Broken Open
Aria
I didn’t cry prettily.
I want to be clear about that because I’ve read enough books to know that women in stories cry in ways that are somehow still attractive — single tears, trembling lips, quiet dignity. That is not what happened to me on Caden’s couch at eight thirty in the morning.
What happened was ugly and loud and completely without warning, the kind of crying that starts somewhere in your chest before your brain has finished processing what triggered it and arrives on your face as a full collapse before you can decide whether to let it.
My mother.
My mother had told someone my father was planning to go to the authorities.
She hadn’t known. That was what Caden said. She was twenty-six and she trusted someone and she had no idea what Romano would do with that
