Bast’s hands fist at his sides, and he gives my mom a murderous look. “Do not call me that. My name isn’t Tyler.” His voice is cold. I’ve never seen or heard him like this.
Was this all a game? Is he even the Bast I’ve fallen in love with?
“So this… us…” I motion between us. “It was all just…” I can’t even say the words as my heart splinters further.
His eyes soften the smallest amount when he looks at me. “At first you were a means to an end. I came to Wisconsin to see her, and when I saw the relationship she had with you, I wanted her to feel the pain she caused me. I ruin you, which ruins dear old Mom. I purposely met you at the coffee shop, I bought the company you work for, and I’m the one who laid you off. All to get you to Seattle so I could… but then…” He swallows hard,and his deep blue eyes gloss over. “My feelings for you are real, Hattie. I fell in love with you.”
I shake my head.
No. No. This is Rich all over again.
He lied.
Pretended.
None of this was real.
He wanted to ruin me.
Nausea overtakes me, and I race over to the grass, collapsing on all fours, and throw up. My tears mix with the vomit in the green grass as they drip from my cheeks.
A large hand rubs my back, and I flinch away from the touch until I glance to my right to see my dad. He helps me up. I fall into the safety of his arms, sobbing against his shirt.
“None of this changes how I feel about you,” Bastion says from behind me.
I let go of my dad and whip around to face the man who has succeeded in ruining me, just as he planned. “It changes everything! You lied to me. Over and over again. Did you ever plan to tell me?”
He doesn’t answer. It’s not as if I would have believed him had he said yes anyway.
I glance at my mom. She’s still staring at Bastion in disbelief.
“You need to go.” My voice is hollow, as though all the emotion has been scooped out of me.
“No, Hattie.” Bastion takes a few steps toward me with his hands up, but my dad puts himself between the two of us.
“I believe my daughter asked you to leave, young man.”
I shouldn’t let my dad fight my battles for me, but he feels like the only safe place at the moment. The man I loved has deceived me in the worst way, and the woman who raised me is not the woman I thought she was. My head spins. I can’t make sense of anything that’s happening right now.
“Just leave, Bastion.” The words are full of desperation and pleading.
“Bastion?” he clarifies, hurt lining his eyes from me using his full name. His shoulders sag, and he walks toward the pool, gathering his things. Once he’s done, he comes to stand before my dad and me. “This might have started as one thing, but it ended as another.”
He makes his way through the shattered glass sprawled across the deck-slash-patio, crunching it under the soles of his shoes, until he stops right in front of my mother. “You deserve to suffer for what I had to endure. My only regret is that Hattie now will as well.”
Bastion disappears into the house and out of my life, forever.
46
HATTIE
Once Bastion is gone, I race into the house, tiptoeing over the broken glass, and upstairs into the guest room. I dive into the bed, pulling up the covers over my head as if I’m a child and still believe it will shut out the world.
But nothing keeps the utter devastation from taking hold of my thoughts and emotions. There’s so much to take in that I can’t settle on one thought or feeling for long—heartbreak at Bastion’s betrayal, shock at a version of my mother I had no idea existed, or trying to reconcile that the pain in Bastion’s eyes when he told me about his childhood was caused by the woman who has loved and provided for me.
I sob into the pillow until my eyes sting. I haven’t felt this much pain since my mom’s death. Everything that went down with Rich was a fraction of the despair seeping into my body right now.
Sometime later, my bedroom door opens, but I don’t come out from under the covers. It’s a childish response, I know, but I can’t bear to set eyes on either of my parents when I know that one or both of them have been keeping this from me.
