by Jen Talty
“So long as you don’t take the bottle.”
Georgia Moon nodded. “Want to know what gets me more than him lying about who he was and how that was connected to my life?”
“I have a feeling this might have to do with the bitch who I don’t like to talk about,” Kitty said.
“It kills me that of all the ways Luke could have destroyed my brother, he picked fucking Bella.”
“For the record, that wasn’t my idea. And come on. Like you’ve never fucked a mistake before, or do I need to remind you about Xander, the douchebag who plastered your naked picture all over the internet,” Luke’s voice boomed in the night. “He was a real piece of work.”
“I’m going to go find my husband.” Kitty took a step back. She glanced over her shoulder and waved. “There he is. I’ll give you two some privacy.”
“Fucking wonderful,” Georgia Moon muttered.
Luke held up his beer and nodded at the waiter who set a bottle of whiskey on the table. “Planning on getting sloshed this evening?”
“That’s none of your damned business.” With a shaky hand, she poured herself a double shot, but this time she sipped.
“I’ll take a shot of Georgia Moon.” Luke snagged the glass and helped himself.
Jerk.
“I think I’m going to call it a night.” She curled her fingers around the bottle and took a step.
“Oh, no, you don’t.” Luke jumped in front of her. “We need to talk, and if not tonight, then I’m camping outside of your room.”
“I’ve got nothing to say to you, ever.”
“I want to take the job that you and your family offered me.”
She closed her eyes for a long moment. Memories of her and Joanie playing in the child-size playhouse in her backyard flooded her mind’s eye. They would sit around the play kitchen table drinking Kool-Aid, pretending it was wine and they were wealthy ranchers. But soon, those recollections turned into the nightmare of the day they found Joanie’s body by the train tracks. She’d gone missing for three days. She’d been beaten and molested.
And Luke did nothing to stop his father.
“Why?”
“Because I need to work; my sister loves it here, and well, this has been the only real home I’ve ever had.”
She blinked, rolled her shoulders, and turned. “If you stay, I will leave, and that will destroy my brothers. Can you live with that? Like you lived with the knowledge that you knew my best friend, or that you were fucking my brother’s fiancée?” The words flew from her mouth like a bullet hurling for a target with only one purpose.
To make someone suffer.
He cringed.
“You’d leave your brothers, your family, your entire life, just because I worked at Whiskey Ranch?”
She nodded.
“I didn’t kill her,” he said softly behind a tight jaw. “I still have nightmares about what my father did. Not a day has gone by where I haven’t wished I could have done something—”
“You could have gone to the police sooner. But you waited until after—”
He took her by the forearm and squeezed. “You have no idea what I went through or what really happened because you won’t let me tell you. For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve wanted answers, and I’m willing to give them to you, but instead of listening, you hide behind anger and fear. So don’t you dare say I waited or could have done something to save Joanie. I’m lucky I got my sister out of there before he killed her. And let’s not forget I was ten damn years old, and my entire life had been a living hell, and all I wanted to do was protect my little sister.” He glanced around. “And while I saved her from death, I will always have to live with the knowledge that he touched her.”
“Oh, my God. I didn’t know that.”
He laughed. “Because you won’t listen to me or my sister.” He released his hand and shook his head. “I don’t want to come between you and your family. I’ll tell JW I changed my mind about the job. I’ll leave tomorrow.” He turned and walked away with his hands in his pockets and his head hanging low.
“Fuck,” she muttered. “Luke. Wait.”
He didn’t stop nor glance over his shoulder. He just waved his hand. “I told JW if you weren’t on board, then neither was I. Goodbye, Georgia Moon.”
Chapter 9
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m packing; what does it look like I’m doing?” Luke glanced up and saw his sister with her hands on her hips, glaring at him as he came down the stairs.
“You’re leaving? You’re going to break your promise?”
“Sorry, sis. I tried talking to her tonight, and I won’t be the asshole that steps between her and her family again.”
Annette opened her mouth to say something, but he held up his hand in protest. “She’s stubborn as all get-out, and she’s not going to change her mind, no matter what I do. Honestly, I think I’m making it worse for her by staying, and I don’t want to cause her or her family any more pain.”
“She’s not being fair.”
He set his suitcase by the front door. “But she has that right. Like I said, you and Tony can stay on. They aren’t going to fire you or change how they treat you.”
“No. That’s bullshit. I was there when Joanie died. I was at the park, and we both helped Dad lure her into his car. I played with her for three days while Daddy did things to her.” Tears quickly flowed down Annette’s cheeks like a waterfall. “What gives me a hall pass and not you?”
“You never sat at Joanie’s gravesite and listened to Georgia Moon talk about that day or let her cry on your shoulder, knowing you could answer the one question she’s desperately wanted the answer to for years.”
“And what’s that?”
“Out of all the little girls in the park that day, why Joanie? Why not her?” Luke tossed a pair of jeans into his suitcase. “I tried to answer it generically a few times, hoping to help her understand that any one of those girls at the park were prey to my father, even her, but she has it in her head that Joanie did something specific to make her a target.”
Annette took one of the throw pillows and hugged it as she slumped into the rocking chair. “It sounds like she’s twisting her real issue.”
He nodded. “She’s said more than once that she blames herself for not noticing her best friend gone sooner, but I had Joanie follow me into the woods when no one was looking, and you had a bunch of people surrounding you during your little crying… oh, shit.”
“What?”
“Fuck. I can’t believe I didn’t put it together until just now.”
“I’m not following,” Annette said.
“Do you remember a kid hitting another kid after that boy pulled your hair?”
Annette tilted her head and pursed her lips. “The hair yanking was staged.”
“But you told me someone came to your defense and punched that boy. Georgia Moon told me she got into a fight that day in the playground, but she never told me that it was at the precise moment Joanie went missing, much less that she actually used her fist, though knowing her, that makes perfect sense.”
The sound of the door closing caught his attention.
He jumped.
“Georgia Moon,” he whispered.
“Was Joanie always the target? Or did I just make it easier for her to be the one instead of me by helping Annette out?”
The air in Luke’s lungs escaped. His muscles went weak. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he sat on the edge of the sofa.
It was the time for the entire truth.
“There is always one kid who stands in the background when someone is getting bullied or picked on,” Annette started. “My job was to find one of the mean boys, or girls, and make it out like they had hurt me.”
“So, that boy I punched. He didn’t pull your hair?” Georgia Moon asked.
Annette shook her head.
“I didn’t see what happened because I was busy watching Joanie step away from the
crowd. As planned, I approached her with tears in my eyes—”
“You would make yourself cry?” Georgia Moon asked with fire in her tone.
“I cried every time my father suggested we go to the playground because I knew it meant he’d find another girl, so no. I didn’t make myself cry.” He swiped at his cheeks, though they were dry. His eyes felt like sandpaper, and his pulse pounded so fast he could no longer count the heartbeats. “We had just relocated to the area three months prior. That had been the longest my father had gone between abductions, that we know of.”
“Why didn’t you tell her to run? Why did you lure her out into the woods and then your father’s car? Why?” Georgia Moon asked behind a shaky voice. Black mascara blotted her skin. “You could have told another parent at the park or something. They would have protected you.”
Luke lifted his shirt and showed off one of his scars. “We tried that once, and my father did this to me.”
“And once he did this to me.” Annette grabbed the hem of her shirt. “He would use hurting me as a way to control Luke. Anytime Luke didn’t do what our father wanted, he would touch me or take a knife to me or burn me.”
Luke blinked his eyes a dozen or so times. Every time he saw his sister’s scars, it was a reminder of his defiance. A reminder of all the times he’d failed to save another victim.
“Oh, my God,” Georgia Moon whispered as she took Annette in her arms. “I had heard he beat his children.”
“He did more than that,” Annette said. “He was truly a monster, and our childhood was taken from us. It took us years of therapy to understand this wasn’t our fault. You have to understand, Luke did everything his ten-year-old little brain could think of to protect me. And he did some crazy things to try to save our father’s victims, like what he did with Joanie.”
“Only that backfired, didn’t it,” Luke said.
“What did you do?” Georgia Moon asked.
“Does it matter?” Luke asked.
“It matters to me,” Georgia Moon said. “When I was fifteen, that book about your father’s life came out, and it talked about his last victim, and she came up with a plan for all of you to escape, but you got caught, and she covered for you.”
Luke sucked in a deep breath. He remembered that day as if it were yesterday. He also remembered the stabbing pain in his heart every time he’d see Georgia Moon at Joanie’s graveside. He opened his mouth, but the burn in his chest prevented him from speaking.
“I know I said I didn’t want to hear it, but please, Luke. Tell me what happened to my friend.”
Luke ran a hand over his stubble. “Can we do this outside? I feel like I’m suffocating in here.”
“That’s a good idea,” Annette said. “I need to go check on Tony. I’ll catch up with you all later.” She leaned in and gave Luke a hug. “Let it all out. All of it. And then you need to give her some time to process.”
“Thanks,” he whispered back.
He glanced toward the front of the house. The main door swung wide-open, and Georgia Moon had already disappeared into the night.
The music from the wedding band rolled across the ranch. It had been an amazing day, but Georgia Moon’s mind continued to wander to Luke and his horrific childhood. She knew damn well she’d been too hard on him for all the wrong reasons.
“Georgia Moon?” His voice tickled her eardrum.
“Down by the hammock.” She sat on the ground and leaned against one of the fat tree trunks and crossed her legs.
“Here.” He handed her a sizable glass of red wine. “You might need it for this chat.”
“Thanks.” She sipped the bold liquid. “I want you to know that I have never blamed you for Joanie’s death. But it physically hurts my heart that you would actually offer me up possible answers to my questions and not tell me you were Liam.”
“Please, don’t ever call me that. It’s not who I am.”
She tipped her head, catching his strong gaze. “Okay.”
“For the longest time, my father would bring girls in and out of my life. He’d tell me he was babysitting for a friend, and I would try to make them feel at home, but they always feared me. I never understood why until I was maybe eight when I saw up close and personal what he did to those girls.”
“Luke, I’m so sorry—”
“Let me get through this, okay?”
She held out her hand. “Sit with me.”
“I’m good here.” He leaned against a post and ran a hand over his chin. He looked tired and at the same time, she could see a sense of relief in his eyes. “We went to that park every day for two weeks. My father wanted us to blend in. He’d sit on one of the benches with an iPad and pretend to work. He didn’t engage with anyone, and our job was to play with the other kids. Before I knew I was only there to find his prey, I lived for the days we went to the park. But once I knew, I hated going, and to this day, I really don’t want to be at one.”
“It was summer, so school was out.” Georgia Moon closed her eyes and let the memories fill her brain. “I can picture your sister, but I don’t remember talking to or playing with you.”
“I don’t think we did, but I do remember you and how feisty you were. I thought if my father wanted you, he’d end up having his finger bitten off.”
Georgia Moon laughed. “I would like to believe I would have fought him.”
“I would like to believe you would have caved to submission quickly because the more anyone fought him, the worst it got and not with the beatings.”
She gasped. Knowing that his father violated Joanie in so many ways shattered her heart in a million pieces. And it didn’t just break for Joanie, but that man stole so many lives and injured so many innocent people. “Joanie was more of a follower. Did she submit quickly?”
Luke nodded. “She was smart and did what she had to in order to survive, but when my father caught her sneaking out the window, that was it.” Luke rubbed his temples. “I had managed to land in the backyard without breaking anything. I could hear her screaming and begging my father not to hurt her. Not to kill her. I was about to run down the street and find anyone to help, but then I heard Annette, and my father was about to—he was going to—rape her. I didn’t really know what that was except that I knew a father shouldn’t touch his little girl that way, and I couldn’t let it happen to Annette.”
Georgia Moon swallowed a guttural sob.
“I went back inside, and it wasn’t until after my father killed Joanie that I was able to get help. I live with the knowledge that I might have been able to save her.”
“But at what cost?” Georgia Moon had heard enough. Her brothers had been right all along.
So had her heart.
Luke was a good, honest man who did what he had to in order to protect family. Even at the ripe old age of ten. Her anger wasn’t toward him, or even the boy he used to be.
If she was being totally honest with herself, her fury was directed at herself. Had she not done such a bang-up job of punching the jerk on the playground, maybe Joanie wouldn’t have been abducted.
But she could play that game all day long because had Joanie not been taken that day, how many others would have followed because it had been her kidnapping and subsequent death that brought down a monster.
And gave two innocent children their freedom.
“I don’t really believe in God,” Georgia Moon started. “But I think sometimes everything happens for a reason, and we can’t always make sense of that reason. To be fair to you, I’ve been trying to absolve myself of any guilt—”
“You did nothing wrong,” Luke said. “I, on the other hand—”
“Made decisions in order to survive in a situation that no child should have to endure.” She pushed herself to a standing position. It became abundantly clear that the answers she thought she’d been searching for were only questions she used to cover up her real fear.
And that was that Joanie’s death was somehow ultimately her fault. But no matte
r how she spun it, no matter who she tried to blame, there was only one person responsible for Joanie, and that was her murderer, Joey Hill. Everyone else was another victim.
“I’m sorry. I’ve been horrible to you.” She inched closer, taking his hands. “I am hurt, but I understand why you had to keep your past from me.”
“There were so many times I wanted to tell you, but I knew how you’d react, and I thought that maybe after my father had been put to death, it wouldn’t matter.”
“It will always matter.” She rested her head on his shoulder, letting out a long breath. “But not in the way I thought.”
He cupped her cheeks and tilted her head. “What does that mean?”
“Joanie is always going to be part of our lives. She was my best friend, and she’s given me courage, even in death. She helped you find a way to put an end to your father’s murderous ways, and in a very bizarre way, she brought the two of us together.”
“Together?” He ran his thumbs tenderly over her cheeks and gazed into her eyes, holding her captive.
She leaned into his strong body. “I’m sorry about the way I treated you and the way I reacted. Everything came as a shock, and with the trial and impending execution, I didn’t handle this well.”
He lowered his forehead to hers and kissed her nose. “There is no script for how to handle something like this.”
“Do you have any other secrets?”
“No. You now know everything. That said, I still don’t want my identity shared with the world.”
“I can understand that, and my brothers won’t say anything, nor will I.”
“If I stay, are you going to still leave?” he asked. “Because I can’t have that.”
“I’m not going to leave Whiskey Ranch.” For the first time in her adult life, she felt in total control of her life. Even though Luke could tell her to fuck off. That her constant cruelty over Joanie had been too much for him to take. She still felt as though she was in the driver’s seat of her own destination. Her happiness was up to her. It wasn’t dictated by things that had happened in the past, but what she chose to do moving forward. “And I want you to stay.”