“I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it,” she said.
Hmm.
“He’s with Hattie,” Lottie noted firmly.
“He isn’t Corbin,” Ryn put in.
Oh yeah.
Right.
God.
How could I forget?
Corbin, Pepper’s ex, cheated on her to the full extent of the definition of cheating (and then some).
In other words, he’d moved in with her, committed to her, had a baby with her, and kept fucking his ex-girlfriend through all of that, and obviously, she didn’t know.
The ex-girlfriend didn’t know.
But getting away with it for years, he eventually got lazy, left a trail Pepper followed, there were a variety of nasty confrontations, and boom.
Suddenly she’s a very young single mom, her ex is pissed that she rained on his parade, he takes it out on her, uses their daughter as a weapon, and insult to injury, Pepper’s parents made members of the moral majority look like hippies. They’d washed their hands of her when she moved in with Corbin out of wedlock, without washing their hands of her, since they intermittently got in her space to share she was going to hell.
“I know he isn’t,” Pepper said to Ryn.
“And Auggie isn’t Corbin,” Lottie added.
“I know he isn’t,” Pepper repeated to Lottie, a wee bit more impatient this time.
“So, what gives?” Lottie asked. “I mean, she shoots, she scores, three times, babe,” Lottie reminded her of the wins she’d had with Evie and Mag, Boone and Ryn and me and Axl, doing it pointing to herself then Ryn and me.
“It’s more complicated when you have a kid,” Pepper said.
“It is not,” Ryn returned. “You’re being chicken.”
“I’m not being chicken,” Pepper snapped.
“I’d make chicken noises, but I’m above that,” Ryn said to Lottie.
Lottie laughed.
Although that was funny, I was seeing they weren’t getting this wasn’t a funny moment for Pepper.
I kept my gaze on Pepper and suggested quietly, “Maybe we should lay off.”
“Yeah, that’d be good,” Pepper said curtly.
“As far as I know, you’re not Benjamin Button,” Ryn told her. “You dig what I’m saying to you?”
Pepper stepped back from us.
Yup.
This wasn’t a funny moment.
I braced.
And it was a good thing I did.
“You know, I would never want to have a psychopath obsessed with me, like you,” Pepper said to Lottie. “Or have a friend murdered and some guy whacked at my back door, like you,” she said to Ryn. “Or have someone send me dirty pictures and emails like you,” she said to me. “Or gambling addict fathers.” Back to Lottie. “Alcoholic brothers.” To Ryn. “Or abusive fathers.” To me. “But I have never, never been loved by my parents. I have always, always been an outsider in that family. I meet a guy who I think loves me, loves … me. He wants to make a family with me and build a future with me and every year it’s going to be putting up the Christmas tree and taking out the ornaments with the years on or remembering when we got them on vacation or when we had another baby or that year we made decorations as a family. And he was fucking around on me from the start.”
Oh man.
We totally should have laid off.
She was far from done.
“And since I found out and we were over, he’s just been fucking with me. And I have you guys, and that’s it. My sister is programmed to their bullshit. My brother took off to escape it before I even graduated from high school and no one has heard from him since. So day-to-day, hour-to-hour, minute-to-minute, except for Juno, who is my kid, and I have to protect her from all this, I’m very, very alone.”
She took a huge breath as we all stood there, silent and still, listening.
And I knew for me, but I figured the same for Lots and Rinz, hurting for Pepper.
Then she launched in again.
“And with what I endured growing up. And what Corbin did to us, and he did it to us, me and my baby girl, and keeps doing, I know one thing. I need to protect my daughter. So yeah. Auggie is hot. He seems nice. Lottie wouldn’t fix me up with a loser. But I come with baggage.” She focused on me. “The kind that no way in hell, when he’s with me, I’d let him text some woman he’s fucked.” She glanced around. “And these guys are who they are. They do what they do. And so he gets with me and finds my baggage too much to bear, my hang-ups tying him too tight, and he scrapes me off, it isn’t about just me losing him. Which is bad enough. My daughter loses him too. She’s already been through that and I’m not gonna put her through it again. So maybe you can put yourself in my shoes for a hot fucking second and then back off.”
“Maybe he won’t—” Ryn began.