God damn it.I really do. “That’s not a mask.”
“Isn’t it?”
“It’s a coping mechanism.”
“And what is a mask then?”
I fight the urge to pick up a solid stone and biff it at him. “What do you want me to do then? Yell at you?”
“If you want.” He reaches over his head and tugs a small branch down.
I look away from the sliver of skin it reveals at his waist.
“Or you could scream it out. Talk it out. Just lie on your back and groan while you stare at the sky.” He releases the branch with a loud swish of leaves. “I don’t care. All I want is for you to let out the shit that’ll eventually rot you if you keep it welled up inside.”
“How’s your liver doing, then?” I sass with a lifted eyebrow.
He gives a lop-sided grin. “Toxic. But I’d rather you weren’t around when I let off my valve.”
“Why? Don’t want me to see you cry?”
“Don’t want to hurt you in the crossfire.” He’s serious.
Oh.I pick up an interesting-shaped rock and turn it in my hands. It’s flared, like a tulip, with little indents on one side like the tips of the petals. “To answer your question, no, I didn’t tell him where I was going, and you damn well know why.”
“Uh-huh.” He pings another offshoot, avoiding looking at me. Probably in case it makes me shut down.
I kind of feel like it would.
“But that doesn’t mean I’m afraid of him, Jinx. It just means I choose my peace over justification. I don’t feel the need to expend my energy trying to make him understand why I think his opinion is wrong.” I run my thumbnail along the indented side of the stone. “He’s entitled to think what he thinks. It’s not my responsibility to change that.”
I realize he’s stopped fidgeting with nature, standing still while he watches me talk.
I turn away so I can’t see him.
“Lord knows Mom’s tried loosening him up over the years, and all she achieved is him white knuckling his beliefs like they’re the last things holding humanity together. I don’t have to be the same as him just because I’m his daughter. That’s something I learned in my time away; that we’re allowed to be completely different people.”
The thing that took longer to come to terms with was that it meant we’d never be close again. The more I stepped into myself as a person, the more distant he got. It was a sacrifice I had to be willing to make to save myself.
“It doesn’t make me wrong, thinking differently from him,” I say. “It doesn’t make him better or me worse. I’m enough as I am, and I suppose he is too, because despite what an ass he can be, he’s done a lot of good for this town. He has good intentions. They’re just… born from a narrow mind.”
I focus so hard on the stone turning in my hands that I have no idea Jinx has moved closer until he slowly puts his hands to the top of my arms, offering comfort. Support.
A different kind of stone lodges in my throat.
I’ve carried the weight of my father’s disappointment in me for so many damn years with nobody to talk to about it. Not even my brother, Devon. And I’ve justified that it was okay to keep these feelings inside because I didn’t need affirmation of how Ifelt. I don’t want to be a victim. Have no desire to farm people’s sympathy in exchange for a few heartfelt words.
But the truth of the matter is, itdoesrot me inside. It’s a little black corner of my heart that shrivels the longer the feelings and memories stay trapped in there, depleting the rest of me of much-needed support.
My chin quivers, hands quickening on the stone. Jinx slides his hands down my arms until they reach mine, stilling my incessant fidgeting.
“It’s all valid, Kyra. None of it is your fault.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake.I have no idea how badly I needed to hear someone say that until I feel the first tear crest my cheek. It’s one thing to tell yourself that over and over, but it hits different when said from another’s mouth.
“I know,” I strain. “But it feels as though it is. Like I could have done something different. I grieve not being enough for him.”
“He’s not enough for you.” His words whisper against my ear as he draws me against his chest. “And you know how I know that?”
