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“I bet my crazy story beats yours, doesn’t it?” she asks.
“I guess it does,” I admit. “You guys shared yours, so I should share mine, right?”
“You don’t have to,” Lulu says quickly. “That’s not why I said you should hear ours. I just wanted you to realize that none of our marriages had the most conventional start. None of us will judge you for being swept away by Oz’s certainty, even if you’re not quite there yet.”
“He hated me from the first moment we met. I was nine, and he was twelve, almost thirteen. His dad had just left his mom for mine, and I didn’t really understand what that meant. He was so angry at his dad and at me. The custody agreement his parents had, meant that Oz had to stay at his dad’s place every weekend. When he got a little older, it changed to just on the holidays, but whenever he came, he made it his mission to make me as miserable as possible. He did some really mean stuff…and some messed-up stuff that I never really forgot or forgave him for. He was my bully, my monster under the bed. I hadn’t seen him for fifteen years before I got to town. When Bruce found out where I was moving to, he insisted that I had to stay with Oz. Obviously, I didn’t want to reconnect with my childhood tormentor, so I texted him and thanked him for offering, but told him it’d be better for me to stay at a hotel. Only he was there waiting for me when my bus got to town. Somehow, and honestly, I don’t really know how it happened, but he put me in his truck and drove me to his place. I planned to hate him. I thought I’d always hate him.”
“But you don’t…right?” Missy asks.
“No,” I whisper. “But it feels like I should. His bullying shaped who I am as a person, but I married him only days after I vowed to hate him for the rest of eternity, and now I have to tell my parents that I married my stepbrother and I have no idea if I’m going to wake up tomorrow and hate him or love him.”
Seven sets of eyes soften in understanding, and for the very first time since before Oz turned my friends against me, I feel a sense of comradery with these women.
“I think we’ve all felt that way,” Alice says in her sweet, softly spoken voice. “Only you can decide if you can truly forgive him for whatever he did as a kid. But as much as men like ours dominate and coerce, ultimately, we can say no. You didn’t have to marry him. You could have said no and you didn’t, so some part of you, even if it’s buried deep inside of you, must have wanted to say yes.”
Swallowing thickly, I find myself nodding, and when Alice smiles a shy smile at me, I feel like I just made a friend, or seven.
Time passes quickly, and when Oz takes my hand and we say goodbye, I already have plans for a girls’ dinner out and an open invitation to join the whole Barnett clan whenever I’m lonely. I don’t know how I’ve gone twenty-six years without meeting anyone apart from Octy, whom I felt an instant connection with, then stumbled into this tiny town and suddenly have a whole group of new friends, a husband, and a support system in just a matter of days.
“That wasn’t too bad, was it?” Oz asks as we wander back down the hill toward his place.
“No, I guess not,” I admit, shrugging.
“The girls want to take you out?”
“Yeah, we’re going to go to a Mexican place on Tuesday.”
Oz nods, but his expression is pensive.
“What’s the matter? You don’t want me to go?” I ask, suddenly tense, a wave of doubt hitting me and making me instantly feel nauseous.
“What? No, of course I want you to go. I’d have just rather been here to drive you and pick you up. Do you drive? I can’t remember if you told me or not.”
“You’d want to drive me to my girls’ dinner and then pick me up?” I ask slowly.
“Of course.”
Blinking, I stare at him, unsure if that’s adorable or kind of weird.
“So, do you? Drive?”
“No, I don’t,” I say absentmindedly.
“I don’t think I’d want you driving the mountain roads anyway, even if you did. I’ll speak to Beau and find out who’s playing chauffeur that day and make sure they come get you too.”
“I can ask Betty for a ride. It’s fine, we’re grown women, we don’t need to have someone drive us places.”
Oz’s laugh is low and rough, and it tingles straight between my legs like his amusement is connected right to my clit. “Cody doesn’t let Betty drive anymore.”
“He doesn’t…let her drive?”
“She’s a terrible driver. She has a pink Cadillac, and since they got together, he’s had to change out the transmission twice because it’s a stick, and she just murders gear changes.”
“Oh,” I say with a nod, my ire settling even though I have no idea if that’s a reasonable reason for Cody not wanting his wife to drive anymore.
“But for the record, I probably wouldn’t let you drive around here either.”
“Oz, you don’t get to tell me what I can and can’t do.”
