each other.

  “We both live in Fawn Hill. My brother is marrying her friend. It’s inevitable that I’d see her.”

  “But are you trying to see her?” His voice is sharp, direct.

  Does he want me to confess I’m trying to fuck his daughter or something? What the hell does this prick want? Besides ruining my life more than he already has.

  “I’ve been trying to avoid Lily since the moment my father told me to. Or don’t you already know that? I’m sticking to your little pact, Senator. Even if my father is six feet under.” My words are biting, and I switch the guard on the razor to fade the sides of his hair.

  I may be the one with the electric blade in my hands, but I feel weak. Powerless. The man sitting in my chair has this invisible hold over me, his upper hand in this situation is so clear that we both sense it. He knows that he’s calling the shots, even if I have a semi-weapon moving over his scalp.

  “I’m glad to hear you picked up your father’s end of things when he died. Perhaps you’re a smarter boy than I thought you were.”

  Notice how he calls me a boy and not a man.

  I finish his hair, a sour pride rising in my chest because even if this asshole was subtly threatening me the entire cut, I did a damn good job.

  My mind travels back to the day my father sat me down. It was about a month and a half after the accident, my arm was still in a sling with pins holding my wrist together. Those were the hopeful days, the ones where we still thought there was a chance I’d get full functionality back. A chance that I’d make it to the majors like all the scouts who’d come to see me play said I would.

  Dad had asked me to join him at the kitchen table, and I hadn’t thought it was strange back then that not one of our four other family members were in the house. He’d asked me how I was feeling, if the pain had gotten any better, and told me he was so happy that I was here and healthy.

  But then … the father that I knew came out. I loved my dad, fiercely, and still to this day think he was a great man. But he also had his flaws. His need to appear as a pillar of the community sometimes overshadowed the right thing in the situation. He wanted to protect his boys, but not at the expense of becoming a social pariah.

  I know now why he did what he did. My father struck a deal with the devil to protect our family, and to protect me. My life was headed in the direction of baseball greatness, that’s what I’d told him I always wanted most. And he’d tried to preserve that for me.

  But in the process, he’d promised Eric Grantham that I would stay away from his daughter. Lily’s father had hated me on sight, and it had been years of enduring his under-the-breath comments whenever I picked her up or spent time at their home. The state senator had power in places that a family like mine couldn’t even fathom. At the time, I hadn’t realized that. I’d thought my father was just forbidding me to see the girl I was in love with because he thought we were bad for each other, and she’d ruin my future.

  Now I knew it was twofold. From the snippets of information I’d been able to bleed out of my father over the seven years before he died, but after the accident, I’d learned that both he and Eric agreed that Lily and I were better off not being together. Our love blinded us … which back then, was probably true.

  However, it also encouraged us to be better people. We supported each other to follow our dreams and love that unconditional wasn’t easily found. I wish my father had seen that … because he had it with my mother.

  Both my father and Eric had threatened mutually assured destruction. If I didn’t stay away from Lily, the state senator would use his influence to make sure my father’s business and reputation were ruined. And, although I don’t know if he ever had this kind of leverage, he promised my father he could ruin my chances of getting recruited by a division one university.

  My father, in turn, threatened to reveal the truth about who caused the accident. Rumors were more deadly than power, sometimes, and spreading one to the town of Fawn Hill that innocent Lily Grantham had unbuckled and had her hands down her boyfriend’s pants at the time of the crash … that would ruin the political shine of her family.

  Even now, my father’s words burn in my gut. I wanted to hit him so badly back then, and even though he’s six feet under now, I could still sink a nice uppercut and feel no guilt. It was a shameful, fucking awful thing he did. He looked at it as protecting his family, keeping his son’s ambitions intact.

  I saw, and still see, it as the biggest sabotage of my life. He left that secret on me, told me the details of their horrible agreement, while Lily never got a hint of what went down. And that’s my secret to keep. I will never tell her the disgusting words her father said about her, or how he continued to control her life even when we thought she might not make it.

  Our eyes connect in the mirror. “Don’t worry, I’ve ruined my relationship with Lily to the point of no return. Just like you have, if she ever finds out what you did.”

  I can’t resist getting that jab in, because he’s a twisted bastard.

  The senator’s face goes scarlet with anger. “I’m warning you, boy, I can do a lot more damage to you now than I could have done then. This shop, your home, your mother—”

  “Don’t you dare bring my mother into this, you piece of shit!” That gets my blood boiling.

  He smirks, having gotten me to lose my temper. “Careful, Bowen, you wouldn’t want to do anything to make me mad. Plus, if Lily ever found out, which she won’t or there will be hell to pay, what’s stopping me from pinning the whole secret on you? She has no idea what happened back then. You wouldn’t want my daughter to think you left her because let’s say, she was a danger to your baseball career. That you didn’t visit her in the hospital because you were angry that she made you drive that truck off the road.”

  Lies. It’s all fucking lies. And he knows it, but Lily doesn’t. He could say whatever he wants to her, twist the truth until it resembled nothing like the pact our fathers made. Until he convinced her I’d been the bad guy behind it all. After all, I had barely spoken to her in ten years, and he was her trusted and loving father.

  I fucking hated him. “Get out of my shop.”

  “Do you understand what I’m saying, boy?” He grins, an evil expression clouding his features.

  “Get. Out. Of. My. Shop,” I grit out, ready to spit nails and sucker punch him if he says one more thing.

  He must sense my temper about to teeter over the edge because he gets up and walks out. Without even paying me.

  As he gets to the door, he pulls out his wallet, throwing a ten-dollar bill on the floor. “Glad we came to that agreement. Until n
ext time, Bowen.”

  It takes me a full three hours until my heart rate is normal enough to take the “out to lunch” sign off the door. The prick wound me up so much that I had to run home over lunch.

  Not to eat. But to beat the shit out of the punching bag in my basement.

  15

  Lily

  Two weeks pass with no major blips on the wedding planning front and no disastrous run-ins with Bowen.

  I go to work, clean my house, read a few good books, help Presley prepare centerpieces, babysit Penelope’s boys twice while she goes out of town for a sales conference, and accompany my parents on a trip to Philadelphia for an event my father is a part of.

  Mom and I walk the streets of the city while Dad shakes hands and makes appearances, and I’m so happy to take a break from Fawn Hill that I’m smiling more than I have in two months.

  “You look good, dear.” Mom pats my hand as we walk, holding it in hers.

  “I feel good,” I say, smiling at her.

  The city bustles with energy, and although it exhausts me by the end of the day because I am a small-town girl through and through, the change of pace is nice. All the commotion helps drown out thoughts you don’t want to deal with, and it’s a much-needed break from my spiral of worrying.

  “Thank you for coming on the trip.” She squeezes my hand and then lets go.

  In my other hand, I clutch two big shopping bags. One from the Amish market, and another from an art gallery we stumbled upon. There were two prints of lilies, and I couldn’t not buy them to frame and hang somewhere in my house. They were too perfect.

  “Not as if I had a choice.” I give her a half-joking smile.

  “You always have a choice.” Mom frowns at me.

  She says this as if we both don’t know how this goes. From the time I could say political campaign, I’d been included in one. I’d never consented to being paraded around in the dresses or bows, I smiled for all the cameras, trained with interview coaches and was even scolded by a couple of campaign workers about my report card grades when I’d brought home a B plus in middle school.

  “This could tarnish your father’s reputation.”

  That’s what it always boiled down to. I lived a life walking on eggshells, worrying about how every move I made would reflect on my father.

  For twenty-seven years, I’d played along. But recently, maybe over the past year or two, it had all grown very old. Not that I’d ever disclose this to my parents, but I tended to side with the party my father wasn’t affiliated to. And what’s worse, what they would disown me over … I didn’t even really care about politics. It was all a bunch of stuffy old men in suits arguing about where money should go.

  Yes, I’m aware there is more to it than that, but government has just never been my cup of tea. I’d rather help people on a ground level, face-to-face, with as much kindness as I can. That’s why I am a librarian. My sole job is to help others find joy or information from inside the pages of books.

  What my father does? It’s all a facade. One I’d grown very tired of.

  And my mother putting on this act like she isn’t a cog in the wheel … it’s frustrating.

  “Mom, I love you, but don’t bullshit me.”

  “Lily! Language.” Mother looks around as if the political correctness police could pop out from any random sewer grate.

  “I’m serious. Dad practically packed my bag for me. I had to get Madison to cover at the library for me on such short notice, we’d ended up having to cancel two of the kid’s reading circles we’d had planned for the week.”

  “Surely, they won’t mind rescheduling those.” She shrugs as if it’s an afterthought.

  “They might not, but I do. I have a job, I run a library. I mind when I have to move things around, not only because it creates scheduling nightmares, but because it means I’m breaking my word. All because I’m a grown woman who has to take mandatory trips with her senator father!”

  Mom sighs and I take a breath, surprised at my sudden outburst.

  She takes a seat on a bench as we come to the Schuylkill River Trail, and pats beside her, signaling for me to sit down.

  “Sweetheart … I’m sorry. From day one, you’ve been our pride and joy. And we only ever wanted to take you everywhere with us. I know you’ve grown up being watched, in the press at times, and made to feel like everything you do is judged.”

  Her breath catches, and when I look over, she’s pressing a hand to her chest.

  “Oh, Mom …” And now I feel bad, because I’ve made her feel like a jerk. “I didn’t mean … I grew up with a wonderful childhood, a wonderful life …”

  And I meant that. I’d always had everything I’d ever wanted or wished for. They’d been great supporters and my parents had always told me they loved me.

  She waves me off. “Just listen, okay? Maybe your father and I didn’t take into account how much this world can affect a child. We were young and naïve when he got elected, we didn’t know anyone else in government. We were just trying to live the life we thought would give you and the citizens of Pennsylvania the best future. We’re your parents, but we’re also just people, Lily. People are flawed. They make mistakes. Just because we raised you doesn’t mean we were always right.”

  It’s humbling to hear her admit that.

  “Your father … I think he demands you be here because he’s proud to show you all he’s accomplished. You drive him, motivate him to work harder. But if you really don’t want to be a part of this public life, of this government family life, then tell your father. He will understand, I know he will.”

  She said it with such confidence, I almost thought it was true. And while I believed that Mom thought Dad would respond well to this talk, I had my doubts.

  * * *

  Five hours later, and we’re well into the second course of dinner at a charity event honoring the cancer institute in the city.

  The event is honoring many small-town politicians, from state senators to local assemblyman to mayors, who have helped raise funds and passed bills for the institute. It’s a wonderful cause, and I’m especially grateful to attend this event because there are actual pediatric survivors in attendance. Each of the survivors and their families are being given a week’s stay in a vacation location of their choice.

  While it might be my preference that they open college funds for each of them, lord knows there is money to go around, it is nice that these families who have been through so much get to spend some quality time relaxing together.

  I’ve spent much of the night talking to the children, who are easily the most interesting and intelligent people here. I’m not kidding either … half of my father’s colleagues are blowhards going on about their privilege in unironic ways, and the other half are just trying to get a better look down my dress. They skeeve me out, and I realize that I should really stop coming to these.

  My knife is halfway through my roast duck when Dad speaks up.

  “Lily, I have someone I want you to meet,” he says casually from the other side of Mom, who sits between us.

  We’re surrounded by other Pennsylvania politicians, and no one is really paying attention to us. But I know … this isn’t a request. And it’s not a setup.

  He needs something.

  How do I know this? Because he’s done it before. Introduced me to some junior politician who will probably think I’m pretty and listen to me about my father’s policies. The first time he did it, I hadn’t even realized I’d just been prostituted out for politics.

  Not that I ever had to leave the ballroom with them, or even accept a drink. But my father thought by having his attractive daughter, in her form-fitting dress, talk about his views rather than the old man doing it himself … he thought it garnered more support. That if I batted my eyelashes and smiled, it would win him an ally.

  I’d done this five or six times before I started to object. It was weird and dirty … it made me feel cheap. And the fact that my own father dev
ised this strategy … I felt like just another pawn on his political chessboard.

  “I’m eating, and I don’t feel like meeting anyone new,” I say quietly, trying not to have the other members of our table overhear.

  I hear his fork clatter as he tries to set it down calmly. “You really should meet this junior senator from New Jersey. You two could discuss many things.”

  This isn’t a suggestion, and both my mother and I know it. She looks up at her husband, her eyes suspicious.

  “If she says she doesn’t want to meet him, she doesn’t have to meet him.” Her tone is chastising.

  My father gives me a look that could translate to daggers being thrown. “But I know that they would have a very good conversation.”

  Now my bones are on edge, and my leg bounces up and down under the table. “And I said no.”

  “I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal out of this, Lily.” My father sighs, exasperated.

  He doesn’t get why I’m making a big deal? I want to scream at him. This is the side of him that I loathe, the one I downright hate. The pompous Senator Grantham, the man who thinks he can walk all over people and tell them what to do with his nose high up in the clouds.

  This man, the jerk sitting on the other side of my mother, has taken over the doting father that I still see from time to time.

  This is not the parent who would kiss my scraped knees and tell me to get back up and play. I missed that part of my father, the one who’d take me for ice cream before dinner without telling Mom. Or drive really fast over the train tracks because he knew I liked how my stomach dropped out in that quick burst of air the car got off the jump.

  And now I understand why Bowen made those comments. The alcohol that night only fueled him to speak more harshly about my father than he ever has before. But he was right. More and more, I saw this … almost evil side of my father. Something had happened to him over the years, and it would be easy to say he changed after the accident, but the truth was, it had been a slow corruption of his soul. With more frequent trips to Washington, more responsibility as he became a senior senator, and the amount of power he’d amassed … my father had become someone I didn’t like all that much.