“Why won’t you tell me? I’ve told you everything about my life. I thought you told me about yours, too. What is so bad that you feel like you can’t confide in me?” Once again, she proved how innocent and amazing she was—nothing at all like her sister. The fact that she couldn’t come up with a single horrendous thing showed just how optimistic—and maybe even a tad naïve—her mindset was.
“I think it’s best if we let things cool off for a bit, see if it blows over.” Saying that made me feel like the biggest piece of shit who’d ever lived. “Let’s see if Ty can squash the talk, then we can figure out where things stand between us. But in the meantime, we can’t leave any room for error. You being here right now is risky. You never know who’s hiding out in the trees, ready to snap a picture of you leaving my place.”
Tasha reluctantly nodded, and without another word spoken, she got up and made her way to the door. Right before she walked out, she glanced over her shoulder one last time, offered a sad, heartbreaking smile, and left.
Everything felt wrong. Everything. But there was nothing I could do to change it.
All we could do was wait and see.
* * *
I didn’t have to wait long for my name to accompany my face in the photos plastered online. All with the heading “Tiffany Lewis Suspected of Cheating on Fiancé, Adam King, With Neighbor.”
If it weren’t for my sister, I probably would’ve lost my sanity by now. While she didn’t have all the answers—or any answer, for that matter—at least she remained by my side. After all, it wasn’t just my past coming back to haunt me. It was hers, too.
Her cell buzzed on the granite countertop. After a quick glance at the screen, she silenced it and went back to reorganizing the cupboards. That’s what she did when she was stressed—she cleaned and organized. Marcus and I had agreed a long time ago to stay out of her way when she got like this, but we’d step in the second she got out the paintbrush. Once she started painting the house, there was no saving her.
“If you ignore every call you get, why not just turn off your cell? Or change your number?”
Jessa glared at me from over her shoulder. “I don’t ignore every call. And I can’t turn it off or change my number in case a social worker needs to get ahold of me to temporarily place a family. I just don’t bother answering calls from relatives who haven’t bothered to keep in contact until our tragic childhood is broadcasted all over the internet.”
“At least that’s one thing we didn’t have back then. Thank God.”
“What? Phones?”
“Well, that too, but I meant the internet.” I pushed a few fries around on the plate. Lately, Jessa had been forcing me to eat, even though I kept telling her I wasn’t hungry. “Just imagine how much worse things would’ve been if we had to deal with things like social media.”
She laughed, turning around to face me. Leaning with her back against the edge of the counter and her arms crossed over her chest, she asked, “How much worse could it have possibly been, Coby? Pictures of our evangelist father snorting cocaine off an eighteen-year-old male stripper’s bare ass cheek made national news. You can’t get much worse than that.”
When she put it like that, it was hard not to find it funny.
However, the truth of the matter wasn’t anything to laugh at. Not only were our parents caught embezzling money from the religious organization that they ran—which ended up being a lot of money thanks to the popularity of his televised sermons—but they were also publicly humiliated for the perverted nature of their private lives.
“Any word from them yet?” I asked and then practically held my breath, unsure if I was ready for the answer.
Jessa shrugged before returning to her task of cleaning every dish she owned. “No, but it’s only a matter of time before they show up on the front doorstep. Whatever happens, we at least need to be prepared for that.”
Neither she nor I had had any contact with our parents in twenty years, ever since they were arrested and we were sent to live with our grandparents. Honestly, I hadn’t thought too much about them until my name appearing in the headlines became a reality all over again.
“How exactly does one prepare for something like that?”
“I guess that all depends on what you want out of it. If you have no intention of talking to them or listening to what they have to say, then I’d suggest you practice the art of closing the door in one’s face. But if you don’t plan on doing that, then you’ll have to brace yourself for lies, as well as prepare yourself to hear the truth…and all the darkness and ugliness that comes along with it.”
I thought about it for a moment, wondering what side of the fence I stood on. Then I asked, “What about you? What do you plan to do?”
She turned and held my stare for a long beat. “I have no idea.”
Well, that wasn’t very helpful.
19
Tasha
“You don’t have a choice,” Tiffany argued over the phone, sounding just as nasty as ever.
This was why I had avoided calling her and just let Ty deal with her. She was able to get me so fired up that all I wanted to do was strangle her, and the fact that she wasn’t within reach only made me more irate.
“You can’t force me to
