Graceless - Page 73

Cassidy looked at her, her face uncharacteristically soft.

“No,” she said. Then, as she watched Savannah weeping, her eyes got wide. “No,” she emphasized. “You always tried your best. This isn’t on you, it’s all on Randy, I see that now. Besides,” she said, “you also saved me. You were my safe place to land,” her eyes filled with tears again, “and I kind of put you through some shit too.” She shrugged a little, then her own voice broke. “Thank you.”

Savannah hugged her long-lost baby sister tightly and for once Cassidy gripped her equally hard back, both of them still crying, until Brynn arrived with a box of tissues.

“I love you both, but there is a lot of snot happening right now,” she told them. “It’s hard to watch.”

They both burst into laughter and pulled back to clean up.

“Cassidy.” Their mother spoke up for the first time since Randy had been removed. “I’m sorry you had to run away from us. And I’m glad you’re safe. But I think you should leave here with me, today.”

Cassidy’s face went tight.

“I don’t think so, Mom,” she said shortly. “I’m happy where I am.”

“This isn’t how we raised you to live.” Her eyes darted toward Lane.

Savannah opened her mouth fast, but Cassidy got in first.

“And thank god for that,” she said. “Do you know how much therapy I’m having to undo all the bullshit you put into my head?”

“That sounds like brain-washing.” Her mother looked alarmed.

Cassidy laughed out loud.

“Sometimes I do feel like I need my brain scrubbed after a life with fucking Randy,” she said wryly. “Listen Mom, I love you, but if you can’t unlearn some things and open your mind, you’re going to lose both your daughters.”

Bethany flushed, her eyes springing full of tears. She opened her mouth and Savannah stopped her.

“She’s right, Mom,” she said quietly. “You have two beautiful grandchildren you don’t know and two daughters who you’re missing out on. I’ll make sure you’re safe and taken care of, far from Randy, but until you learn to see things differently, you’re not welcome in my home.”

Brynn wrapped her arms around Savannah’s waist and kissed the side of her head.

“Our home,” Brynn corrected.

Savannah smiled. She looked up at her wife, then over to Cassidy and Lane.

“Our home,” she said.

Epilogue

Six weeks later

Cassidy took a deep breath. All of a sudden it came down to this: her whole twenty-four years of life, distilled to this one moment.

The last several weeks, all she’d done was hole up in Lane’s guesthouse and write. Well, that wasn’t all she’d done in Lane’s guesthouse, as a matter of fact, but when they weren’t there – making her sweat and curse and gasp and come – she’d spent a hell of a lot of time curled up on their couch, her notebook on her knees and her pen tapping against the page as she thought. And felt.

Then, way off in the back paddock, far from everyone, she’d taken her beautiful new guitar and played and sang, stopped – refined it – then played and sang again. And now, here she was, about to walk onto a stage, in Nashville, for the first time.

It was just an open mic night, but it was a famous one. She’d had to audition just to get her name on the list, and now as she waited nervously at the edge of the stage, knowing her name was about to get called, she felt a little panicked. This was the kind of night that a crowd turned out for. It was the kind of venue that talent scouts would casually wander into, just in case someone good – someone like Cassidy – happened to appear.

When she’d told the family at dinner three nights ago that she’d secured a spot, every single one of them had looked at her with a dropped jaw.

“Cassidy,” Brynn said, her smile warm. “We’re stoked for you. Just…you’ve been too shy to play in front of any of us and now you’re playing for the first time in front of what, two hundred people?”

Cassidy shrugged, trying not to show how goddamned terrified she was.

“You’re a badass,” Lane told her, their hand on her thigh, admiration sparkling in their eyes.