Who: Brielle & Wren What: Catching up in a car ride. Where: Ultimately Caesar's. When: Shortly after this conversation. Warnings: None!
Wren’s last memory of Brielle was the kind of thing that was blazed forever in her mind, and it didn’t even have anything to do with her cousin. She’d been staying at a hotel paid for by a man named Steven Johnson, and it was the first week in months that she hadn’t slept in a shelter or beneath one of south Florida’s many bridges. She was almost eight months pregnant, hooking, skinny as a rail, emaciated and with a wheezing cough that never actually left anymore, bruises all over and the kind of dark circles around sunken eyes that spoke of hell and horrors that couldn’t ever be slept away. She’d spent the previous days talking to Roger, making decisions, thinking things through, trying (one last time) to find out where Luke was, almost calling MK. She’d just turned twenty, and she felt fifty, and she’d reached that rock-bottom that only happened in the movies. That’s when Brielle had walked back into her life, on the night Wren had decided to pack up the few memories she had from Seattle and make the move to Las Vegas. They’d talked, two broken things skirting their issues, and they’d parted ways.
Seeing her cousin’s name on the phone was unexpected, but it was the good kind of unexpected. Wren and Brielle had only met a few times as children, but Wren had no family to speak of, and any family counted. And so, she didn’t hesitate before calling for the driver and sliding into the car to meet Brielle at Starbucks. The call had been unexpected, and Wren didn’t have the time (or inclination) to slip on the perfect facade that she so carefully cultivated. The woman that stepped out of the luxury Town Car at the coffee shop was pale blonde (gone were the honeyed locks), designer sunglasses and a simple ensemble of slim black leggings and a pale, sleeveless Dior tunic. Blahnik stilettos finished off the ensemble, and Wren pushed the sunglasses up on her head and looked around the shop, seeking out Brielle’s familiar face.
Brielle was the same, but different. The city life had polished her platinum, but everything in between took it's toll on the tender of heart. She'd always been the quieter one, despite having two years on Wren. Meek without being bookish, Brielle was the dancer with no desire of spotlight. Quick and smart went without saying, those were necessary elements to any Maheu, but there'd always been a youthful and quiet curiosity that she failed to shake, even now.
In her marriage, there'd been money. Now she was pieced together by the scraps. Brielle remembered that was how he'd found her before, that first time she'd run away. He'd followed the credit cards, because she'd been foolish or maybe just young(naive, her mama always said, like it was a bad thing). She didn't take chances on anything now. She got the feeling that she wouldn't survive the next trip in David's trunk. There was really no going back now. Ivy comforted her constantly with promises that they wouldn't be found, they wouldn't be taken back, they'd kill him first.. .. but Brielle didn't want that either. She'd married him, after all, she must have known what she was getting into, deep down. Her engagement ring was worth the better part of a half mil, and she'd chucked it at a pawn shop in Jersey for 30k, which ran out fast on the road. Especially after nearly a year. The golden edge of her highlights were grown out far past fashionable. The mustard colored silk of her chemise top was designer, but it's fabric was rumpled from the recent abuse of laundromats. There was nothing before her, Brielle detested coffee and Ivy refused to allow her tea. Dark sunglasses guarded her skittish eyes, which was a good thing because she was beginning to feel cornered in the crowded coffee shop. Brielle glanced over Wren easily, failing to recognize her.
The last time Wren had seen Brielle was early on in the other woman’s cycle of escape and, to be honest, Wren had been too sick to notice much. She still remembered her cousin as the little girl from her youth, the one she only saw seldom and always wanted to emulate. Still, even with the changes, Wren did recognize her. Her own changes, she knew, were much more significant, and she made herself wind her way around the busy coffee shop and stop in front of the empty table that her cousin occupied. “Bonjour,” she said, the greeting an old one from home, when all the French words made her certain she would be a princess one day if she only waited enough. She noticed all the signs of little money on her cousin, but she didn’t say anything. She’d been poor her whole life, and she remembered how much she hated charity or people looking down on her because of it. Instead, she just smiled a warm and honest smile. “I’m so glad you’re here.” Which was absolutely and without doubt the truth. She knew Brielle would have questions about the baby, about how she’d ended up where she was, but this once Wren didn’t mind the impending conversations. Brielle was family, and there was enough of the hopeful girl left in Wren that she implicitly trusted her on account of it.
"Oh!" Brielle glanced up quickly, and even with the glasses her shock was evident. Something lurked in the depths of that brief expression, it was almost fear. Whatever ghost lingered in those hidden eyes, it was gone in a second because if anyone knew how to put up a front, it was a Southern girl. She beamed, and this was honest, it helped to eat away the shadow of anxiety and Brielle reached for Wren's hand without apprehension or uncertainty. "You're beautiful, cherie. So grown up." Even if her French was rusty, there was no way to outgrow it. Not with who her father was.
The shock was noted, and Wren wondered if Brielle was running. It would explain why her cousin hadn’t wanted to give a phone number, and Wren knew a fair amount about what the lingering ghost of fear looked like in an expression. She took Brielle’s hand and, after a quick squeeze of her fingers, she pulled her cousin into a hug that was reminiscent of little girls in dresses beneath the sticky Key West sun. “You’re almost too gorgeous to look at,” Wren said, stepping back and cupping her cousin’s cheeks, because she’d always thought that about Brielle. Where Wren was curves and softness, Brielle was elegant long lines, and she’d always been Wren’s idea of beauty, this girl with the beautiful cheekbones and the aristocratic features. “Come on,” she added, a tug of fingers coaxing Brielle toward the door. “Where are your things?”
"Things?" Brielle asked with sleek eyebrows moving into jaunty arches. Then she realized that Wren expected her to have more than what was on her, which consisted of a tangerine-colored Hermes bag. It was at least two seasons old. There were things inside, actually. Another blouse and a skirt and one forgotten tube of lipstick(because Brielle seemed to have lost interest in makeup altogether these days). Some granola bars and some cash, the iPad and some pepperspray. There had been more things once, a couple of suitcases worth, actually.. but it all kind of dwindled as the motels rotated and the months wore on. "I left my bags at the hotel," she answered, sudden and vague.
Wren caught something in the jaunty arch of those brows that said she’d misspoken, and she almost bit her own tongue to try to take the words back. She knew that feeling too, leaving without anything much at all. It’s exactly how Brielle had found her those years back, and she did the only thing she could do, which was pretend to believe the claim about the hotel. If the items never showed up, well, that was fine. Wren’s clothing would be too big in spots for Brielle, but with Alice and MK living in the suite there was enough clothing sharing that it was a normal thing. She was hoping that Alice and MK would like her cousin, but she wasn’t worried about that either. She, Wren, was the quiet and reserved one among the three of them, and MK was so infectious that no one could dislike her. “Okay,” she said, tugging on Brielle’s fingers and not stopping until they were at the Town Car, where the driver was waiting with an open door. “The suite is terrible and impersonal,” she apologized, because it was nothing like what either girl had gravitated toward in their youth. “I can’t say I consider it home, really, but it’s comfortable. It comes with my job,” she explained.
"You seem to be doing very well for yourself." There was admiration as much as assurance in the words. Brielle could hardly believe that this was the same Wren that she remembered, but then she supposed that she didn't feel much like the same Brielle she'd been back then, either. It made her smile a little, if a smile could be sad, to think about how things could change. "You work in Vegas?" In the back of the car, the darkness was daunting and Brielle pulled her sunglasses down with delicate piano fingers in order to regard Wren with eyes that demanded truth. Not because they were strict, but because they were so trusting. She folded the glasses in her lap, it gave her nervous, chinaboned hands something to do.
Wren had no reason to lie to Brielle. Unlike everyone who knew Luke, whose loyalties were to him, Brielle was hers, and she didn’t even need to hide the pregnancy from her cousin, who had seen her when the world was crashing down around her. She reached across the dark coolness of the car, pushed the button to raise the divider, and then she squeezed Brielle’s fingers after. “I do. I came here, like you know, because of the baby. I stayed after.” She paused here, having trouble with the words. “I wanted to be close-by, which probably isn’t very healthy, I know. I worked the streets a few years, and a couple of years ago I got a job as a professional dominatrix working out of Caesar’s. Some good connections, a couple of years of pretending, and here I am.” She shrugged a little. It wasn’t a rags to riches story exactly, but it was much better than things had been. She didn’t mention Luke, not yet, because Brielle had never actually known about him. And, anyway, she wanted Brielle’s story, if she was willing to share it. “How did you end up here?”
Brielle was the one with the secrets, they were brewed so deep and dark that there was no letting them go. Not now. She'd shared none of her life with the people closest to her, not her mama for sure. Even after she'd escaped, when she'd forced herself to relax in the arms of a young man running from his own demons, she hadn't told him. Nobody knew, and given God's grace, they never would. At their last meeting, she'd known what Wren did, about the hooking and all. Maybe she was just like her father in that she'd never quite known what to do about it, or what to say, but there was no judgement there and it seemed like a heavy enough situation without Brielle bringing up her husband. So she hadn't told Wren then, and now.. all these years gone, it felt a little late to start. "Really?" Shock was prevalent because Brielle had never really known that those kinds of women existed, dominatrixes. Having only slept with two men in the extent of her life, it left her view of such things kind of crooked. She imagined it had a lot to do with control, and that was enough to bring to mind the choking and other violent things. Brielle always worked best in neutral, and she shifted seamlessly into a lie, to get away. "My husband died a while back." It's funny how the cover-ups give way to such easy deceptions. The excuses and the laughter over one's own make-believe clumsiness. Always falling down the stairs and choking one's self, how silly. In time, the lies grew into flawless vines that knew nothing but self-survival. They stretched up to her tongue and took possession without asking. "A couple months ago."
The shock made Wren go just a littlecooler, the reaction an old one that she couldn’t help, and she followed it with another reassuring squeeze to Brielle’s fingers. “I’m sorry,” she said about Brielle’s husband, though she wasn’t really sure if it was good or bad, but she didn’t ask. The two women, despite being related, had never been really close, had never had the chance. Wren had always been more of an open book than Brielle, but these days that was less the case, and it was a real effort to not draw back and hide things from her like she did everyone else. She knew she was bad at trust, terrible at it, really, and she needed to figure out how to change that. Brielle seemed the perfect solution, and so Wren bit her lip and tried. “I’m so sorry,” she repeated. “But you’re not alone. I promise. And you can talk to me about anything,” she offered. Her free hand tugged on the chain she always wore around her neck, the ring on the end visible beneath the tunic, and she rubbed it between her fingers, a nervous habit developed over the years. “I know we’ve never really talked very much, but maybe we can change that,” she offered hopefully. Opening up to Brielle might make the inevitable day when she had to open up to Luke easier, right? She had no idea Brielle was as inexperienced as she was, but that was okay, she sensed something in her reaction that made it pretty clear. “Don’t worry. You won’t even know that I’m working,” she promised, quick to want to protect from the dirty reality that was her life. Until then, she’d thought it was so much better, but she wondered now (as she did whenever she thought of Gus possibly sharing her life). It was sobering.
Noting the stoic coolness that pervaded Wren, Brielle winced immediately. "I didn't mean anything by that," in case her surprise had been offensive. Her hazel eyes(which leaned a little more on the green side these days) were honest, aware that all too regularly she said the wrong thing. She took Wren's hand and a smile bloomed, somehow different from the ones that preceded it, a little more comfortable already. "Thank you, I.. didn't want to just drop by, but.. I didn't really know where else to go." There was raw honesty in that, perhaps more than Wren could decipher. "Maman's kind of lost it lately, and you know she wasn't ever all there to begin with, so.." She glanced out the tinted window, trying to find the words. Was she rambling? ".. it's just been hard, I guess." Something Wren said made her glance back, a sable brow twitching. "You work from home?"
Any coolness that had seeped in melted away with Brielle’s more comfortable smile, and the encouraging squeeze to Brielle’s fingers was repeated. “I understand, oui,” Wren said about Brielle’s Maman. Wren’s own Maman had wanted nothing to do with her own brother, and Wren always suspected that was because her uncle knew the truth behind the dead family Lark Maheu had left behind in New Orleans. But, still, Wren knew about her uncle’s wife, just like she knew that she and Brielle had both had terrible luck when it came to their parents. Wren pushed an errant strand of hair away from Brielle’s forehead, an ease of touch that had been learned from MK so many years ago, and she tucked the strand behind Brielle’s ear. “I do work from home, but the clients have their own, external entrance, and they never walk into the suite. They don’t have access to it, and with MK there I’ve been doing a lot of work outside, whenever I can manage it. It’s okay. It’s safe. The security at Caesar’s is wonderful,” she added with a smile, because she knew Luke would drop everything if the alarm so much as blinked in the suite. “The man I’m seeing works in security there. It’s safe. I promise.”
The idea of strangers coming and going made Brielle naturally uneasy, but she tried not to betray the somersaults in her stomach. The external entrance piqued her interests, and she listened with attention so rapt that she was undisturbed by the sudden outreach of Wren's hand toward her face. She blinked at the tucking of hair, collapsing at once back into the moment with a bit of surprise. But she knew that she had no reason to flinch from Wren, and that's all her expression conveyed, the briefest bewilderment. While hardly knowing the woman she'd become, Brielle knew her cousin well enough to take strong notice of the warmth that edged the girl's smile when she mentioned the man, the security. "He takes care of you?" Her autumn eyes lit up at that, touched by the idea.
There was something in the question, and in the flinch, that made Wren start to add things up. “He tries. I’m a little stubborn about being able to do it myself, but he tries, and I trust him to save me, if the need arises.” A young smile. “That sounds so silly doesn’t it?” Then, more seriously, as the car began to make the turn into Caesar’s. “But when I- When I was a teenager, a man attacked me, and I almost died. After that, I learned to defend myself. I’m a little rusty, but I can show you.” Because that kind of empowering, there was nothing better than it, even a beautiful boy in a security uniform with the safest arms in the world. The car stopped, and the driver moved around, and Wren squeezed Brielle’s fingers reassuringly. “Bienvenue au your new home, cousine,” she finished with a smile.
"It sounds romantic," Brielle countered softly. Her tone was a tidal of warmth, a little dreamy and a little proud. There was a sudden frown when Wren made that confession about being attacked, and Brielle had to swallow the rough ache that compassion always caused over such things in her throat. "I'm sorry, I didn't know." Although, how would she? Their sides of the family had cleaved apart with death over the years. She knew that Wren had likely not even heard that she'd been married until this conversation today. At the offer of being taught to defend herself, Brielle seesawed on the formation of a new cover-up. "Oh, I don't know, I--" Distracted, she glanced out the window when the car stopped. She stared at the hotel for a moment, appreciating it's beauty and wondering if it was big enough to hide in. "I'll only be in town a while." Glancing back at Wren, she nodded along with her own words. That dulcet French weaving itself like a beautiful ribbon between so many consonants and vowels, as if it had never truly left. "A week or two," she promised.
“As long as you need,” Wren replied, not pushing about the lessons, but already deciding that this scared girl would do well with MK and Alice and her to protect her from whatever it was that she obviously needed protecting from. “Forever, if we’re lucky. Come on, Venez,” she said, and she tugged on Brielle’s fingers, very much that little girl with the tattered dress on the beach. Maybe, for the first time, it would be nice to let someone see the place, especially if that wide-eyed appreciative look in Brielle’s eyes was any indication.
Brielle smiled another of those very real smiles and took Wren's hand as she was led from the car. Polished men opened equally polished doors for them, and for the first time, she glanced over her shoulder. The valet and street were teaming with cars and chaos, but she forced herself to ignore it even as she shrank into the safety of Wren's shadow. It was all second nature. Partly because of nerves that never went away any more, and partly because she could feel Ivy stretching like sleeping tigress inside of her. Stronger than before, and for the first time, worrying.