“This is why you sent me here…”
“Well, it’s complicated…”
“God, I’m such a selfish, stupid idiot.” My hands rake furiously through my hair.
“Matthew, please. Pull it together.”
“What was his name?” I ask. I’m coming unstuck enough to see my biggest mistake rising through the mayhem.
Mom blinks at me, her fake lashes cartoonish in the overhead light. “Whose name?”
“The young man?” I prompt her. Because if the name in my head matches the one on her lips, I don’t know that I’ll be able to handle it.
“His name?” she asks, dazed. Her eyes flick back to the screen. “This was a bit ago. I believe, well…I believe it started with anH.”
I’m sucker punched.
Hector. Hector. Hector.
I don’t dare speak his name aloud for fear that will make it true.
But it already is true. Isn’t it? Mom has just confirmed what I couldn’t see. I shared all the dirty details of Island Gate with him in confidence as I fell for him.
I was tricked. Hector played me for his own plane ticket home.
He didn’t trust me, and I misplaced my trust in him.
“Hector.” When his name finally comes out, it’s nothing more than a raspy sob.
Mom nods. “Yes, now that I think of it. That’s what it was…yes.”
“I’m sorry,” I croak, knowing those words will make me seem weak, won’t be enough, but they’re all I have left as the anxiety rocks me from the inside out.
Mom sighs, straightening her back and pushing her hair behind her ears. “It’s not your fault, Matthew.” Those are words I’d never thought I’d hear come out of her mouth. “Everyone wants what we have. Everyone wantsmoreand some people will do dastardly things to get it or keep it.”
Her words are a horse pill in my mouth, impossible to swallow.
As we pull away from the curb, Hector comes rushing out the front entrance. He paces in frustration, seemingly scanning the faces for mine.
I hate how utterly heart-stopping he still looks in the moonlight. I squish that thought like the pest it has become.
What I felt from the start was right. I don’t belong here. Being here made me soft. It made me care. It opened me up, and it sent the bucket of paint on an impossible string slamming straight into my chest.
No more.
I face forward and find Mom’s hand on the leather seat between us.
Chapter 34
Mom stays in the car while Maxim and I run inside to grab my things from the basement.
I’m grabbing items left and right, a Frankenstein’s monster of mistakes causing destruction every which way.
In the bathroom, I catch sight of Hector’s Breathe Right strips beside my SpectraLite mask. It makes me sick to my stomach how the sweetness could spoil so quickly.
Krampus roars right on cue. Autopilot prompts me to throw everything into the nearest bag without a care. Clothes, shoes, and toiletries are strewn into the suitcases, lotion bottles spilling all over expensive fabric.Fuck it.I don’t have the energy to care.
I shudder, slinging one zipped bag toward the staircase. My moment of thought cost me necessary seconds because a text pops up from Mom.
