Page 6 of Wicked Devotions: Part 2

“Are you okay?” he asks, hesitating before opening his arms in invitation for a hug.

“Not really.” I surprise myself with how honest I am while I accept the comfort of a hug from him. He’s the antithesis to my father. It makes it easy to open up.

“I’m going to ruin whoever did this, in every way possible.” He releases me from the hug, and I go to Mom.

As soon as her arms wrap around me, I’m instantly transported to my childhood, before my father’s abuse became so severe, when she was healthy and strong. Her arms hold me tightly while she kisses my cheek. I try so hard to hold back my tears, but I can’t. They come pouring back out until some of hers mix with mine.

“It’s okay,” she shushes me lovingly. “Let it out, sweetheart. It’s safe, you’re safe.”

It’s safe.

That phrase makes me cry even harder. We’ve never been able to do this before, cry together. Anytime one of us cried, we’d be hit, so we learned to turn the tears off. To hold ourselves together until we were alone and could crack. Or, in my case, with Banks.

“We should get going so we can get you home,” Cillian says. “We’ll meet you down at the car.” He holds out his arm for Mom,wrapping his arm around her waist after saying their goodbyes to Banks.

I turn to him and rise on my tiptoes to give him a kiss. He pulls me against his chest and buries his head in my hair. We stay like that for a few minutes in silence until he cups my face and tilts my head back.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too,” I tell him. “Thank you for always being so strong for me.”

“That’s never going to change. I have a meet this weekend, but I’m open the weekend after next. I’m going to come spend it with you.”

“I’d love that.”

He walks me down to the Range Rover Cillian and Mom are waiting in. I look around for Cy’s Ducati, nervous when I don’t see it. It would be my luck that I didn’t turn it off properly or something.

Cillian rolls down his window. “If you’re looking for Cyrus’s bike, your mom’s bodyguard is already on the way back to Trinity on it.”

Bodyguard? I look questioningly at Mom, but she just looks straight ahead.

Banks opens the back door for me and gives me one more quick goodbye kiss before closing the door. I sneak a few furtive glances at my mom in the front seat while I buckle up. Banks gives me a wave, which I return as we drive out of the parking lot.

The silence in the car is stifling. I know I need to apologize, but it’s a delicate thing to navigate. Did they see the video? Do they think poorly of me now? I know exactly how my father would have reacted which makes not knowing what they’re thinking so much harder.

“I’m sorry you had to take time out of your day to deal with this. I know it’s embarrassing for you to have your daughter and stepdaughter known for something so scandalous.”

“Harper,” Cillian says. “I need you to do me a favor, alright?”

“Anything,” I quickly agree.

“I need you to acknowledge that you are a victim and your privacy was violated in the most egregious way. You were on privately owned property, under the impression no one was around, and nothing you did was illegal.” He pauses while he merges onto the highway. “Someone illegally gaining access to private property, filming you without your consent, and uploading it to the internet is most definitely illegal. You didn’t deserve that.”

My mouth hangs open as his eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror. I’ll never stop crying at this point. My limbs tingle while my mind works overtime to understand how he can be so open and understanding. It’s so far outside the bounds of anything I’ve experienced that I can’t wrap my mind around it.

“Mom, I’m sorry.”

“Sweetie.” She turns around and squeezes my knee. “You don’t owe me an apology either.”

“But what about everyone you know? Your friends? Surely they’re going to see or hear and then you’ll be known as the mother to a slut.”

Her eyes narrow to slits. “Don’t ever call yourself that again.”

My gaze drops to the floorboards. I don’t feel deserving of all the grace I’m getting from the people I love. Shame burns through my veins, pounding at my temples.

“By tomorrow morning the world is going to forget all about the video. Our family contacts have gotten it removed from most sites and several reputable agencies have reported it as a fake video.”

“But it was real, how can we just lie and people not know?”

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