A/N: Wow. Thank you all so much to everyone who took the time to comment and let me know you're still invested in the Devilishverse! It was a much-needed incentive to keep going. :D I also wanted to clarify that the long story won't be the next one I post, by any means. There's still a good chunk of writing left for that one. But in the meantime, I want to continue posting "Little Devils" to enjoy, so stay tuned. I hope y'all like chapter 5, and again, thank you for reading my stories! TW for descriptions of sexual abuse of a minor.
5. Loving and Giving
. . .
"You sure you're okay with this?" Amanda used her index finger to guide a lock of Olivia's hair behind her shoulder, peeking around it for a glimpse at her face. The booth squeaked whenever one of them moved or breathed, but Amanda was sticking close by her side, thigh to thigh, bicep to bicep, and Olivia felt oddly secure and grounded, despite the loose seat. "We can totally ditch her wrinkled old butt if this is too triggery for you. You don't owe her squat."
It was impossible not to smile at her wife's fiercely protective nature. Sometimes Amanda took it a bit too far—secretly installing a tracking app on someone's phone and not removing it when asked, for instance—but it was almost always done out of love and concern for Olivia and their family's safety. Olivia knew what it was like to be on the other side of that vigilance; to mean nothing to the person who should love you the most; to have neither their protection or compassion.
She honestly didn't care what negative behaviors Amanda might have, as long as she never stopped loving Olivia. That was worth everything.
"I think I'm okay," Olivia said, taking Amanda's arm and hugging it to her as if using it for warmth. "Running into her like that . . . it definitely threw me at first, but I kind of . . . want to hear what she has to say? I know it won't change anything. But I think I should listen. I think I need to listen." Absently she toyed with Amanda's fingers, plunking them like piano keys. Just because she wanted to stay and hear Meg out didn't mean she wasn't nervous as hell. Every muscle in her body seemed tensed for flight. She had felt the same way during every single argument she ever had with Serena.
"Yeah, I get that." Amanda scooped Olivia's restless hand into hers, folding it up in a snug little cocoon under the table. For once, she was the calm one between them, and she slowed her respiration until Olivia caught on and matched her, breath for mindful breath. After a few reps of the 4-7-8 technique, she offered Olivia an easy smile. She always made it look so damn easy. "Thanks for letting me be here for you, baby. And if she starts making excuses, or you start feelin' poorly again, just say the word. I'll have you outta here faster'n you can say— well, 'church.'"
Olivia tipped her head to rest lightly against Amanda's, comforted by just the scent of her, the warmth emanating from her slender frame. Truth be told, she had thought about asking Amanda to wait in the Jeep while she and Meg grabbed a coffee at the diner right around the corner from the cemetery; she didn't anticipate being any longer than fifteen or twenty minutes, just long enough for Meg to unload her guilt, for them to exchange numbers without the intention of ever calling each other, and for Olivia to beat a hasty retreat back to Manhattan, where you could go thirty-eight years without bumping into an old acquaintance.
But she wouldn't ask that of her wife, not on Mother's Day. She doubted there was anything Meg could say that Amanda didn't already know about, anyway. And much to her surprise, she felt better having Amanda at her side. Not having to face the darkness alone was an entirely new concept, at least when it came to dealing with her past. But Amanda had yet to run away, despite the night terrors, the flashbacks, the dissociation, the recovered memories, and despite discovering that Olivia was a multiple-assault survivor. There was nothing they couldn't withstand together, it seemed.
"Thank you for being here with me," she returned, and pecked Amanda on the tip of the nose. "And for keeping the migraine meds in your car. They really helped."
Actually, the migraine had lifted at the exact moment Amanda pulled out of the cemetery lot, and Olivia felt the specter of her mother fading away, left to the scattered dahlias and a paperback copy of The Bluest Eye. The pills had solidified it, though, and only an occasional pulse in Olivia's temples remained.
"Good." Amanda gave a firm, decisive nod, as if she were approving something of great importance—a proposed military strike, or a surgical cut near the frontal lobe—rather than a headache cure. Her confidence flagged a moment later, and she grew pensive as she massaged the nape of Olivia's neck with probing fingertips. "That one came on quick," she noted in a tone that would have raised an objection in court.
Counsel is leading the witness, Your Honor.
"Mm-hmm . . . " Olivia arched her eyebrow.
The struggle to find a suitable response played itself out on Amanda's face, her blue eyes darting like hummingbirds, unable or unwilling to land, her bottom lip snagged between her teeth, hands too occupied to tug on it. "Just . . . no wine tonight, huh?"
Olivia blinked, caught off guard by the suggestion. Wine was the last thing on her mind right then, nor did she have specific plans to drink any that evening. Perhaps one glass to celebrate Mother's Day, though no more than that, since tomorrow was work. True, combining SSRIs, triptans, and alcohol wasn't a particularly wise decision, but she wasn't self-medicating these days. She could count on one hand the number of drinks she'd had since Samantha's conception. Granted, they were all in the past couple of weeks—it had been so hard to relax after Giacomo, knowing what he'd intended to do to her—but she hadn't gone overboard.
Had she?
Before she could ask, the waitress showed up with the coffee and Meg returned from the ladies room, patting her hands on a balled up paper towel. The silence as they each prepared the steaming brew to their liking, stirring in creamers and artificial sugars like they were high-schoolers in chemistry class, was deeply awkward. Olivia feigned such fascination with the liquid swirling in her cup, she flinched when the spoon pinged against the glass sides. She glanced up furtively to see Meg watching her with almost as much interest, her head tilted to an angle of admiration.
Olivia recognized it as the look she gave her children when they were absorbed in play, her love for them so overwhelming—the absolute knowing that no matter whose blood ran through their veins, they were hers—she ached inside. "What?" she ventured softly, putting the spoon down without a sound. Her coffee went on churning, as if stirred by an invisible hand.
"I'm sorry, I don't mean to stare." Meg warmed her hands on her cup, lifting it but not bringing it all the way to her lips. She glanced at it like she was surprised to find herself holding it at all, and set it gently back onto its saucer. Her hands were shaky, the cup and plate rattling like she was in a subway car, not seated in a mostly stationary booth (her side wasn't quite as loose as the one opposite). "You're just so . . . grown up. I've seen you on TV and in the papers— I guess you might say I've been following your career. But here you are in person, and . . . I don't know. I think I still expected you to be a little girl."
It would have been less painful if she'd thrust a hand into Olivia's chest and wrenched out her heart. Meg, the woman who had taught her fractions and explained what to do when she got her first period, who smuggled Kit Kats and M&Ms into her hospital room the time Serena pushed her down the stairs, was satisfied sitting back and watching her from afar.
Some of those television appearances and newspaper articles Meg mentioned were undoubtedly about Lewis and The Mangler. Had she seen Serena's obituary too? If you really cared about someone, you didn't just stand there and let nature take its course like a wildlife documentarian filming a snake eating a goat. You intervened. You picked up the damn phone. Even Joseph Hollister had done that much.
"I can see that you're angry with me," Meg said, choosing her words with great care. She had always done that. Being raised by a woman who spoke—no, screamed—every insult or hurtful comment that popped into her head, Olivia had loved Meg's discretion and calm. She could breathe around Meg in a way she was never able to around Serena. "And I don't blame you. You have every right to hate me. What I did . . . it's the biggest regret of my life."
Try as she might to practice the same stalwart behavior as her old friend, Olivia felt decades of anger, frustration, and resentment bubbling up inside of her, hot as the coffee in her cup. She felt fifteen years old again, volatile and impulsive, her emotions too big for her still-developing brain to handle. Had she really been that young when Daniel McNab began grooming her? Just weeks before her sixteenth birthday?
She'd always thought she was so grown up back then. Even until recently, when Amanda pointed out adamantly (and repeatedly) that Olivia had been very much a child when Daniel bedded her, she had believed herself somehow exempt—a fully realized adult who made the decision to sleep with a man she hardly knew. Never mind that, days prior to losing her virginity, the one person who had ever professed to love her had simply walked away. The woman sitting across from her now.
"What you did," Olivia echoed, shaking her head without a particular reason. She was smiling too, and it frightened her that, at first, she didn't recognize the sensation. It was too forced and too pained to resemble anything like a genuine smile. But her cheeks felt frozen in that expression, as if they would stay that way permanently, a creepy, surreal mask that didn't match up with her true self. "What you did was abandon me, Meg. You knew . . . you knew how she treated me, you must have. The bruises, the fractures, the nightmares. And you still left me alone with her. I tried to call you, I went to your apartment and the library. Anywhere I could think to look. Do you have any idea what that's like for a kid? I had no one else to turn to."
Meg stared sadly into the coffee that was the same color as her eyes. Hers were clouded with tears when she finally directed them at Olivia and took a deep breath. She laid her palms on the table as though to cover Olivia's hands with them, though they were too far away and already tucked into Amanda's. "You're right. And it's inexcusable that I abandoned you that way. But it wasn't because I didn't love y—"
"I heard her on the phone with you!" It was probably Olivia's imagination, but she could swear a hush fell over the diner at the sound of her raised voice. At least in the cemetery she hadn't needed to worry about who might be eavesdropping. Seated on the inside of the booth and out of view of the Mother's Day brunch crowd, she still felt like every eye in the place was focused on her. She leaned in and half-whispered the rest in the most even tone she could muster. "She all but admitted she didn't love me, and you just . . . you let her. Do you even know what happened after she hung up the phone?"
A solemn nod from Meg, and Olivia's stomach dropped like she was falling from the balcony of a high-rise. Meg really had known, then. She'd known all along. "Not everything, but . . . enough to see that you were having a hard time. That she was . . . getting worse and you weren't safe with her anymore."
Anymore. As if there was ever a time Olivia had been safe with her mother. She did not recall such a time existing. In fact, the fear that Serena had instilled all those years ago still ran just beneath Olivia's skin like a fault line, threatening the next big quake that would throw her world off balance and destroy the life she'd so painstakingly built. It shuddered ominously inside of her now, and she held tighter to Amanda's hand, afraid to let go and fall into a deep crevasse or a pit that suddenly yawned open beneath her.
"No. I wasn't. She almost killed me that night. Shoved me headfirst into that brick wall right outside her study—you remember the one, with the big faded ad for the laundromat. Then she sat on top of me and choked me until I blacked out." Olivia cleared her throat softly, disguising it as a natural pause in the story and not a reaction to feeling momentarily like she couldn't breathe. That happened sometimes when a shirt collar was snug around her neck, or the seatbelt pressed against it, too. "She held me after that, and cried. Treated me like a baby, let me fall asleep in her lap. When I woke up, she was gone. Left me for two or three days that time. Guess what happened when she came back?"
"Liv," Amanda said, resting a hand on Olivia's arm, apprehension in her tone. She sounded more cautious about Olivia spilling out the story to a relative stranger than Olivia felt doing it. "You don't have to."
Olivia studied her wife's face, trying to determine if Amanda wanted to protect her from reliving the next part of the tale, or just keep her from sharing something so shameful and embarrassing. Or maybe she wanted to be the sole keeper of Olivia's deepest, darkest secrets. But that was the thing with secrets—once they were out, they took on a life of their own. Things you'd hidden so deeply you had no recollection of them yourself suddenly became dinner table conversation, or a harsh truth spoken over a cup of coffee. The years of suffering in silence and emotional turmoil were ultimately for nothing.
"I know." Olivia squeezed Amanda's knee, a soft, sad smile on her lips. She would gladly have gone on forever allowing Amanda to guard her tortured past, but it only grew bigger and more terrifying the longer it remained in the shadows. It shouldn't be Amanda's burden alone. She shouldn't be. "I think I need to, though. I lost my chance to talk about it with them. I can't do that again. I'm so tired of pretending."
Receiving a small nod of assent, she turned back to Meg, whose face was still a mask of shock and disbelief at hearing what her best friend had done to her child. "Guess," Olivia said without malice or contempt of any kind. She wouldn't use her abuse to inflict wounds on someone else, no matter how deeply that person had wronged her. It wasn't her way.
"I . . . I can't imagine. I didn't want to believe it was that bad. I told myself she could never purposely harm you, not really." Meg swiped at the tears that escaped onto her cheeks, sparkling like crystal. "I told myself you were strong and resourceful and you could handle yourself."
"She is strong and resourceful," Amanda put in, hugging Olivia's waist with one arm and looking at her like a proud mother displaying a talented child. Her voice had a bite to it when she added the rest, for Meg's benefit: "But she was a kid. She shouldn't've had to handle anything herself. Not with a responsible adult there to, oh, I dunno, call the damn cops or children's services. Anything but just leave."
Meg unraveled the napkin folded around her silverware and dried her damp nose, going slowly through the motions, putting off a reply. Right then she seemed very old and very sad. "You have no idea how many times I wanted to do that, but—"
"She had a man with her." Olivia couldn't listen to any more excuses. She'd already heard thirty years' worth of them from Serena, and that was enough for a lifetime. "One of her 'friends' from the bar. Some sleazebag she called Si. He wasn't the first of her drinking buddies to come after me, but he was the one who got the furthest."
She paused to lick her lips, to take a breath. Just for a second she had felt his hands on her, like it was still happening. Creeping up her nightie to clasp her buttocks. A mouth on her breasts, biting through the soft pajama fabric. An erection against her thigh, then in her hand, the pre-ejaculate slimy between her fingers. Meg was shaking her head, crying, "Oh, Jesus, no," into her napkin, but Olivia wasn't finished.
This time she would finish.
"He sexually assaulted me in our kitchen. He put his . . . he forced me to . . ." She couldn't make the gesture, let alone get the words out. Her throat was too tight, her pulse racing as if she'd been injected with pure adrenaline. The smell of patchouli and baby swiss was stifling in her nostrils, and she had the inexplicable urge to pour all three cups of hot coffee over herself, scalding away the revulsion she felt just being in her own skin. The things she had done with her body, let others do to it
(her own father!)
were disgusting. She was a stupid, filthy, disgusting—
"He forced her to jack him off. Held her hands and made her do it," Amanda explained at a discreet volume that almost disguised the quaver in her voice. Olivia might not have heard it at all if not for their close proximity—physically and emotionally. But Amanda's arm was extra tight at her middle, and one of them had a heartbeat so loud, Olivia was sure it could be heard throughout the diner. Whomever it belonged to, she focused on the sound of it to bring her back to the present moment. She had to stop getting lost in the past.
"He touched me too, while I— while he used my hands." Wrists pressed against the aluminum edge of the retro diner table, Olivia studied the offending hands poised in front of her. They felt cuffed together, and she clenched them into fists to be rid of the unnerving sensation. "I didn't want to, but he was strong. He was a grown man, and I was just . . . " She gave an aimless wave that faded with the rest of the sentence. Just a stupid, unlovable girl who wanted a dad and found a monster. "Anyway, she walked in and caught us. Him. But she didn't scream at us like I expected. Actually, she thanked me for warming him up for her, then took him back to bed and finished him off. I heard every bit of it. My mother having sex with the man who just molested me."
Meg covered her mouth, stifling a miserable sound, part moan, part gasp. She genuinely looked as though she would vomit into her untouched coffee. "Oh, Livvy honey, I'm so sorry. Oh my God, that's awful. I— I'm just so sorry that happened to you."
"It was my father, Meg," Olivia said, leaving out the fanfare. There was no good way to tell someone you'd given your old man a handjob at fifteen, other than to flat-out say it. "His real name was Joseph Hollister. He stalked me for years. Her too, I suppose. It would have been easy to do, since she didn't see his face during the attack. And she was too blind drunk to recognize him after all those years, anyway. I don't think she ever figured out who he was. I hope she didn't."
I wish I hadn't figured it out, either, she thought, suppressing a weary sigh. Meg was silent and aghast, her jaw slack behind her hand, eyes wide over it. She didn't even try finding the right words to say this time, her horrified expression more effective than any apology. Olivia derived no satisfaction from either, though—the expression or the apology—and she got the sinking feeling that no matter the outcome of this surprise reunion, she would leave it just as empty as she had gone into it.
"He's dead now. Suicide in '97." Olivia gave a single dry chuckle against the brim of her coffee, then took a tentative sip. Hot and bitter, like the irony she had just discovered in her narrative. You couldn't make this shit up if you tried. "She gave that one a shot too, the day after our little family get-together. I know you remember that, you're the one who made sure we got home from the hospital. What was it she told them, to get released? She had simply 'overdone it' with the wine and sleeping pills? It's so hard to relax when you're the single mother of a rebellious teenage girl, isn't it, Meg?"
"I didn't believe that," Meg said, more beseeching than defensive. She clasped her hands together above her coffee cup, as if she were praying or pleading at someone's feet, the napkin smashed between her palms. "You were always a good girl. A nice, sweet—"
A good girl. A nice girl. The kind of girl who opened up when you put it in her mouth, who followed your lead when you put it in her hand, who held still when you climbed on top of her. Daddy's sweet strawberry girl and Mommy's little angel. Don't ever tell, it isn't real if you don't—
"You went along with it," Olivia said heatedly, losing the battle to keep her composure. Fifteen-year-old Olivia had lost her temper frequently too, until realizing she would end up just like her mother, angry and abusive, if she didn't learn better self-control. That thought had frightened her more than anything else she could imagine. It still did. Not all of her concerns about genetics were because of Hollister. "You smoothed it over for her so she could come home and take it out on me some more. God, when I think of what I did to get away from her . . . what I let him do to me . . . "
Amanda sat up straight, instantly on alert at the mention of anyone taking advantage of Olivia. She knew the history well enough to guess that the "him" in question was Daniel, but Olivia hadn't told her all the sordid details of that relationship. The way Daniel liked to be big man on campus and brag about all the sexual favors his teenage girlfriend did for him, and how she had complied, even when the favors were degrading or painful. The way his friends looked at her, like she was a dirty little high-school slut, and propositioned her accordingly. If Amanda knew the full story, she would have done more than deliver condoms to Daniel's door and stir up trouble with his wife. That's why Olivia would never tell her.
"Babe, anything he did was stat rape, and it ain't on you," Amanda murmured, speaking as if Meg wouldn't hear. "You're looking kinda peaked, maybe you should take a breather or something, huh?"
. . .