He shook his head. "You are not broken. You are not diseased." Words that surely had come from their parents, probably in describing him and Ric. Their problem child. No, not their child. Not anymore. They wouldn't claim him, of course. Perhaps they would have used him as a cautionary tale only.
"You do not have to marry a good boy," he told her. "You don't have to do anything that you don't want to do. The fact that they've made you feel like you don't have any choice but to do as they say is just a testament to the fact that they're worthless pieces of shit," Toby said, shaking his head and reaching out to gently brush his sister's hair behind her ear. "The only responsibility you should have is to make yourself happy, not to make yourself miserable. Marrying some man, no matter how nice he might be, would not be fair to you or to him. You'd be living a lie and so would he. You would be doomed to never be truly happy and you shouldn't have to accept that as your fate, Laurel. I know that it's scary, I've been there before and it is terrifying. I get it. I understand. But as someone who's been through it and come out on the other side, I can also tell you that I would not have changed the way that things happened. The only thing that I would change is that you were left behind to deal with their bullshit and to get the same sort of treatment that I was running from." It made him sick to his stomach that he couldn't protect her from their parents. He couldn't keep her shielded from their wants and their needs.
"Family loves you no matter what," he told her. "And if they are trying to make you something that you're not, that's not love. That's not family."