Page 52 of Wrap Around
"Yeah, I got that now, asshole," I shoot back.
I look back at my sister with new hope. I'm actually trembling, but I feel weirdly… amused. Happy. Relieved.
"So, you know?"
She nods, smirking through her tears. "Yeah, I know. Honestly, the more I think about it the less surprising it is. You two have always been obsessed with each other."
"You aren't upset about it?"
"That you're gay, or that you're in love with my husband?"
I swallow hard. "Either. Both?"
"Not even a little bit," she says, but her voice gets choked and her face falls, more tears streaming down her face.
"Yeah, you seem real happy about it," I say wryly, trying and failing to hold back my own tears. They keep blurring my vision and falling down every time I blink, and my nose is starting to get drippy too, now. Damnit.
Lily coughs out a laugh and stands to come sit next to me. She hands me the box of tissues but pulls several out before she fully relinquishes it.
"I'm just sorry. That I didn't see it before. That I kept y'all from being happy with each other. I knew the whole thing was fucked up, that it wasn't fair that Silas was tyin' his life to mine like that. I've always felt guilty about it, but I still let it happen because I was scared. If I'd known, there's no way I would have allowed him to–"
"Wait. Slow down," I say, shaking the word salad from my head and trying to make sense of it. "What are you talking about?"
Silas moves to Lily's other side, hugs her close, and murmurs against the side of his head. "He still doesn't know, babe."
Her mouth forms an O and she inhales a shaky breath. Her leg begins to bounce, and she turns her body to face me, but her gaze is directed at her hands, where she's currently tearing the tissue she's holding into pieces of shredded confetti.
"Lily," I say softly, getting her attention. "I've been holding on to that secret since I was nine years old. You put all the pieces together and made it easy for me, but I'm sorry to tell you I'm still a meathead and not a brain like you. You're gonna have to spell it out for me."
Silas raises an eyebrow. "Nine?"
"Shut it."
Lily snorts a laugh and finally looks up, her green eyes locking with mine. Her green eyes that are so like my own, like our father’s, like her daughter’s. Nothing like Silas’…
Just as I'm getting an inkling, she spits it out. "Silas isn't Adaline's father."
Silas clears his throat.
"Sorry. Biological father. He didn't get me pregnant. We've never…" she trails off, looking mortified.
I snap my gaze up to Silas, who scrunches his nose and says, "Ew". Lily smacks him, but it makes her laugh a little, which allows her to take a breath.
"We aren't actuallytogether-together. I love Silas and I always have, but it's never been romantic between us."
"Because she accepted me."
Suddenly the words make sense.
I look back at Silas, who looks like the weight of the world has fallen off his shoulders.
"We started pretending to be boyfriend and girlfriend after my dad beat the shit out of me because he thought I might be 'one of them queers'. Lily found me out by the lake after I'd gotten away from him, helped patch me up, and sat there with me while I cried like the little girl my father accused me of being. Even then it never occurred to me to be offended by that, because the strongest person I knew happened to be a little girl, and that day she took me by the hand and said, 'I've got you, Silas Caldwell. Don't you worry about that.'"
Lily sniffs and reaches for his hand. "And the day I found out I was pregnant, he repeated those same words back to me. Except he said Lily Caldwell." She swallows and gives him a sad smile. "I was so stupid. Stupider for not seeing what was right in front of my face," she says, looking back and forth between me and her husband.
"I wouldn't have made a different decision even if you did know," Silas says firmly. "I think he would have understood."
I nod, because I would have. Even if I didn't like it, I would have absolutely understood and supported them. "If anything, it would have been a great cover," I say dryly. Reaching for Lily's other hand, I hold it in mine. "I'm sorry for hiding from you. If I'd been honest and trusted you, then you would have felt you could trust me with your secret, too. And hell yes, I would have helped protect you. I'm so sorry I hid the truth, and that I left when I found out. I thought…"
