With a slight grunt, Violet was gone. He was never one for goodbyes.
“You have a plan?” I asked Austin, hope blossoming in my chest.
“Not exactly,” he said, cocky grin in place. “Unless you count me callin’ in people to make a plan.”
15
Austin
I feel the need to put this out there…
I was a liar.
Yep. Some of the things I told people were… well, stretching the truth, to put it in a better light.
I’d once told Jameson that I had an older sister who came out when she was like thirty or something. I didn’t have an older sister. And if I did, she sure as hell wouldn’t have been accepted by my family if she had come out.
At the time, Jameson had been in love with someone who wasn’t ready to come out. I’d only been trying to help, which was funny since we butted heads most of the time back then. I just didn’t want him to feel like he was alone. I had been trying to get him to see that there wasn’t really a time limit on coming out. I wasn’t even sure if my lie helped in the way I’d meant for it to.
But the best lies were never far from the truth. She wasn’tmysister, but she was the sister of someone who was once close to me. My best friend throughout grade school. I’d all but forgotten about him until I’d told that story. His sister was nearly twice his age, and she’d come out to their family when we were in high school. I remembered how everyone reacted because I’d been there like I was part of their family. Sometimes, I wished I was.
So, yeah, I lied constantly. Most of the time it was stupid shit to deflect others from who I really was. You know, anythingto run from my past and my actual family. It was never to hurt anyone. But… a lie was still a lie.
Remy and Reed were the only two people on the team who knew the truth. Reed never pushed me to talk about it after he recruited me, but I knew he was always there if I ever wanted to. Not something that was likely to happen, and he knew it. But I still appreciated… you know, having someone there for me.
Remy knew more. When he’d first come to me, confessing that he knew who I was— or more importantly, who my dad was— I was on high alert and ready to shut down. But then he followed it up by saying that he didn’t want me to talk about it, just simply that he wanted me to know so there wasn’t this weird secret hanging between us. I respected it, even if I wasn’t happy about it. And, in a moment or two of weakness, I had broken down and told Remy more about what was going on with my family after… the fall, as my mother saw it. He checked in with me about my family situation often enough that I felt a closer connection to him than anyone else on the team.
The lies allowed me to be someone else. I could have a completely different family. I could… feel normal and happy.
Pretty sad, yeah, I knew it.
I never lied to be spiteful. The only harm I was really doing with my tall tales was hurting myself.
Sometimes it could get lonely when you kept people at a distance.
But there was someone I was having a hard time even tossing the smallest of lies at.
Agent Ford Priestley.
I couldn’t say why. Maybe it was the man himself. Maybe it was the title he wore. Or maybe it had everything to do with where we were.
While I didn’t think the ghosts of my grandparents hung around this house, the pressure of not disappointing them felt thicker here.
And maybe, there was a part of me that didn’t want to taint this place. I didn’t want to look back at the things that happened here while I protected a man who made my insides shaky, and hate the things I’d done to him. The lies I would have given him.
So what did one do when they didn’t want to lie but also couldn’t talk about certain shit?
That was how things became “off limits”. It was a matter of time before Ford stopped letting me get away with using those two words to shut down and keep him at a distance.
And if I was being honest, I was starting to hate myself every time I shot those stupid words at him. It always sat bitter on my tongue.
Not that I was eagerly jumping at the chance to change that. I sure as fuck wasn’t going to open up to Ford. I couldn’t. I had trained myself to deny and ignore all the things I didn’t want to deal with. It was so much easier to live in a world where it wasn’t my life. It wasn’t my trauma. It didn’t happen to me.
Even if there was a small— so small you’d need a microscope to see it— part of me that thought about opening up, I had no clue where to even start. How did one break that cycle? How did I go from being closed off to… openslightly? A door ajar. A small truth allowed to slip out. An honestmomentwhere I didn’t hate myself in the end.
Was that too much? Could I really be okay with a start like that? Could I do it?
The thought was nice, but putting it into action seemed so out of this world that I clammed up just thinking about it.
