My heart stops dead in my chest, my stomach clenching in painful, sick inducing knots. I curl my fingers into my hand, digging my nails into the soft skin.
“Shit…” Jordan says, sounding like he’s in pain. “I’ve f**ked up badly. I thought she wouldn’t forgive me before … she’ll never forgive me now. She knew – she knew something was up, and I just kept telling her everything was okay.”
“Do you want me to be with you when you tell her?”
“No.” Jordan sighs. “I’ll tell her alone. I don’t want to bulldoze her with the two of us. I’ll go speak to her now.” The determination in his voice, and his heavy footsteps across the floor, have me turning to run back down the stairs.
I know I have no chance of making it, but still I try.
I hear the door open and Jordan say, “Mia,” in a tone that can only be described as fearful. I have no choice but to turn around.
The fear in his voice matches the fear on his face, but it’s the look in his eyes that’s the worst. He looks hopeless. Like he’s about to lose everything. Or maybe it’s me that’s about to lose everything.
And the sick I was feeling worsens.
Chapter Twenty-One
Jordan
When I was fourteen years old, Maisy Richards kicked me in the nuts at Ben Castle’s birthday party because she’d given me a handjob in the hall closet, then caught me making out with Sophie Jenkins an hour later.
It literally feels like your testicles have exploded and the flying debris is obliterating your insides like a dirty bomb, leaving you feeling pain of the unimaginable kind.
Up until exactly thirty seconds ago, I’d believed that was the most painful thing I would ever feel.
I was wrong.
Because standing here, seeing the crumpled look of devastation on Mia’s face after telling her that her mother—the mother who left her behind to be raised by a father who repeatedly beat her—is, in fact, the woman who raised me.
“I-I don’t understand…” She stumbles back, her knee making contact with the office desk with a sickening thud.
I reach for her, but she doesn’t even seem to have registered the pain, which only aids to show me how bad this is.
How badly I’ve screwed up.
“I’m so sorry.” I shake my head, disconsolate.
“She’s … my … your mom … dead.” Her hand grips her stomach as if she’s in actual pain.
“Mia…” I step toward her, needing to be close to her.
Her hand goes up, stopping me.
“Mia,” my dad says in his gentle ‘cop’ voice. “You should sit down. It’s a terrible shock you’ve had … sit. Let me get you a glass of water.”
She looks at my dad with a confused look on her face. Then her eyes slice back to me, and the way she looks at me … through me. Her eyes are ice-cold. The pain slides through me as easily as a hot knife in butter.
Then her eyes drift across the room to the wall, and I know what she’s looking at without me even needing to turn.
She’s looking at the framed photo of me, Dad and Mom. It was the last picture we had taken together before she died. The day I was leaving to go traveling.
Her face crumbles, and tears fall from her eyes.
She covers her face with her hands. I hear a sob emit from her, so painful it shatters my heart, leaving nothing but dust in its place.
I can’t stay away.
I cross the room in quick strides, and wrap my arms around her.
It’s only a second before she’s pushing me off with a strength I didn’t know she had.
“Don’t touch me … don’t ever touch me again.” She dries her face on her sleeve, turns and runs out the office.
I look at my dad for guidance because I literally don’t know what the hell to do.
“Go after her,” he urges.
I’m out of the door a second later.
I catch sight of Mia disappearing into her room. I run down the hall, expecting her door to be closed, but it’s not. It’s wide open.
I don’t go in the room out of respect for her space. So I stand in the doorway, gripping the frame to keep myself from going to her.
She’s pushing her feet into her sneakers and grabbing her purse.
“Mia?”
She ignores me, pulling her jacket on.
“Mia, please. Talk to me.”
She grabs her car keys, swings her purse over her shoulder, and without a word she pushes past me and walks quickly down the hall.
I’m at her heel, following, trying to talk to her.
“Please don’t go … just wait … I know how hard this must be for you … how much you’re hurting right now … but if you’ll just let me explain…”
She stops outside on the porch—the porch where I made love to her only a few hours ago, when I lied to her again—and slowly turns around.
The cold in her eyes, and the dead look on her face, tell me what I already fear.
I’ve lost her.
There is no getting past this.
I lied to her. I let her down. Men have been letting Mia down her whole life, and now I’ve just added my name to that list.
“Explain? You want to explain now? You’ve had DAYS TO EXPLAIN!” she yells. “DAYS TO TELL ME THE TRUTH, BUT YOU LIED … you lied.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “She loved you … not me – you. She left me with him. God, she must have hated me…”