“There’s a lot you don’t tell,” I retort. “If I’ve got it so wrong, then fucking tell me. Because as far as me and the rest of the goddamn world is concerned, you’ve never retracted your support for him publicly, which means you still support him, and you still think I’m a fucking liar!”
The last sentence echoes in the massive space as I seethe down at her, my chest pumping as that familiar feeling builds in my chest.
Hurt.
I’ve spent nearly my entire childhood hurting, and the woman standing in front of me is part of the reason.
Tears gather in her eyes as she stares up at me with a trembling bottom lip.
“I’ve always believed you,” she whispers. “I still do. I believe you.”
Those four words are catastrophic to my insides.
I’ve always believed you.
Despite how hard I try to shove them down, tears rise to the surface of my eyes. My sinuses burn as I fight them back.
“Then why the fuck did you lie?” My voice cracks, and I fucking hate it. I hate her. So fucking much.
Her mouth parts like she’s going to speak, but just like always, she clicks her teeth shut.
And that only pisses me off more, but it also makes me deeply suspicious.
“If you’re biting your tongue, you’re either lying to me now and telling me what you think I want to hear so I don’t hurt you.” She shakes her head, denying it before I’ve even finished. “Or your secrets will only make me angrier.”
This time, she glances away, and I have my answer.
And it’s a fucking hit to the sternum.
Once again, my arm snaps out, but this time, I grip the underside of her jaw, tugging her until her front is flush with mine. With a sharp gasp, she clutches my wrist with both hands and digs her nails into my skin. The position forces her onto the tips of her toes, struggling to keep her balance.
“What are you hiding from me?” I snarl.
“Not everything is about you,” she bites out.
“No, it’s about you,” I agree. “The second your father took everything from me, you became all I had left.” I jerk her closer, eliciting a strangled gasp from her throat. “My entire world revolves around you, darling, and you’re no longer his to have—you’remine.”
She shakes her head, staring up at me like she’s seeing me for the first time.
Did she think my obsession with her was so trivial?
I’ve watched her for as long as I can remember, just out of sight or hidden in the background. From the moment I got my first cell phone at twelve and stalked her online, to taking two buses to Silent Mist and watching her from afar any chance I got—the minuscule free time I had outside of swimming, I spent thinking, watching, and hating her.
I visited her at her first job as a barista, though she was too much of an anxious wreck to recognize me. I was at the dealership when she bought her first car with her own money. Her friend’s house for homecoming and prom. When she opened the acceptance letter for HCU with Agent Jones and his wife. Her graduation. The day she left for college, I drove behind her with Rogue and Severen beside me.
Even on her eighteenth birthday, when her mother killed herself, I was there, watching from afar as paramedics pushed her mother out of the house on a gurney, a sheet covering her lifeless body while she sat on her front steps, face blank and eyes distant as silent tears rolled down her cheeks.
I’vealwaysbeen her fucking ghost, and she’s always been my skeptic.
“Were you in on it? Is that it?” The mere possibility of it makes my hands flex with fury. “Did you help him murder her?”
My mind instantly flips over various scenarios in which she somehow played a part in my mother’s death. The thought sends me spiraling, and in a blink, I’m whipping her around and pushing her back toward the edge of the pool.
She squeals, desperately digging her heels in to resist me, but she’s helpless. As helpless as my mom was in her last moments.
“No!” she shouts, terror rounding her eyes.
Her chest heaves, and what little color remained in her face now completely diminishes.
