Page 71 of Fracture

But I don’t say any of that. I simply give Eric a smile, and a nod.

“She has us back. She’ll be alright.”

CHAPTER 15

DYLAN

“I’ve askedmyself so many times what I did to deserve what happened.” Stella pulls a leg up onto the chair, resting her chin on her knee as she watches me make orange juice. “I’d sit there and think, why did I deserve a father like that? Why couldn’t I have a dad like yours?”

“That’s not how life works.” I discard one spent orange half into the trash can at my feet and push the next one into the press. “Your father was a fucking monster with the perfect public image.” I raise my eyes to her. “You have to know that,guera. None of this was your fault. None of it.”

“I guess.” She rolls her head back and forth, her eyes fixed on my task. She’s still pale, but thank fuck she’s finally stopped shaking. It felt like forever until she was warm again, until her body stopped quaking as the bad memories clawed their way to the forefront of her mind.

“So, this reporter, where does she come into it?” I pour the juice into a tall frosted glass, and carry it over to where Stella sits at the table. Stella takes the glass from me with a sigh, and shrugs as I sit down beside her.

“She sniffed me out at Zee’s salon a couple weeks ago. Told me that Gloria’s giving Channel Four an interview, some tell-allthing. She wanted to give me the chance to tell my side of the story.”

“And I guess you said no?”

Stella tosses back half the glass of juice, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth as she sniffles. “I sure did. I was hounded by reporters for years after you two went to prison, and I’ve never spoken to them. Not once.”

I want to ask her why, but it feels like a stupid question. What would she have to tell them? Why would they even listen? They’d turn her pain into some fantastical story about the almost-President’s daughter, and it would bring her nothing.

“What happened after we went inside?” I ask the question slowly, not sure if I’m ready to hear it or for her to tell it, but with everything that’s happening around us, I need to understand.

Stella drinks down the rest of the juice, placing the glass on the table and rolling it back and forth between her fingers as she stares at it intently. “I don’t know much you heard in court, I never knew how aware you two were of what was happening, but… when they read the verdict out and took you both away, I fainted. They called an ambulance, it was on the front page of every newspaper. It started all these dirty rumors, that I was in on it, that I’d secretly married you, that I was pregnant, you name it.”

I can’t even name the emotion that tears through me hearing this, knowing that while Levi and I were escorted out of that courtroom, my girl was lying helpless on the floor. It’s beyond grief, beyond anger and rage, and so much of it is once again directed at me. I left her alone in every way.

“I’m so sorry.”

Stella reaches over and takes my hand. “I need you to stop apologizing for that time. Please. I don’t need your apologies, I really don’t. Please stop giving them to me. It won’t change what happened.”

“I know, but I let you down.”

“Stop it.” She leans closer and lays her head against my shoulder. “You’re here now, and that’s what matters.”

“Yeah.” I run my hand over her head before she raises it to look out the window at the sunshine.

“After that, it was a weird time. I finally managed to contact my mom, and told her that I wanted to come live with her. She was in France, living with some baron who had an estate in the Loire Valley, husband number 7 I think.” She swallows, her lashes fluttering. “She told me that it was a bad time. As though there was ever a good time when it came to my mother.” She inhales sharply, and her head drops. “Then my mom told me she'd signed my guardianship over to Gloria. Forstability. That’s the word she used.Stability. I needed it, she said. At least she was self-aware enough to know that I’d never find that with her.” Her face crumples, her lip trembling as she presses her hands to her face. “It still hurts, to this fucking day. It still breaks my fucking heart that even then, when I had no one else, even then she didn’t want me.”

I pull Stella into my lap and draw her close to me, wrapping my arms around her and wishing I could make it stop hurting. I wish I had the power to say something, or do something, anything, to take away all the cuts and bruises Stella’s parents left behind on her heart. Instead I just hold her silently, not knowing what else to do but just let her know I’m right here, and that I’m not going anywhere.

Finally, she takes a deep breath and wipes her face with her hands.

“I’m alright. Sometimes I just, I don’t know, it just comes out.” She gazes up at me, her amber eyes still shining with tears. “I trained myself not to cry, you know that? Because it was always worse when I cried.”

I swear to god, I’m going to throw up. I clutch her to me tighter, because those words shatter my soul. “You cry all you want with me, I don’t care. Flood the house. You don’t hold back with us.”

“Thank you.” She wraps an arm around my neck and buries her face against my shoulder. “You have no idea what that means to me.”

We sit like that for a while, until she takes a deep breath and sits up. “I only had 8 months until I turned 18, but I think Gloria had her plan. She wanted a conservatorship put in place so she’d be able to control my father’s money. Because the old bastard had never named her in his will.” Stella laughs scornfully. “That bitch really thought my dad loved her. You should have seen the look on her face that day.”

“The only person who didn’t know that marriage was a sham was Gloria.” I run my hand down Stella’s back. “How was she going to get a conservatorship?”

Stella’s eyes meet mine. “By trying to make me go insane.”

My lungs contract almost painfully, and the pit of my stomach is icy. “And how was she going to do that?”

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