At the apartment, I walked in and found Lucy and Max sitting at the table. The sliding door was open, letting in a breeze, although, the summer air was too warm to be soothing.

"Hey, Luce," I said, pleased and surprised to see her here. She lives in Colorado and from what I know, is super busy.

"Hey," she grinned, neither of us went in for a hug, she's never been much of a hugger. "Max was just telling me about Bernie, this girl sounds like a child genius."

"She is," I said, taking a seat at the table. "She just gave her clothing line a brand name. Valor. It's Spanish for courage."

It still gives me chills.

"Wow," Max said, folding his arms. "That's perfect. Can't wait to see that name all over New York."

"That's what I said," I chime and look at Lucy, she's beautiful, shoulder length curls and a glimmer in her dark brown eyes. She's got an incredible figure too, strong and muscular.

"How are you?" I asked. "Still fighting?" 

Lucy is an MMA champion. She's competed in global competitions, she's got a stack of trophies and magazine headlines. Plus she does a lot of charity events to raise funds for sexual assault survivors, being one herself.

"Coaching now," she said, picking at a loose thread on her cropped t-shirt. "We have a new gym being built back in Fort Collins. It's gorgeous. Mom and dad are overseeing the architectural side of things while I'll be full time running classes. I'm only thirty three but I just feel ready to be more settled, instead of jetting around all the time."

"Seems fair," Max said, pushing his seat back. "Sorry, I have to head off and meet Amalia. Luce, you hanging around? Having dinner?"

"I have a flight at five," she said. "I was just over in Jersey visiting a friend so I thought I'd come over this way and catch up."

"No worries," Max said. "It was good to see you."

"You too. Good luck with the proposal. You'll have to let me know how it goes."

"I will."

"Are you doing that today?!" I leaned over the back of my seat.

"No, shit no," Max said. "We were just talking about it."

"Oh, right."

Max left and Lucy sat back in her seat with a sigh, the warm breeze bristling her hair. "So, how are things going?" She asked. "Your dad has kept me updated on the rehab and that sort of thing. I wanted to visit sooner but I've just finished a tour around Australia."

"Oh it's fine," I said and stood up, wandering into the kitchen. "Drink?"

"Just a cold water, please."

I filled two glasses from the jug in the fridge and popped a couple of ice cubes in each one. "Yeah things feel good at the moment. I'm focusing on figuring out what I'm going to do with my life. Still a little. . . uncertain."

"You're nineteen," she said when I sat down with the glasses. "Don't be too hard on yourself. I remember what it was like though. After I was assaulted, I became so desperate to reinvent myself that it really took away from the actual healing I needed to do. Once I decided to stop going to school and got some therapy and focused on me, things started to fall into place."

"Yes," I agreed. "I feel like I'm getting to that place now, like, just giving myself to the flow and working through the assault and taking the time to discover what I love and makes me happy."

"And that seems to be the clothing stuff?" She asked, thumb running over the condensation on her glass.

"Well, that's the thing, within that, I'm not sure where my place is. Bernie does the designing and I sit around, talking to her, posting things on her socials. I did get her a meeting with a big name but she decided not to expand for a while. So I'm kind of like, what now? What do I do. I can't just sit around the apartment all the time, waiting for her to call me."

"There must be ideas though," Lucy said, raising a brow. "Right? You must think up ideas, internally and not voice them because you think they might fail?"

How did she—

"I used to dream up creating a class for assault survivors. I'd lie in bed and imagine it, I'd think of how much it could help other girls like me. But I was only eighteen at the time. I didn't think I could make something like that happen. And then I did. I took that step because I figured, what did I have to lose? The only failure was in never trying."

I palmed my glass and chewed the inside of my cheek. "I sometimes imagine starting an Instagram or TikTok for girls with body image issues. Like, having Bernie design their outfits and having them model. Giving those girls who aren't societally seen as 'models' the chance to feel beautiful."

"So do it."

"Yeah but where do I even start? Do I just approach girls on the street? What if they didn't see themselves as bigger or whatever until I asked them to be a plus size model. I'd feel like an asshole."

"Does Bernie have a large online following?" Lucy asked.

"Yeah."

"Start there. Put a call out for the description you want and ask for volunteers. Ask them to be part of something empowering. Ask them to bring a friend who might not have the confidence to volunteer on their own."

Excitement started to hum through me. "That could work."

"I think it's a great idea. You know, when I was younger, I used to be super insecure about my shoulders. I loved being strong but I felt so masculine in certain tops."

That blew my mind. "You have an amazing figure. I definitely wouldn't look at you and think 'man shoulders.'"

"Most people didn't," she laughed. "Just goes to show how deceiving our own eyes can be, right."

"Yeah, I know all about that."

Lucy lowered her gaze, her voice too. "It absolutely broke me when I heard about what happened. My heart broke for your dad too. I knew first hand how much damage assault can do. On not just you, but the entire family."

"It kind of brought your family closer in the end though, right?"

"Eventually," she softly smiled. "Dad is my best friend. He and mom are happy. Coen is getting more and more auditions each week. He's living in LA. It's going well for him."

I was glad to hear her family was doing well because there had been a long time when the four of them were broken and no one ever imagined they would become whole again.

Dad and Noah had a weird relationship. They got along when they were together but the taunting and shit talking would never end I imagined.

"Noah helped a lot, right? When it first happened."

"He did," she said, a gratefulness in her tone. "I think it was the sort of person he was. He had a really good understanding of boundaries and he knew it didn't help to push certain conversations, he knew when to be close and when to give space. We're super similar in our personalities and that made a huge difference."

My mind drifted to Harley again, how much I wish he'd had that himself. The physical ache in my chest was brutal, more so because there were thousands more in the same position as him.

"I've never told anyone this," Lucy almost whispered, a slight grin on her lips. "The man who assaulted me, he was a basketball player. He lost his scholarship when everything first came out but less than a year later he started at a new college. The night before his first game, he was found in a campus boxing ring with broken knee caps and mangled fingers."

My stomach dropped. It sounded horrific.

"Really?"

She nodded. "At my eighteenth birthday, your dad said to me he can't play ball if he has broken knee caps."

"Dad?!"

Lucy nodded. "We've literally never discussed it but it had to be him. Maybe not him personally, but I think he made it happen."

"You know what," I threw up my hands. "That doesn't surprise me at all."

Lucy covered her mouth, giggling as if she felt evil for laughing. "At first I didn't know how to feel about it. I wasn't sure that it sat right with me. For him to have been put through so much pain and permanent suffering.

"But then I remembered how terrified I was the night he drugged and raped me. The way he told me I couldn't fight him off, the way he spat my name and told me to shut up. What I went through is permanent. These are permanent," she said, standing up to show me the self harm scars all over her thighs, below her shorts.

"I think society has really conditioned us to down play rape and assault like it's not a big deal. Like, we'll get over it. But it's a huge deal. It's very permanent. Not for rapists though. It's never permanent for them. Your dad wanted to make sure that wasn't the case this time and he did it with major dramatic flare. I mean, he left him in a boxing ring."

We both laughed again, still trying to smother our snickering because it felt morbid but hell, she was right.

It made me wonder what he had planned for Avery who could be out of prison in six years. Would he bide his time for that long? Would he let it go?

Probably not.

"The men in this family are. . . something else," I mused.

"In a good way though," Lucy said. "Honestly, it's made dating so freaking hard because I know what a real man should be and there aren't a lot of them."

"Have you met someone?" 

"Nothing's stuck but I'm in no rush. It'll happen when it happens."

"Mmmm," I nodded thoughtfully.

"You? You were quite serious with Flynn, right?"

"We're taking some time apart," I confessed, feeling sad but not broken.

"As cheesy as it sounds, if it's meant to be, it'll be."

"What if I don't think it's meant to be," I mumbled.

"Only you know if that's true or not. Think of all the things you've survived, Abby. Breaking up with a boy will not be the worst of it."

"He's a good guy," I said. "I love him, a lot. He's really, really good. I'm just, he's tied to the old me and I'm letting so much of her go. Is it selfish that I feel like it's hard to keep moving forward with him?"

"It's not always wrong to be selfish. You have to do what's best for you. Even if it's hard, even if it hurts. If you feel something could prevent your growth, you have to let it go. It's called surviving and sometimes that requires being selfish. Normalise being selfish, in the right context."

"He also wants to have kids and I don't. Not anymore. Most people think I'll change my mind but, I don't think I will."

"That's definitely a big one. Breaking up sucks but having a child you never wanted, to make someone else happy, that's way more damaging."

"Yeah."

"You're a tough one, Abby. Whatever you do, you've got this. I can tell."

I smiled, grateful for the impromptu visit because Lucy had said a few things, I definitely needed to hear.