“I just want you to be happy too, and I don’t know if I’ve apologized, but I should have before now. I’m sorry for anything I did to hurt you—” I cut Mirabelle off when I twist my head to look at her because she owes menothing. I hate how I treated her and our family in the past.
“Don’t. Donotapologize. I believed the wrong—” I snap my mouth shut, afraid I’ve already let too much slip. “I’m the one who owes you an apology. I’m sorry.”
Mirabelle struggles to get to her feet, and I move to help her, but she swats my hands away. “I can still get up by myself. It just takes me a little bit longer than it used to.”
“Okay,” I agree, but I’m still ready to step in at a second’s notice. I’d never let anything happen to her, especially not after everything she’s done for Javi.
“You were saying something about believing the wrong something?” Mirabelle’s forehead creases, and her dark eyes narrow. “Was someone telling you stuff about our family? Is that the reason you left?”
Fuck, fuck, fuck.“I-I can’t do this now. We need to finish setting up and—” She cuts me off by throwing her arms around me. I freeze, not anticipating comfort for mistakes I made.
“Later. We’ll talk later,” she says, and I feel like I can’t breathe. I don’t want to talk about this later. I don’t ever want to talk about this with my family, but I opened the doors. I told Kaitlyn as much of the truth as I’m willing to face, but it doesn’t mean I want to burden my family after putting them through so much. I know Luna thinks they won’t hate me if I tell them, but it’s not like we can go back and change anything.
I slowly return her hug, wanting nothing more than to find some room to hide in while I sort out how I’m feeling right now. I wait the appropriate amount of time before pulling away, making some excuse about having something to go do. I don’t even know what I said. I just need space to breathe.
One bonus of Henry and Mirabelle owning a fucking castle means there’s a lot of rooms to disappear in.
Sinking into a corner, I rest my elbows on my knees with the intent of calming myself, except I fall deep into the swirling abyss surrounding the length of time I was gone.
My teeth are chattering despite my best attempts to keep them still. It’s so goddamn cold. The thin jacket I have wrapped around me is doing nothing to keep me warm from the heavy onslaught of rain. I gave Javi my heavier coat to protect him from the chill that sinks into your bones and lingers. I can deal with it, but he can’t.
I thought we were past the freezing temperatures, but it just feels like a cruel joke after last week’s false spring. I didn’t expect it, and on days like this, the shelters fill up quickly. No one gives a shit if you’re a kid or not. You snooze, you lose.
I lost this time.
Javi curls up tighter into my side, seeking comfort from me in his sleep. I don’t know how he can sleep through weather like this, but I’m grateful he can.
God, I hope he doesn’t get sick from being out in this.
I barely have enough money to feed us, let alone take him to a clinic to get antibiotics to fix him. The last thing I want to do is call Luna for money because I don’t want her to think it’s the only reason I still talk to her. It’s not.
She’s my lifeline to some sense of normalcy. Lu has thisuncanny ability to catch me off guard in the best way, putting things in perspectives my “pea-sized brain”—as she likes to refer to it—can’t comprehend until “someone of higher intelligence spells it out for me.” The first time she said it, I laughed so hard I nearly cried. Lu helped coax me out of my shell, and stuck by my side when Kiera finally admitted Carter wasn’t my brother. She hasn’t spoken to her mother since.
I told her she didn’t have to do that, but Luna shut down any notion that she was doing it for me. She insisted she was doing it for Carter and herself.
While Luna hasn’t spoken to Kiera, Carter hasn’t spoken to me. I’m not sure if it’s out of guilt since he was the one who sought me out and laid the foundation for the bomb I used to blow up my life, but nothing I said could change his mind.
He told me to go home.
I couldn’t, though. Not by that point. It’d been eight months since I left my family after burning (quite literally) the last chance they would have given me. I’m honestly shocked they never pressed charges, since I’m sure Mirabelle and Henry told my parents what I did.
A crack of lightning and rolling thunder has me pulling Javi closer.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Kaitlyn
NOW
“I can’t find Bailey,”Javi says, walking into the kitchen where I’m making sandwiches for everyone.
“Are you sure?” I ask, and he shrugs, looking on the counter.
“Can you cut them in triangles instead of squares?”
I chuckle under my breath, smiling. “I can do that. When’s the last time you saw B?”
“Carrying blankets upstairs, but then he disappeared. We’re gonna build a fort,” Javi says, smiling. “Do you want to help?”
