Page 134 of The Exit Strategy

With me.

Not the heavy stuff. Not hospice, or everything she’s been carrying alone, but the stuff she collected outside of the pain her mother created. Like the way Anna hummed when she cooked. The way she couldn’t balance a checkbook but was uncannily good at trivia. The rare afternoons of affection when she’d braid Junie’s hair while telling her to stop slouching because “a woman leads with her chest, never an apology.”

According to the Boston boys, Junie hasn’t talked to anyone about her mother in years.

But she’s doing it now, with me.

She doesn’t do second chances, Cole. Not even for you.Nolan’s words vibrate through my mind now with more urgency than ever.

“Mom wasn’t perfect,” Junie says, and I clear my thoughts to give her the attention she deserves. “She was selfish and inconsiderate. She put me in the middle of her love-hate relationship with my dad my entire life. Sheblamed me for everything that went wrong in her life, but when she was capable of love, I think she tried to do it well.”

She plays with the button of my shirt, but she has no idea that her mother was never capable of love. Not for her. And this is why Natalie’s blackmail works. Junie can never know how fucked-up her mother really was.

“I—I’ve never said it, and God knows she never would have, but we both appreciated what all of you did for us. You know, giving up your normal college life to help us keep the lights on and the house in the family when she got sick. I wouldn’t have even been able to afford the taxes on that place without all your help.”

My arm wraps around her then, pulling her into my side as close as I can get her. “That’s something you never have to thank me for, Junie. There isn’t anywhere else I would have wanted to be.” I glance down at her. At the mist in her eyes that she blinks away. The heaviness she holds on to because she doesn’t trust anyone to help carry the weight.

But for now, she’s talking. So I listen. I listen the way I’ve never been able to before—without trying to fix anything.

A million stories flicker in her eyes before she buries her face into my side, and relief relaxes my muscles.

I may be fucking some things up, but this? Here, holding her, I’ll always get this right.

“The gala is in eleven days,” she says into the quiet room.

I grunt.

Eleven days is my ownThe Tell-Tale Heart.

“What do you even wear to something like that?”

“We could skip it? Hide out in a hotel for a couple of days…naked.” Hope blooms in my chest.

Junie snorts. “Nana Mae would never allow it.”

My moment of joy is crushed with that statement because she’s right. Nana Mae has her own reasons forwanting to win—and I don’t think many of them actually have to do with Paula Van Holten but everything to do with my mother.

“She’ll try to get you to wear something you don’t want to wear.” I pull Junie closer and tug her leg over my thigh. “Resist her. You’re allowed to resist her. I’ve done it. It is possible.”

Junie laughs a full belly laugh this time, right into my chest. “You forget, I’ve met her. I can’t imagine it’s all that easy.”

“I’ve been doing it for years. I’m an expert now.” Or I know where the best hiding spots are, at least.

“You’re not as slick as you think you are. When I was looking for you last week, she told me you were hiding behind the shed. She knows all your tricks.”

Well, shit.

“She’s pretty terrifying,” I admit. “Maybe bring Katie along. With them at the opposite ends of the spectrum, you might land somewhere in the middle of appropriate.”

“Ugh.” There’s humor in her tone as she finishes off her glass of wine.

I remove the glass from her hand and set it on the table in front of us while she burrows further into my chest, and I allow myself to enjoy the quiet moment.

Her weight against me gets heavier, but I don’t move. Not even when I hear her soft snore.

Somewhere in the last hour, I’ve stopped being afraid of what I left behind and have started to fear the unsettled future that feels almost within reach. Not because I don’t want it, but because I’m terrified that I want it too much and don’t yet deserve it.

But I’ve run out of time. The only way to keep Junie is to act and hope that we survive the fallout.