“I played soccer, and I surf in my free time,” I reply, doing my best to smile back at her. I just really don’t feel like smiling right now, but I’m trying. For some reason, I want her to like me.
“That sounds fun,” she says, causing Luna to scoff.
“Mom, the only person you’re fooling is Bailey because everyone here knows how much you hate the ocean,” she says, reminding me of Kaitlyn a little, which only rips open the scab on my bleeding heart. “She has a huge fear of sharks. Won’t go anywhere near the water.”
“Luna,” her dad says in warning, and she rolls her eyes, shooting me a quick look as if to ask,Can you believe this?
“What? It’s not a secret.”
I surprise everyone—including myself—by laughing. It’srefreshing to have someone be brutally honest. She tilts her head, studying me. Maybe I shouldn’t have laughed, but I’m not sorry I did. Luna doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t take her eyes off me. It’s a little unnerving, and I feel like she’s cataloguing every move I’m making.
“Lu,” Carter says, and she huffs, taking a bite of spaghetti.
“What? You said to be ourselves, and not make it weird that Mom’s ex-fiancé’s son showed up.”
Ryan laughs, shaking his head as Kiera sputters on her wine. “I think he meant, don’t do that,” he says, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned from being silent, is you can understand a lot just by listening.
It’s a similar yet entirely different dynamic from mine, but I’m trying to wrap my head around all of this.
Carter wasn’t lying when he called himself the black sheep of this family. Luna and Ryan are clearly close, which makes sense given the closeness of their ages. Luna is on the debate team, which definitely matches her bluntness from earlier. Ryan is on a scholarship studying forensic science at North Carolina State. I can understand why Carter feels like the odd one out. It seems like choosing to love soccer made him feel like an outlier too.
They’re still a family, and I didn’t expect it to make me miss mine so much.
It’s not like I asked to be different.
I wonder if they’ll even miss me. Their lives will be so much easier with me gone—fitting the picture of perfection.
After dinner, I excuse myself to the restroom so I can have a second to breathe. I brace my hands on the sink, hating what I see staring back at me in the mirror.
All I see is someone lost, trying to find their place in the world. I hate that my face doesn’t belong to me, and how I didn’t feel important as an individual in a family of superstars. More than that, I hate seeing my parents in my features. Thecolor of my hair and eyes is a direct match to my mom, whereas my facial shape and nose belong to my dad.
It doesn’t matter how far I run. I’ll never be able to escape the parts of me I got from them.
Turning on the sink, I splash water on my face, trying to soothe my churning thoughts. It wakes me up a little, but despite the cat nap I took while waiting for Carter to get home, I’m exhausted. I don’t think the last forty-eight hours have fully hit me yet.
I drag my hands through my hair, creating dark spots in the golden locks. I can hear laughter coming from the kitchen, and I’m too busy focusing on the happiness in the room to notice I’m slowly being lured into the lion’s den.
I didn’t realize until it was too late.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Kaitlyn
NOW
I didn’t haveto look very hard to find Hunter. We’ve been tiptoeing around each other for the last few days, but the longer I think about it, the more I know we’re simply avoiding the inevitable.
Everything I’ve tried to paint since finding out the truth goes straight into the trash. Nothing fits together anymore, and I know why.
He’s outside the shed, kneeling over his surfboard as he scrapes off the wax with a comb. Being out on the water is how I clear my head, but cleaning and waxing his board is Hunter’s.
“Hey,” I say, approaching as Hunter looks up at me.
I don’t know if it makes me feel better or worse that he doesn’t look hopeful, and I think it’s because he knows it’s over.
“Hey.”
Hunter sits up, giving me his full attention. I hate feeling guilty for being the one to call the time of death on our relationship.
