Page 36 of Can't Be Love

“It’s funny,” I said aloud, “but I don’t really remember you here in Collier.”

“Oh, that’s ’cause little Maddie would get bored when you were traveling with your daddy, or out deep in the range when you started riding with the cowboys. She’d get real sad, missing you something fierce, son, so your mama would always make arrangements for little Lily to come stay for a weekend, sometimes a week. Those two were something else. Like night and day. Miss Maddie with her dark hair and tanned skin, and then little Lily and her pale hair, and skin as ivory as snow even in the middle of summer. Yin and yang, I used to tell them. They complemented each other in every way. It was such a joy watching the two of them grow up together. And then . . .” His voice drifted off. We all knew he was thinking of my sister’s disappearance.

Lily snorted, seeming unaware of the shift in nostalgia. “It’s true. I still can’t tan to save my life. It’s white or red. There’s no in-between.”

Dalton laughed along with her, salvaging the mood back to a more pleasant one, but the memories of Madelyn’s disappearance were heavy on my heart and I had a hard time shaking them as Dalton gave Lily a tour of the barn and they chatted like old friends.

I excused myself after awhile and headed outside. I needed fresh air and open space to breathe again. I headed off toward the river and sat on a boulder, alone with my memories. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been there before I sensed Lily nearby. I looked up to see her watching me with confusion on her face.

“Where’d you go?” she asked.

I tried to brush it off. “I’ve been on that tour and heard his stories a million times. I’ve been right here.”

“No, I mean, I know you’re right here, physically, but what were you thinking about? Your emotions changed when we were talking about Maddie. Why?”

I didn’t want to get into it with her, so I looked back out over the water, trying to compose myself.

“It’s nothing,” I said with the fake smile I used for everyone who had ever asked me how I was concerning my sister, but I knew by the look in her eye she wasn’t buying it. I went to rise, ready to move on to our next site and forget all about it, but before I could get up, she sat beside me.

“Sydney said something the night we were out drinking that’s been weighing on me. Can we talk about it?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I guess that depends what on she said.”

“She said that Maddie’s disappearance had been really hard on you. I hadn’t really considered that before. I was just so upset, and it was easy to channel all my anger towards you.”

“I’ve heard that from several people now, but I don’t understand it. Why would you be mad at me because Madelyn left?”

She took a deep breath and looked out into the water. She was raw and vulnerable. “I’ll explain, if you answer my question first,” she finally said.

“Was Maddie’s disappearance hard on me?”

She nodded.

“Lily, Madelyn was my sister. We were really close, you know. Not just in age, but in everything. I knew she was sneaking out that night, she told me. I didn’t stop her. I should have. I should have gone after her, protected her, but I didn’t, and then she never came back. I never told anyone I knew about her plans that night, and I blamed myself for a long time. To make matters worse, Mom got really scared of everything. She went borderline psychotic for a long time. I was fifteen years old. She yanked me out of school to homeschool me. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere without supervision. Do you have any idea what that was like?”

I didn’t mean to unleash everything on Lily, but I couldn’t seem to stop talking. I’d never talked to anyone about this stuff before, not even Syd. Lily was crying, but I kept talking.

“Dad intervened my senior year, but even still, while others were up partying late into the night, I had a strict ten o’clock curfew and even if I was one minute ahead of that curfew, I’d come home to Mom practically hyperventilating in fear, watching the clock for my return. It was hard. When I went off to college, I went a little wild at first from the freedom. I considered not returning to Collier at all. I was ready to be a lone wolf, but my place in the Pack had been so tightly engrained in me that it only lasted a short while before I came back home.”

“But you were never here. Never,” Lily said, raising her voice while tears streaked down her face. “I returned every year on the anniversary of Maddie’s disappearance. The entire Pack held a vigil, every single year. You missed them all. Rumors said you were in Cabo or up in Alaska living it up with a harem of women at your disposal. You were everywhere but where your family needed you most. Where I needed you most.”

The pain in her words cut me like a knife. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her to me, kissing the top of her head.

“There was never a harem of women. Those were all rumors and nothing more. You’re right, though, I wasn’t here. I always made plans to be away during the vigil. It was too hard, too painful. I couldn’t face it all. The tighter my parents’ restrictions were in the early years, the more I resented Maddie for leaving me. I was angry at her. I’ve never said that aloud before, but there you have it. I was angry at my sister for not coming home. I was angry at myself for not listening to my gut instinct and letting her go out that night. I was young, and I was angry. Mom and Dad understood that, even if they didn’t really know the reasons for it. They sent me away to other packs that week, and when I was old enough and on my own, I chose to stay away. I’m not perfect, Lily. There are some demons that are just too great to face and that vigil each year was mine.”

Lily

Chapter 15

Never once had I considered things from Thomas’s side. His words and account of what he’d experienced and felt contradicted everything I’d imagined in my head. Years of anger and hatred melted away, and I didn’t know how to process it all.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“You don’t have anything to be sorry about,” he assured me.

“Yes, I do. I tend to be an emotion feeder. Everyone was always so sad at those vigils, and I never missed them. The only vigil I ever skipped was last year, the day I found out MC was alive and well. Madelyn was never the only one missing at those things. You were. I’d look at your family, so sad and supportive of each other. They were so strong in the face of such devastation, and in my mind, you’d just abandoned that. You gave up on her and you let down your family. Sure, they never said anything like that, and even Ruby and Lizzy tried to argue a case on your behalf a thousand times, but I would never once listen. My mind was made up and you had to be the most evil person alive to do that to them.”

“You mean the biggest douchebag?” he said, sadly at first, then smiling bigger and bigger as the pieces seemed to fall into place.

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