Page 68 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

“Do you want to tell me about it? What it was like growing up with your Mom?”

There’s just the light in the kitchenette on, and her head is snuggled on my bicep, my hand on her hip dropping from the curls framing her face to her hip, because I can’tnottouch her.

She curls her fingers against my chest. “Mom was kind of man-crazy when I was small. She was so into my stepdad and tried so hard to make it work. I mean, I think she was trying to keep things stable for me, but for her, too. I’d gotten a scholarship to this fancy high school and she wanted a better life for me than the one she had.”

I kiss the top of her head. “That’s every parent’s dream, isn’t it?” Excluding mine, but they don’t count.

She nods.

“Except it was awful. The girls at the school were awful to me because I didn’t know how to act right yet.”

“Act right?” I frown.

“You know. Like how you can be one way at home, but you have to hide it when you go out socially so you can fit in? Cover it up and kind of perform so everyone thinks you’re normal, too?”

Her eyes in the dim light are so sincere as she says it. Like it’s something she still believes.

I narrow my eyes. “Wait. Do you hide who you are around me and perform for me?”

She laughs and smacks me on the chest. “No, silly. That’s what’s so refreshing about you. About this.” She heaves out a big breath and smiles as she settles her cheek back in against my chest right over my heartbeat, eyes briefly closing like it’s the best feeling.

Which is when I understand.

Around fuckface, shedidhave to keep the performance up.

Even in her own home, the one place you’re supposed to be able to unwind completely.

Jesus.

I swallow, but love that she’s finally opening up. I want to be just as supportive for her as she’s been for me when I opened up. “So it was bad at that school in Dallas, then you moved here to Austin?”

The smile drops from her face, and I watch it cloud over. She snuggles closer like Owen does after a bad dream.

“The thing was, not everyone at that school was a bitch to me. There was a girl who became my best friend. Harper. She liked me forme. She adopted a cat when my stepdad was threatening to drown the litter— And she stood up against the bullies for me.”

“Damn right. I’m glad you had that.”

But Lennon is still shaking her head. “No, it turned out really bad.” She swallows. “Some really,reallybad shit went down. My parents were fighting all the time. And then Harper’s stepmom was dying of cancer and someone exposed this big secret she had, but it looked likeIhad betrayed her. They planted weed in her locker, too and?—”

Lennon looks up at me and there are tears in her eyes. “And I just stood there and watched it all happen, totally frozen. I didn’t defend her like she’d defended me. Then she just disappeared from school and I never saw her again or got to apologize for anything.”

“Babe.” I caress some hair out of her face, pushing in behind her ear. “You were what? Sixteen?”

“Fifteen. But still. It was horrible. Her dad went toprisonfor the weed. No one really thought he’d put it there. He sacrificed himself for Harper and she split town. She was the best friend I ever had. I felt so awful. It’s one of the reasons Mom moved us here after my stepdad split. For a new start. And I swore to myself?—”

She swallows hard, not meeting my eyes.

“What? Lennon. I’ll never judge you. You heard what a maniac fuck-up I was. You were just a kid in a screwed-up situation.”

She shrugs, tears in her eyes. “I think it’s why I threw myself so hard into youth group when I got here. Performingextrahard. Not to just be accepted, but to… like…atone. When they all said I needed to be sorry for my sins, I was really,reallysorry.”

A tear falls down her cheek, and it kills me. She’s guilty not for some bad thingshedid, but just for freezing in the moment, and as a kid no less?

“They said I could be forgiven if I was sorry enough,” she says, “and Iwas. So then I wanted to be perfect to have earned that forgiveness. To demonstrate how hard I meant it. I even changed to start going by my first name again instead of Marie, the middle name I’d been going by since I was a little kid. I just wanted to be a new person so much.”

I pull her into my arms as she cries then, stroking my fingers through her hair.

I can imagine teenage Lennon Marie. Trying to perform perfectly for everyone and learning it was a way to gain acceptance.