Cassie grinned. “Correct! We all call him Ram, though, not Ramsey. And the little girl is Nina, Brock and Claire’s daughter.” She pointed at the adults in question: a tall man built somewhere between the monster physique of Bax and the lean whipcord of the twins, with his brown hair swept back and to the side, clean shaven, and so devastatingly handsome he would put every GQ model ever photographed to shame; the woman was tiny, barely over five feet, with blond hair cut straight across at her chin.
I was trying to figure out how to politely ask the obvious question, but Cass answered it for me.
“Claire can’t have kids—not sure why. They adopted Nina a year, year and a half ago. Took them, like, over a year to get through the adoption process, I guess.”
We watched Ram throw the little girl ever higher, much to her delight. Cassie turned back to me. Then eyed Myles. “My sister clearly has no manners or she’d have already introduced us. But, I mean, you’re you and so obviously I know who you are, but still.”
Myles held out his hand. “Myles.”
“Cassie. The other bitchy sister.”
I cackled. “The only bitchy sister. I’m a perfect angel.”
She flipped me off, and then went way too serious way too fast. “Mom gave me the Spark Notes version of what happened, but said I should talk to you myself.”
I huffed. “The Spark Notes version is I had an affair with a married professor, got caught by his wife, who was the dean’s daughter, got kicked out, lost my scholarship, and had an abortion.” I turned to see several faces regarding me with interest, and realized I’d said all that rather…loudly. “Well…shit. Now everyone knows.”
The tiny blonde came over. “I got knocked up at nineteen, had a miscarriage and had to have a D-and-C afterwards. The D-and-C resulted in what’s called Asherman’s syndrome, meaning I’m infertile and will never have a biological baby of my own.” She watched Ram still playing with Nina. “We adopted her seventeen months ago and I’ve never been happier.”
I blinked. “Wow. Um…wow.”
A tall woman with auburn hair that was closer to red than brown was next to her. “I was stood up at the altar and ended up here in Ketchikan by mistake, met my husband Bast, fell in love, and never went back.”
A woman with long thick black hair in a complicated braid entered the circle. “I’m from an obscenely wealthy upper crust East Coast family whom I’ve disowned and will never see again, because I love Baxter—who was an underground prize fighter when I met him, and I’ve actually been to one of his fights, before he quit doing it. Got all bloody, too.”
“Zane knocked me up the same week we met, which was a week of epic fucking, I must say, and I’m still not sure if I know what I’m doing most days because I never thought I’d be able to fall in love, much less be a mother and a wife.” This from a tall curvy blonde whose tits and ass were nearly as bangin’ as mine and the tall strawberry blonde’s—who was also now joining the circle.
Said strawberry blonde leaned against the other blonde––this was getting confusing—who’d just shared her story. “I was a dedicated hookup artist with a cold dead heart, a wandering vagina, and zero future. Then I met a man named Ramsey, messed around with him a few times, and it turns out the dick was so good I couldn’t walk away, so I stayed with his dick…and the rest of him.”
I snorted, because that sounded like something I’d say.
Next was Aerie, the other blond twin, with Tate beside her once again. “We hooked up with the twins sort of out of curiosity regarding what it would be like with them. Tate got pregnant, and our mom disowned us, loudly and publicly, in Badd’s Bar and Grill. We gave up modeling careers to be here with them.”
“Actually, I think we disowned her just as much,” Tate said.
Joss chimed in, next. “I’m an orphan. I was homeless for a very long time. Almost got raped. And I was a virgin when I met Lucian.”
Harlow, appearing from somewhere. “I never told Xavier who I was when we met. He didn’t know, and I liked it. I liked feeling like a normal girl. So I never told him, even though I knew he was different and that whatever we were doing wasn’t going to be just random sex, because it was clear he was a virgin. I kept my fame a secret from him until things blew up, and it’s only because he has such a kind and forgiving and understanding heart that we’re together. After that deception, he had every right to forget me, but he didn’t, and here I am.”
A short, curvy girl, who looked like she was related to the giant Ink—jet-black hair and skin color and facial structure that made her Native American––held up her hand. “I was a secret tattoo artist, because my mom refused to allow me to do anything except go to college and get a real degree and a real job, so I could be the first and only one in the whole family to do so, even though I didn’t want to. I did go to college, and I did get a degree, and I did get real job at a law firm, but I hated it and it wasn’t until I met Remington that I found the courage to do what I was truly passionate about.”
Another blonde—this one not quite blond and not quite brunette. Tall with a damned near perfect body. “I lived a life of being the good girl, doing the right thing for the right reasons all the time. I couldn’t stand Roman the first time I met him…or the second, or the third. Or…quite a long time after that. Couldn’t stand him, and at some point would have said I hated him…but was absolutely bonkers for him at the same time. As Izzy would have said, I wanted the dick in the worst way.”
“Kitty!” the statuesque, potty-mouthed strawberry blonde said. “I’m shocked at you.”
Kitty just laughed. “The rest of you are rubbing off on me.”
I looked around. Looks like all the women had told me their stories, or the Spark Notes version anyway.
Cassie nudged me. “I got in a car wreck which ended my professional dance career and my relationship with my fiancé, who turned out to be gay. Moved here with Mom like a dog with its tail between its legs, and Ink saved me from walking straight into the Passage because I was anger-walking.”
“My fiancé cheated on me with my overweight middle-aged boss. I quit, moved, and then went on a cross-country road trip with my sister, and did the craziest thing I’ve ever done—fell in love with a badass biker and moved here with him.” She smiled over her shoulder at Crow, who was standing behind her with a giant glass bowl of guacamole in his hands.
Mom walked through the circle to me and placed her hands on my shoulders. “My husband of twenty-five years died, and I moved here for a change of scenery and pace, to start over. I met a strange, gruff, rough, enormous, foul-mouthed, beautiful disaster of a man named Lucas, and we did things my daughters would probably not appreciate hearing about, which made me realize how unhappy I’d been in my marriage before Darren died. I had to accept that, digest it, and then figure out how to fall in love all over again, as a middle-aged woman, well past her prime, with five grown daughters.”
“Ain’t shit about you being past your prime, woman,” Lucas growled.
Mom sighed, smiled. “Thank you, Lucas.” She stayed focused on me. “The point of all this, my dear love, is that there is no story about yourself you could tell which we all here would not understand, sympathize with, and do everything in our power to help you through. You are among family, Alexandra.”
My throat was hot and tight. I didn’t know any of these women except Mom and my sisters, and the only men I knew were Myles and Crow.
So…
Family?
My family was scattered across the country—or had been until recently; now Mom, Cassie, and Charlie were here in Alaska, Torie was still in Connecticut wasting her life away with a bong and a waitress’s apron, and Poppy was in New York dodging the reality of having to either woman up and chase her real dream, or give up on it. And me? I was…I had no fucking clue what I was. Or where I belonged. Or what I wanted to do.
Or who I wanted to do it with.
Should I move to Alaska with Mom, Cassie, and Charlie? Live with
my mother again? Live with one of my older sisters and their serious boyfriends? But do fucking what?
I looked around—the entire clan’s eyes were on me, every single one. And there was…love in those eyes. Acceptance. They didn’t fucking know me, so how could they love me? How could they accept me? They didn’t know me. They all—Mom, Charlie, and Cassie included—thought they knew my worst, deepest, darkest, most painful secret…the affair and abortion.
If only it was that simple.
If only it was as simple as not having a career plan or goals. Well…it was not like I had career plans beyond college; the plan was always get the degree and figure “then what” when then became now. I always assumed if I put off the notion of a career long enough, something would just…happen. I’d end up doing something.
But now even that had been taken away.
I was adrift.
I was at a loss.
I had nothing. A storage locker full of…shit. Clothing, mostly. A shitty fourth-hand futon, a thrift store coffee table, a mattress and bed frame, some books, some posters, some knickknacks from my childhood, a few photos of family, some notebooks full of old poetry and song lyrics. Some cassettes and CDs with self-recorded attempts at being a singer-songwriter.
That’s it—the sum total of me, if you count my possessions as me. If you count my personality and my achievements as me, I’m even less. I’m a partially educated twenty-one-year-old woman with no real world skills or work experience, no degree, not even an interesting romantic history to point to—just a collection of dirty stories from sleeping with any half-decent looking dude who caught my momentary fancy.
“You all think you know me. Like it’s so easy to just…know someone. Like, I told you a few stories about my shitty, fucked-up life and because you’re all so amazing, you can all just accept me and fucking love me.” I glared icy daggers at Myles as I said that. “You don’t fucking know me. None of you fucking know me.”
“Lex, honey—”
I whirled and stormed away. “That includes you, Mom.”
I walked out into the gloomy leaden sky, into the drip-drip-drip of a solid drizzle. Running away from everyone who thought they knew me, who thought they cared about me. Running away to…
What? Who? Where?
Nothing, no one, nowhere.
Myles
We all watched her go, and silence expanded throughout the bar in the wake of her departure, the only sound the faint croon of an old Tony Bennett tune.
“That is one fucked-up female,” one of the Badd men said.
Whack! The sound of a hand smacking a chest. “Baxter! Be compassionate.”
“I am compassionately saying she’s got some serious damage she ain’t dealt with. Fuckin’ all of us know from painful personal experience that when you don’t deal with your shit, your shit has a way of hunting you down and fucking you up until you quit runnin’ and face it.” He looked at me, incredulous. “Dude—the fuck are you still standing here for? Go, motherfucker!”
I went—at a run. She wasn’t hard to find, as she hadn’t gone far. Just across the street to the end of a dock where a mind-bogglingly huge mega yacht, an ocean-going, full staff and crew kind of yacht, was docked. Lexie was sitting at the very end of the pier, her feet kicking into space, her shoes beside her.
She didn’t turn around. “I am not discussing any of what just happened, Myles, so if that’s why you’re here, you can just fuck right off.”
I plopped down beside her, moving her shoes to the other side. Propped my hands behind me, and watched a cruise ship that was anchored offshore, all lit up. I didn’t say a thing.
She finally eyed me, not turning her head. “What? What do you want, Myles?”
“What do I want?” I laughed. “A lot of things. Gotta be more specific.”
A bitter, angry sigh. “With me, Myles. Here, now, in this moment—what the fuck do you want? Why are you sitting here, not talking?”
I shrugged. “Just keeping you company.”
“What if I don’t fucking want company?”
I looked at her. “Then you say to me, ‘Myles, you sexy, understanding hunk of a man, I really just need some time alone. Could you please give me a little bit of time and space? I’ll come find you when I’m ready.’”
She lifted her chin. I saw her wheels turning. Deciding. Did she really want to be alone? Or did she just not want to be questioned?
I held her gaze. “Have I, at any point, demanded answers or stories or explanations from you?”
“Myles—”
“Have I, Alexandra?”
“You don’t get to—”
My temper flared. “The fuck I don’t! I think at this point I absolutely have earned the right to use your full name, Alexandra Rochelle Goode. Answer the goddamn question—have I ever demanded anything from you?”
“No,” she whispered.
“And I’m not doing that now.”
“But you’re—”
“Sitting next to an upset woman who I care about a lot.”
“Dammit, Myles.”
“No, not dammit Myles. I give a shit about you, Lex. Bare minimum, you gotta let me have that without fuckin’ fighting me on it. I give a shit about you—how you feel, what you want. You know who else gives a shit about the person that is Alexandra Goode?” I gestured angrily back at the bar across the street. “Every fucking body else back there. Most especially your mom, Cassie, Charlie, and Crow. So all I’m sayin’ here is, you’re not fuckin’ alone in dealin’ with whatever hell it is you’re holding on to.”
“I’m not—”
“I got a motherfucker of a bullshit sniffer, Lex, so don’t give me that. Yes, you fuckin’ are. I’m calling you on it. It’s as plain as the nipples on your tits that you’re harboring some seriously fucked damage inside you.”
She sniffed a laugh. “As plain as the nipples on my tits, huh? Isn’t the phrase supposed to be as plain as the nose on your face?”
I laughed. “Sure. But noses are boring, and while you’ve got a cute one, as far as body parts go, I much prefer your boobs. So I went with that.”
“Ah. Fair enough.” She nodded. “Anyway. You were saying?”
“I said it. It’s as obvious as whatever you want to say is real fuckin’ obvious that you’re holding on to some deep, dark, fucked-up, painful shit. I see it. I know it. I don’t know what it is, and I’m damn certain nobody else does. That’s fine. It’s your life, your history, and your choice to share or not. But know this, Lex, and hear me real goddamn clear: I will wait. I will continue to care about you. I will continue to not let you push me away. I will continue to let you deflect the hard conversations into sex and humor. I’ll let shit stand, for now. I’ll wait.” I fixed her eyes with mine. “But I can’t do it forever. Eventually I’m gonna need either truth and reciprocation, or to be cut loose. I ain’t sayin’ now. I ain’t giving you an ultimatum. I never will. But it’s inevitable. Same for your mom, your sisters, and anyone else in your life. Hard truth is, Lex, folks can only be kept at arm’s length for so long, and then they quit tryin’ to get any closer.”
She swallowed hard. “Fuck.” She blinked, her eyes wet. “So what are you saying, Myles?”
I shrugged. “I’m saying what I said. No deeper meaning, nothing left unsaid. I care about you. Could I have feelings that go deeper than just caring about you? Sure, I could. Maybe I already do. I don’t know. What that means for you is up to you. I will not ask about anything, Lex. You’ve made it crystal fuckin’ clear you will not discuss your past beyond safe surface shit. Okay. Your choice. The wrong one, if you were askin’ me, which I realize you’re not. But still, your choice. Do I want more with you? Somethin’ deeper? Yeah, I do. But I’m gonna take what I can get with you, and if that’s nothin’ but the best sex of my life, so be it. I’ll take it and I’ll fuckin’…I’ll treasure it. But just know that I’m offering more. It’s not unconditional, though. I do have a condition for offering you all of me—and
that’s all of you in return.” I stood. Gazed down at her. “I’ll leave you to your thinkin’ and stewin’, now. I’m going back to the bar and I’m gonna hang with the crew, drink some whiskey, have some laughs, play with some kids, get to know Cassie and your Mom. As far as I’m concerned, this conversation is over. I’m not opening it again. I’m not gonna say or do shit to push or ask or plead or pull. I’ve said my piece, made myself pretty damn clear. Ball’s in your court. I will accept without question whatever you choose, Alexandra. But that’s a double-edged sword. This is me chasing you, this is me pursuing you. You try to play hard to get from here, you won’t find me chasin’ you.” I drilled my gaze into hers. “I fuckin’ care, Lex. I want to know, I want to be there. I want more than just sex. But like I said, I’ll take what you’re offering until it runs out and I’ll milk it for all it’s worth.”
I walked away without a backward glance. “Your move, Lex.”
“Where’s Lex?” Cassie asked when I reentered the bar.
I gestured. “Out on the dock. I think she needs to…shit, I don’t know.”
Cassie stared at the door as if she could see Lexie. “She’s kept us all at a certain distance for…years. I never really realized how distant until now.”
Charlie was standing behind Cassie’s chair. “She hides it with her sarcasm and being funny and super, like, bold, but I think deep down she’s…”
“Insecure,” Liv said. “And I just wish I knew why.”
Charlie sighed. “She told me she had a dream of moving to Nashville and becoming a singer-songwriter.”
Liv blinked. “She did?”
Charlie frowned. “You didn’t know? How do you not know that about your own daughter? I mean, Mom, I’m not trying to, like, think I know anything about being a mother, but that seems like something you would know.”
She shook her head. “No, and I feel horrible for not knowing that about her.” The pain on her face was agonizing to see. “You say she had a dream. But she doesn’t anymore?”
Charlie shook her head. “No. She told me one time when she was like seventeen and close to graduating that Dad came into her room while she was practicing her music, and told her that she needed to face reality that she just wasn’t talented enough to make it as professional musician, and that she needed to find a more practicable and realistic goal for her future.”
Goode To Be Bad Page 12