Page 48 of Mad Love

“Winter break is in three weeks. Maddie will be back by then.” Fuck, she had to be. “Gary will have been handled… If you want to spend the holidays with your family, you should.”

Court would throw a bitch fit, but he’d deal.

Or follow her to her grandparents’ estate in France like a fucking stalker.

She nodded. “Yeah. I mean, I missed Thanksgiving because I went to Brookfield with you guys. I don’t think Mom will let me skip another holiday. Besides, I miss Nana and Papa.”

No mention of her father, which wasn’t surprising. Betty and Malcolm's marriage had been in name only ever since Bex had been sick as a kid and Malcolm had almost gotten her killed.

Studying Bex, I noticed her hunched shoulders and the dark circles under her eyes. “Have you talked to your dad since…”

Since we’d blown up the way she perceived him. In our world, Bex’s dad was one of the rare fathers who actually seemed to care about his daughter, and when we’d divulged to her that he was involved in a human trafficking ring with our fathers—it was his technology that helped them all communicate privately—she’d been gutted.

I couldn’t imagine how she’d react if she found out that her father was also partially responsible for her almost dying as a kid. Yeah, he’d been played by Jasper Woods, too, but he’d ultimately given Woods what he needed to manipulate Court into some fucked up shit by using Bex as bait under the guise of a bullshit camping trip in the middle of her chemo treatments.

She shook her head, and some of the shorter pieces of her dark hair fell free of the haphazard ponytail she’d scraped it into. The streaks of green and blue she’d dyed into her hair at the beginning of the year had mostly faded now to blonde.

She licked her lips, uncertainty in her gaze. “My whole life, my parents were the two people I could count on. I mean, I know my dad never hurt me the way yours hurt you, or the way Gary hurt Maddie and her sister, but… I thought he was one of the good guys.”

Maybe Maddie really did have my balls in her pocket, because that was the only explanation for me walking into the room and crouching in front of Bex’s chair.

“Your dad loves you, Bex,” I reminded her. “He just got caught up in some bad shit with a bunch of assholes.”

She sniffled a little. “You don’t have to make excuses for him, Ryan.”

“I’m not,” I assured her with a laugh. “I have my own shit to own up to without adding anyone else’s to the mix. But I don’t want you thinking any of his decisions means he loves you any less.”

One corner of her mouth tipped up. “You’re not the guy you used to be, you know that?”

I grimaced and stood up. “Yeah.”

“It’s not a bad thing.” Bex giggled. “Maddie’s been good for you. It’s nice to see you—all of you—the way you used to be.”

Before we’d abandoned her ass.

Fuck.

“I’m sorry about before,” I apologized, meaning it.

Her eyes narrowed. “You know, I hated the way you always called me Rebecca when Maddie first came to school. It was like…”

I waited.

“... like we were just strangers.” She sighed and looked down. “You guys meant the world to me at one point. And I know I was younger and annoying and—”

“You were never annoying.”

She raised a brow.

“Okay, you were sometimes annoying,” I conceded with a smile, remembering the way she used to follow us around everywhere. “But after what happened, it was easier to think of you as Rebecca. Not…”

“Becca,” she whispered with a sad smile. “He still calls me that sometimes.”

Of course Court still called her that. She’d always been his Becca. It was why Ash, Linc, and I had called her that, too. When Court had cut her off, he’d never had to ask if we’d do the same. We just had. The four of us were a team, and we couldn’t be friends with her without hurting him. Back then, it was the four of us against the damn world.

“He cares about you,” I said, careful not to say too much. There was a lot of history between Bex and Court; history that they needed to sort out.

“I hate it when he calls me that,” she admitted with a harsh whisper, her lips pressed into a tight line. “I hate it… and I love it. How messed up is that?”

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