Page 278 of The Grand Duel

She squeezes me tighter. “Can I ask you something? Something that might upset you.”

“You can ask me anything.”

She hesitates, and it makes my stomach twist. “The reason you can’t have children. It was the fall that damaged your womb, wasn’t it?”

I close my eyes, rolling my lips before letting out a deep exhale. “Why would you ask that?”

“Mum said something to me. She asked me how much you’d told me about it. But she knows that I knew about the operations.”

With my baby sister’s head on my shoulder, I consider how she would feel if she ever found out the whole truth. If she knew all they’ve really done to me.

I sometimes forget how young Jovie was when everything happened. How young she still is now at nineteen.

And isn’t her own trauma enough? Enough to live through and carry and overcome. If she can take what happened to her and find a way to forgive them for that, isn’t that all that matters? Her happiness.

“You know everything, Jove,” I reassure her. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

“That’s silly,” she counters. “You know I will always worry. Maybe not as much as you do but?—”

I chuckle at the same time my phone chimes.

My heart twinges.

“Like clockwork,” Jovie muses, picking up the half-empty wine bottle between us and taking a swig. “I need a handbook on how to find a man who will send me calendar memos to let me know when he gets home.”

“That’s a good idea. And how to get other women pregnant and then leave you when you get upset about it?”

She tuts. “I thought you said you weren’t angry.”

“I’m not,” I tell her, staring at my socks. “I’m just sad.”

“You already know what I think of the man.”

I do. Regardless of the situation we’re in, and the fact he vandalised our parents’ home, my sister is rooting for Charlie.

I’m not sure even Nina is putting in quite the shift that Jovie is.

“I don’t think he’ll cave, you know. Not after what you said about the letter.”

I wiggle my toes. “I know he won’t.”

Because he thinks he’s right and that I need this.

And I’m too stubborn to tell him that I don’t.

“You should go and see him. Make the first move.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because I will cry.” I sigh. “Just one of many reasons it’s a terrible idea. Crying doesn’t get you?—”

“Anywhere in life,” she finishes for me. “Yeah, and our dad’s a dick.”

I purse my lips.

“You can’t hide your emotions, Lis. Charlie isn’t our parents.”