Laura had never intended for her daughters to live this life.
It was unthinkable, the things they had been through. She hated to think of it all, and yet it was all she could think about. Late at night, lying alone in a cold bed, those thoughts chased each other around in circles until she was physically too tired to think anymore.
So she had thrown herself into this battle, this social – political - fight against time. If she lingered too long on the thought of her dying husband and her missing girls, it would kill her. So like a shark, she kept on swimming just to stay alive. Just to survive.
The thing was that all Laura had wanted was a family, in the beginning, when she and Matthew were young and in love. She just wanted children to share their happiness with. Just two, perhaps. God, she had wanted so badly to have a child. Just one.
And then they couldn’t conceive, and Laura thought that she could eventually come to terms with that. It wasn’t enough to tear them apart, in spite of the heartbreak they’d both been through.
Then, years later, Stephanie came along.
When Laura had first seen her, in the hospital, wrecked with exhaustion and half-insane with anticipation, her heart had swelled and she hadn’t been able to hold back tears. So many times she had thought that there’d be some complication, that something would have gone wrong, that the inevitable would strike down her chances of having a child. A daughter. Laura had held that tiny little pink newborn, so quiet, unusually so, and had turned to Matthew, brimming with untold happiness and said, “Look at her, Matt. She’s all ours.”
He had smiled back, so heartbreakingly handsome with the dark circles under his eyes and the lines on his forehead. Matthew had fallen in love for a second time the moment he laid eyes on the little body that was to be his first daughter. Taking her tiny hand in his, he’d laughed.
“Welcome to the world, little one,” he’d said. “Your mom and I have been waiting a very long time to meet you.”
Laura hadn’t thought she’d ever be able to feel that overwhelming torrent of joy again, but life had blessed her with a second child, a second daughter to share her home and her love with.
The fear had abated, dulled as the years went by – but it never went away, not once. Fear that something would happen and it would all disappear. She could tell that Matthew shared in that anxiety, but it wasn’t the same. Laura didn’t know if she could survive if something were to happen to either of her children, or her husband.
That fear, for seven years, was solely for Stephanie, until her sister was born. And maybe that’s why it always seemed to stay with her.
Maybe that’s why it all had to happen to her.
When the gunmen came and tore their family apart, wrecked their home and smothered their hope, Laura had operated on fear and instinct. Until one day, one year on from the incident, police officers had showed up on the doorstep and told them that the case would continue to be investigated, but that the likelihood of finding her daughters was severely diminished. Nonexistent.
Laura had gone to bed that night, and she didn’t get up for a week. Matthew had tried all he could to get her to, but not even he had been able to break through to her. She supposed it was a turning point in their lives, because the hits kept coming.
He got sick, a further year on from that day. He never bounced back. And then Laura was burying the last person she loved on the planet.
After that, well, she’d cordoned off the part of herself that was still wracked with grief, still struggled with her part in all of this, the what-ifs, the maybes, and she had convinced herself to move on. There were still people having their families ripped from them, and she could help make sure it never happened again.
Because, if her daughters were still alive by some miracle, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know what had become of them in all that time. What awful things they had seen. The people they had been forced to become.
So when Stephanie showed up, after four years – four years – skinny and worn out and skittish, Laura had allowed herself a second of ignorance, a moment, a couple of hours.
But once Stephanie was asleep, so fragile, so different – a grown woman, Laura had forced herself to face facts.
The avoidance, the quick temper, the shifting restlessness. Something had taken hold of her daughter and warped her beyond recognition, still had hold of her to put that flinty, distrustful look in her hardened eyes.
It could have been any number of things, and all of them scared Laura more than she could admit. She didn’t even know her own child anymore and she didn’t want to invite pain back into her life, so she had turned her back on her first daughter – for all she knew, her only daughter left, and tried to ignore the fact that she was back.
There was nothing left to fix.
Laura had been an idiot. She’d been a selfish, scared, sorry excuse for a mother, and Stephanie had paid the price for that.
When Stephanie had actively stood against that crowd of reporters and media personnel and revealed her secret, Laura had closed her eyes for a moment and struggled to take it in.
Her daughter, locked up for twenty one months without a soul in the world looking for her, looking out for her. It had been a blur, going backstage, Stephanie suddenly ill, and for good reason. Laura hadn’t been able to hold herself back from stepping forward and drawing Stephanie into her arms, trying to apologize as much as with her words as with her actions. But it wasn’t enough.
Their relationship hadn’t been broken by four years of being apart. It had been shattered the moment Laura walked out on Stephanie when she had found her way back.
The fear was back, eating at her from the inside out, because Kim was asking questions. All the focus would be on Stephanie now, and not just about the Facility. About everything. From the day she was born up until the moment she stepped up onto the stage. It no longer scared her what they found that Stephanie had done since the massacre onwards because they could argue her motives, they could fight that.
But there was something that Laura knew, that no one else did.
Fear told her that this would be the end – if there was any part of Stephanie that still loved her mother, it would be dashed by that fact alone. But experience told her that it would be worse if it blindsided them all. Laura steeled herself as the conversation drew to an end.
“Alright, fine.” Kim said. “But we need to do it sooner rather than later. And, Stephanie? Just so I know what to prepare for – how bad is bad? And is there anything that could backfire on us in this?”
Stephanie’s eyes darkened, that steely look that had inspired a quick shock in Laura the first time they’d seen each other in years. Laura tracked her daughter’s gaze as she sought out Liam’s support and found none. Her heart broke for her.
“Bad enough,” she admitted, and Laura fought a shudder. “And yes, there is.”
Liam shook his head, but would not look at Stephanie. It was not the right time for this. Then again, when had there ever been a time for heartbreak and damaging truths?
“Stephanie?” Laura said.
The young girl look up, looking so lost, face a pale ghost-white, shadows hanging under her eyes.
“I need to talk to you.”
Stephanie sighed. “Yeah, so everyone is saying. Can it wait until we get back to the hotel?”
Laura hesitated for a moment and then nodded.
“Of course.”
***
Liam couldn’t even explain what he was feeling. All of his thoughts and emotions were just tangled up in each other, all punctuated by a singular question: Why? Why Stephanie Armstrong? Why werewolves? Why that one facility in the middle of nowhere?
And he was sure he’d never get an explanation, so, really, he should be able to let it go. But he couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Didn’t want to.
On the one hand, he was sure that he was angry somewhere beneath the confusion, the worry, the tired melancholy. Trying to convince himself that he wasn’t mad at Stephanie even a little bit was futile. He was. He had a right to be.
Why had she kept it from them?
If anything, it explained everything. The way she had come back to them, to him, to Laura, had been a shock. She’d been distant and thin and tortured, but she hadn’t trusted them with her pain.
Why hadn’t she trusted him?
Liam had tried – god, had he tried – to win her trust. He’d been fighting for it since they’d first met as kids. Stephanie had just never seemed to notice. His attempts were even more invisible to her now than they had ever been. She’d always been wrapped up in something else; thoughts of elsewhere, and truthfully, it scared Liam.
People had always assumed that their unlikely friendship – why always unlikely? – was based on the fact that Stephanie Armstrong needed Liam Hall. Only he knew that it wasn’t the case. Stephanie had never truly needed anyone. She had all she needed within herself, held an arm’s length away from the rest of the world.
Liam was just a sum product of the people around him. Without other people, he was nothing, and he knew it. It was just a little less obvious around someone like Stephanie. Being around her, with her, was as easy as breathing.
Times like this reminded Liam how much he needed people to rely on him, how much he wanted Stephanie to be able to rely on him. He couldn’t help the fact that it made him so frustrated, so angry, to realize that nothing had changed. Stephanie still couldn’t trust him like he trusted her.
“I’m going out,” Liam announced once they’d returned to the hotel rooms.
He felt Stephanie’s eyes sweep over him suddenly, as if she’d finally realized that he was there. In turn, he avoided looking at her and retreated through the doorway before it had even shut.
Kim slipped through after him, right on his heels.
“Do you really think that’s a good idea?” She asked.
Her words were measured, but he could detect the probing undertone of disapproval. Liam gritted his teeth, not halting in his journey down the quiet residential hallway.
“Why wouldn’t it be?” He grumbled.
Kim heaved a sigh. “Are you serious?”
“If you have something to say, Kim…”
She lunged for his wrist, yanking him to a stop. “It’s not a good time for you to throw a hissy fit,” she said.
Liam turned to look at her.
“Really?” He asked incredulously. “I didn’t notice. Let me just put the fact that I’m a little overwhelmed away and I’ll take it out again when it’s a little more convenient.”
“Do you have any idea what this looks like?” Kim asked. “Because I don’t think you’ve even considered it.”
Liam threw his arms out. “No I don’t know what it looks like, Kim. Actually, to me, it looks like it doesn’t matter because for once no one is here to see it. So why does it matter?”
Kim scoffed. “People are back in that room you just left, and they’re all reeling just like you. This isn’t going to be easy on any of you.”
“I fail to see why that means I can’t take a goddamn walk to sort it all out in my head.”
“Liam,” she said. “I’ll tell you what it looks like, because I think I know what you’re feeling, just like I think I know what Stephanie’s feeling right now.”
Liam shook his head, jamming his hands into his pockets and kicking half-heartedly at the ground.
“She put a lot on the line by standing up and saying what she said, and it looks like you’re pissed off at her, and that you’re abandoning her because of it.”
He looked back up and couldn’t help the flare of heat in his chest.
“And what if I am?” He asked. “I don’t know – Jesus Christ - I can’t imagine what she went through. It makes me sick to think that she was all alone for all that time and I still don’t know what happened to her in there,” he said. “It makes me mad that anyone would think that they could do that to her, or to anyone for that matter. But do you know what else makes me angry? She didn’t – ” He drew a hand over his face and sucked in a breath. “She doesn’t trust me, and I don’t know what else to do to help her. I don’t like feeling like I can’t do anything to help her, Kim.”
Kim nodded. Her dark eyes were soft in the artificial lighting.
“Maybe you should tell her that, Liam.”
He stared at his agent for a second. “Maybe I should. But I don’t think I can right now,” he admitted.
Kim pursed her lips, but he tried not to take any notice of the critical look she was giving him.
“I think you’re making a big mistake if you put this off.”
“I’m going to get some air,” he said.
She didn’t try to stop him as he strode with purpose down the hallway and into the elevator. The last thing he saw as the metal doors closed was the worried twist of Kim’s brow.