After the Storm: Midseason Episode 1 (Rising Storm) (2 page)

She’d found the love of her life and she’d still kept it up because she’d been afraid of losing it all. Well, she’d lost it.

It was time to grow up and stop thinking of herself first. Little Bit needed food and that meant facing the music. She grabbed her robe and wrapped it around her body. It gave her some much needed warmth. Forcing herself to move, she opened the door and started for the kitchen.

“You do understand that this affects all of us, right?” Luis was saying as she walked toward the small kitchen.

She could smell bacon and a faint whiff of cinnamon. Marisol was making her French toast. Food was the language of her sister’s love. Tears pierced her eyes. She wasn’t really alone.

She stepped into the kitchen. Luis was sitting at the table, his cell phone in hand. Marisol was at the stove, her hair swept back and already dressed for the day.

How much was she going to cost her siblings?

“Luis is worried people will stop coming to the bakery,” Ginny said. “So am I. What will we do if you have to close it down?” Yet another problem she’d caused.

Marisol waved it off. “They’ll still come. No one bakes like I do. The good part about being in a small town is there’s not a ton of competition. I’d like to see them find a better bakery. Good luck with that.”

“Marisol, it could be rough. You have to think about that. Maybe it would be better if I found another place to stay, distanced myself a little. Me staying here could cause trouble for you.”

Luis frowned. “Not only for her. Mallory won’t speak to me. All I’ve gotten from her is one text asking me to give her time. Why does she need time? Time for what? I’m not the one who lied.”

She didn’t remember what it felt like to be so young. Ginny wasn’t that much older than Luis, but suddenly she felt as though decades and not mere years separated them. She could point out that his trouble was nothing compared to hers, might have a few days before, but she had to be better now. She had to stop being a child. It was what had gotten her in trouble in the first place.

She sat down across from her brother. “No, you’re not, and she’ll see that. She’s got her own trouble, Luis. Think about it. Her sister was the one who blew everything up. They won’t simply be coming for me.”

Luis wouldn’t look her in the eyes. That hurt. “Yeah, well, I don’t know why. She was only the messenger. Dakota’s the only one with the guts to tell everyone the truth.”

Marisol turned on him, a spatula in her hand. “That girl destroyed three families. How dare you defend her?”

Ginny put a hand up. “He’s not really. He’s just very, very angry with me and he has the right to be.”

Finally, Luis looked at her and she could see the hurt in his eyes. “Why, Ginny? Why would you do this? Why would you lie?”

She got the feeling she would be answering this question a lot. “Because I was afraid. And ashamed.”

“Why would you sleep with that old dude?”

“Leave your sister alone.” Marisol put a plate in front of Ginny. “She needs to rest and eat. She doesn’t need you criticizing her.”

But that’s what she would get. Criticism. Blame. Maybe mockery. It was better to face it. “He’s asking questions he needs the answers to, Marisol. Let us be for a minute. I love you defending me, but I have to start making things right.” She turned to her brother. Once, he’d looked up to her. “I don’t know why I did it. I guess I liked how he made me feel. I often feel like I don’t exist. It’s easy when you’re not the prettiest girl on campus. I moved from here to Austin and I lost myself. For the first time I didn’t know everyone in town and I felt invisible. The senator made me feel like I mattered.”

Marisol stood at the head of the table, looking over them both. “Why did you play around with Lacey when it’s obvious the girl you truly care about is Mallory?”

Luis flushed.

“Marisol, it’s all right. This is about me.” She didn’t want to make her brother feel bad. She’d done enough to all of them.

Marisol shook her head. “No. That’s my point. This isn’t only about you. This is about the town and everyone in it. We’ve all been touched by this in some way. It’s time we stop judging everyone and start looking to help our neighbors. Luis shouldn’t judge you because he’s not perfect himself. I’m not angry at Dakota. I wish she’d found some other way to deal with her own pain, but I truly do understand why she’s hurt. He very likely made her feel important, too.”

Luis nodded. “I don’t know why I did what I did with Lacey. It was stupid and I hurt Mallory, but I hurt myself and Lacey, too. You’re right. I shouldn’t judge my sister. But I can judge him.”

“Oh yes,” Marisol said, her eyes going colder than Ginny could ever remember. “We can judge the senator. He was old enough to know better and you can bet he’s not sitting in his kitchen this morning feeling bad about what he’s done.”

“He’s only upset because he got caught,” Luis said.

“He doesn’t matter now.” Ginny didn’t even want to think about him. He was meaningless and getting angry wouldn’t do any good. “I made my decisions. I was an adult, too. I might not have acted like one, but I was of legal age.”

“He should have known better. And there should be consequences.” Luis reached across the table and placed a hand over hers. “I’m sorry if I was harsh. Marisol’s right. We’ve all done things we’re not proud of. I’m worried about Mallory. I got a text from Marcus telling me to leave her alone. He’s being unreasonable.”

“He loves his sister,” Marisol explained. “And he’s in a terrible position. He’s got one sister who the town is likely to turn on, another sister he’s trying to protect, and he’s got to deal with the fact that the woman he cares about is getting hurt in all of this. See it from Marcus’s point of view. Text him back. Tell him you understand where he is because you’re in the same place and you hope the two of you can work together to make things better for the women you both care about. Act like a man and he’ll treat you like one.”

If only she’d listened to her sister more often. Ginny patted her brother’s hand. “Yes. She’s right. She always is.”

Luis stood up, seeming stronger than before. “I’ll do it. And Ginny? I really am sorry for being so rude. I love you. Let me be the first to say what everyone will say in the end.”

“What’s that?”

“I forgive you.” He leaned over and his lips brushed against her forehead. “I’ll be in my room if you need me.”

Tears made the world hazy as she watched her brother walk away.

Marisol sat down in his place. “They will forgive you in the end. You’ll see. Time heals these things. The scandal will die down and you’ll find your place again.”

There was only one problem with that. “I can’t hide in this house. I know it will take time, but I can’t wait on some things.”

“Are you talking about Logan?”

Ginny nodded. She could still see his face. Her betrayal had been stamped on his handsome face and she had to find a way to make things right between them. “Yes. I hurt him in ways I couldn’t have imagined. I think he was the right man for me and I screwed it all up because I couldn’t be honest with him, couldn’t even be honest with myself.”

“He’s a good man. He’ll come around if it’s really meant to be.”

He’d told her the night before what she had to do. He’d told her that if she wanted to make things right, she needed to start with the people her lies had hurt the most.

Her stomach turned at the thought, but she knew where she needed to go. “I have to see Celeste.”

Marisol’s eyes widened. “Are you sure?”

Getting her things from the Salt house would be the perfect excuse to apologize, truly apologize. It was time to be more than a frightened child. “Yes.”

With shaking hands, she began to eat. Not for herself, but for the baby inside her.

* * * *

Logan pushed through the door to the bar, hauling in the box of vodka that had been on the delivery truck. Maybe he should have stood back and let the driver carry it all in, but he needed to work. He needed sweaty, physical labor to take his mind off what had happened yesterday.

He would do just about anything to go back and erase it, to go back to that moment right before he’d learned who Ginny Moreno really was.

Liar. Mistress. Home wrecker.

The last part she’d truly excelled at. Sure, the word was usually about a woman who slept with a married man and broke up his family, but Ginny had really taken it to the next level. She’d managed to destroy more families with a single lie than he could have imagined.

“If you hold that box any tighter, I’m going to think you’re in love,” a deep voice said. Patrick was behind the bar, sipping on a cup of coffee.

“Well, if I am, then we can be sure this box probably fucked some of the other boxes and lied about it.”

“Wow. That is some serious bitterness.” Patrick set the mug down and moved close, his hands out. “Let me help you.”

He let the box go and immediately turned. The last thing he wanted was a discussion with his brother. He’d tried to avoid everyone. It was why he’d taken off the night before. He knew what his family was like. They would huddle around him, but he needed to be alone. “I’ll be back.”

He strode out through the kitchen and to the storage room where the rest of the boxes were. Maybe he should have taken off and gone fishing. He should have known his family wouldn’t let him be. He grabbed a box marked bourbon and hefted it up.

Patrick was right there at his side again, lifting the last of the delivery. “I think we should do what we should have done last night. We should sit down and talk about what happened.”

Yes, this was why he’d avoided Patrick like the plague last night. He’d grabbed a six-pack of beer and walked to one of the hills that overlooked the town. He’d sat and drank and stared at the lights for hours. He’d wondered if Ginny was sleeping or if she was sitting up and wondering where he was.

Or if she was crying over her precious Jacob. Her true love.

He knew it made him a selfish son of a bitch, but that got to him. She’d loved Jacob Salt so much she was willing to lie to the whole world so she could pretend he’d been the father of her kid.

Logan had been willing to do that. He’d cared about her so much, he’d been willing to step up and be a father to her child. Hell, he’d started thinking of that kid as his.

Now he was just one more fool. One more idiot caught in Ginny Moreno’s lies. There were a whole lot of them. They could form their own damn support group.

“There’s nothing to talk about.” Logan strode back into the bar and set the box down. He was just stubborn enough to not let Patrick run him off. He opened the boxes and started unpacking.

“Logan, I’m not an idiot. None of us are,” Patrick said, leaning against the bar. “We all know how much you have to be hurting.”

Maybe he could brazen his way through this. He didn’t bother to look up. “I broke up with a girl. I’ve done it before. I’ll do it again. This one was easy. She gave me a good reason. It’s so much harder when I have to be polite. They can keep holding on that way and it can take weeks to really get rid of them. Ginny knows the score now.”

Patrick stared at him. “Are you serious?”

“As a heart attack.” He was definitely serious about not having this conversation.

“You loved that girl, Logan.”

He’d thought he loved her. He thought she’d been falling for him, too. He’d thought she was the one good thing that had happened to him in years, the thing that could make all his pain seem less. All she’d done was cause him more. “I spent some time with her, that’s all. When I got home, I was at loose ends and she filled in the time. Now that time is done and I’ve got to move on.”

“Or you could think about what really happened.”

“What really happened?” Was his brother high? “What really happened was she lied to the whole town. She lied about the father of her baby. She actually moved into the Salt house when she knew damn well that baby wasn’t Jacob’s.”

“Or she chose to be optimistic,” Patrick pointed out. “What exactly did you expect her to do? Should she have walked back into town and announced she was pregnant but didn’t know who the daddy was and hey, guys, it might be my best friend’s father. Actually she couldn’t have walked into town because she was carried here by an ambulance. I want you to think about that, Logan.”

“What does the accident have to do with anything?” He didn’t want his brother’s words to make sense. It was so much easier to sit here and let his anger stir inside him.

Patrick regarded him for a moment as though trying to figure out just how to get through to him. “She didn’t know she was pregnant until the doctors told her, Logan. I want you to imagine that. She woke up from a horrible accident and found out the boy she cared about, who’d been her closest friend for years, was dead and gone and she was carrying a baby. You expected her to be logical at that moment?”

He really didn’t like to think about Ginny in that car. It could have been her. She could have easily been the one to bleed out and die on a lonely road with the rain falling all around her. He never would have really known her if that had happened. Somehow, even though he was aching inside, he was so grateful that hadn’t happened. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to agree with what Patrick was saying. “It’s been months. She knew what the odds were.”

“I would bet my life she had no idea Jacob was impotent,” Patrick offered. “How could she have known? The records were private.”

“She knew how many times she’d fucked him. And she knew she’d been with the senator way more. We all know he’s got no problem in the sperm area.” The thought of Ginny with that man made him sick. Sebastian Rush was slimy. He was twice her age. How could she have fallen for his act?

Of course, the one thing the two previous men in her life had in common was money. Jacob came from the wealthy Salts and Sebastian Rush had more money and power than anyone in Storm. What the hell had she seen in a dumb grunt soldier like him?

Patrick sighed. “I would think you of all people would understand the nature of PTSD.”

He finally turned to his brother. “You’re actually going to try to tell me she has PTSD?”