17. Chapter 14
S eeing Henry on his knees with tears streaming down his face makes me want to throw everything away, tell our dads that I fucked up and can’t marry this girl.
But I can’t.
Creed didn’t ask me to do this, but the idea of seeing Fern hurt like my mother was, isn’t something I can handle. I’ll crumble all over again, and this time it won’t only be me. Fern has captured so many hearts in this make-shift family of mine, and a mob war would be bloody.
If I can make all that go away, I’ll sacrifice my heart. And I know I’ll hate myself far longer than Henry will. So I steel my nerves and utter the worst possible words I can muster.
“I never loved you Henry, and the only mistake I made was letting you into my bed.”
Henry falls onto his ass, as if I hit him with everything in me, and I did. I know this will be the only way he’ll stop loving me. The only way I can make him move on. Even if the words taste like death on my tongue, and I hate myself for saying them.
Talon shoots out of his seat toward me, hands outstretched. His dad hooks him around the waist and jerks him back.
“Everyone says I’m the asshole, but I’d never do this.” He spits at my feet, and my insides roll. I want him to hit me, lay me out so that I can hide inside of my head. “You’re a fuc–” But I don’t hear the rest, Nile wrestles him out of the room, and Cin drops her head to follow. She won’t look at me, and God knows I deserve it.
“Your mother would be ashamed of you,” Henry spits, shaking and vibrating with rage and heartbreak, I can see it written on his face. His words hit me like a tornado filled with bricks and shrapnel. It feels like everyone takes a breath and holds it, waiting for me to explode.
“She would hate you for this!”
His words strike home, but I can’t let them pierce the memory of her. She wouldn’t hate me, she would cry and plead with me not to throw my life away, but she would understand why.
He will too.
Eventually.
As calm as I can, I stand and turn toward my room, stepping over where Henry’s still sitting on the floor clutching his chest. Something hard hits my back, and I spin, facing my family once again. Henry’s standing now, chest puffed up, arms straight by his sides, pointing at the floor but looking at me.
“Wear it, melt it,” he says, voice detached while hot tears stream down his face. “Or better yet, throw it away, you’ve gotten really good at that. It doesn’t matter anymore.” He walks out to the patio where the string lights cast a soft glaze, slamming the glass door on his way out. I don’t even glance down at whatever it is, choosing to turn and walk to my room and close myself in.
My fist hits the tile of the shower, over and over, until my knuckles split and the tile is cracked. I gathered sweats and a t-shirt from my bag and came straight to the bathroom after destroying Henry’s heart.
After obliterating any sliver of a chance Henry and I had.
I try convincing myself that it was worth it, that he’ll move on, and I’ll try to make my faceless bride happy. I can do that, I don’t need Henry to be happy. The lie strikes me in the chest, and tears run down my face along with the shower water.
He’ll be okay. He has to be.
I repeat it over and over in my head, willing it to be true. The lock on the door turns, the click is as loud as a gun firing. Toby’s face comes close enough to the fogged glass that he reaches over and wipes the inside of the shower, so we’re standing face to face.
I can’t look at him, saying that in front of them… I used to think Talon was the biggest asshole in our group. But I think that title belongs to me now.
He raises his other hand so just his fingers are visible over the glass, and something dangles from his fingers. It catches and swings back and forth, it’s gold with something hanging on the end.
“I don’t want it,” I repeat and look away. Yet the way Toby stands there and waits as if I’m going to change my mind makes me turn my head. It’s a football, with my new number engraved on the back. I don’t need to touch it to know that it’s real gold and that Henry probably spent a lot of his own money on it, that he earned working at the coffee shop. That he likely painstakingly thought about it for months until it finally hit him.
“I won’t tell you what you already know,” Toby’s usual carefree voice is replaced by a grim one, “but I will tell you that you were wrong. You should have let us decide as a unit like we always do.”
“Talon has Cin, you have Gemma or Salem. I can’t keep track, and Henry deserves to be loved by someone who can love him back.”
“Talon and I can make our own decisions,” he spits. “And as for Henry, you’re an idiot if you think that person isn’t you.” He retracts his hand and leaves the room, pulling the door shut behind him.
My mind works on autopilot, cleaning my body and washing my hair. The itch to shave it again is there. Henry loves my hair, even refused to watch me cut it after mom’s funeral.
Correction, Henry loved my hair.
Ripping the strands, I let the memory of mom’s death wash over me.
The heavy smell of smoke singes my nostrils and has me up and out of bed before I’m fully awake. My hip bumps into the desk my parents got me that I hardly ever use.
“Mom!” I scream around the increasing smoke. When she doesn’t answer, my blood runs cold despite the heat, and I rush to the door. “Mom?!” I scream again, willing her panicked voice to answer me back.
Flames lick the stairs, eating their way up the carpet. Plastering myself to the wall, I get as low as I can and feel my way to my parent’s room. We’re on opposite sides of the house, and I pray with every fiber of my being that she’s okay.
“Mom!!” I holler again, with no answer. Their door is shut, and the knob is hot, using my shirt as a mitt, I turn the knob and push open the door. Checking the bed, I don’t find her. Releasing a breath, I’m hoping that maybe she’s already outside.
Glass explodes somewhere in the house, I can hear the tinkling of glass hitting the tile floor. Crawling to their closet, I check to make sure she’s not hiding in there. When I don’t find her, I move to their bathroom, again she’s nowhere to be seen. So I keep moving but pause at the stairs. They’re completely engulfed now, I have no way through, so I circle back and throw open the window in my parent’s room. The bushes below will break my fall, and then maybe I can get in through the side door and check for mom.
“Banks!” I hear my name, but no relief fills me. “Fauna!” Dread sours my stomach at dad’s voice calling for both of us. Instead of just me, which means mom is still in the house. I can’t leave her, I won’t. Bundling their comforter around my body, I beeline through the house, back to my bedroom, where I’ve snuck out a few times.
There’s a tree outside of my window, and the greenhouse is below it. The fire must not have worked its way in there yet because the inside is still dark and green, but a yellow flicker threatens to break its way in.
Putting my foot out over the window’s seal, I place it on the thickest part of the limb that I can reach, and repeat it with the other. Dropping the comforter on my floor, I ease the rest of my body out into the night air. It’s dark, save for the inferno that’s becoming my house.
“Banks!” I hear Dad call again. “Banks! Thank God!” He says, arms stretched wide above him. “Where’s your mother?”
“I couldn’t get down the stairs!” I yell back, my throat raw from the smoke.
“Can you get down?”
“I’m fine. Go, Dad! Get Mom!” I scream as loud as my throat will allow. He hesitates but circles back around the house and disappears. I hope she’s in the greenhouse, maybe she went to sit there to wait on Dad. My feet hit the grass, and I scramble, pulling open the door to the side of the glass structure Mom loves so much.
“Mom?” I yell, seeing the smoke roll in above my head. “Mom! Where are you?” Tears dot my vision, panic clutches my stomach, and I yell until I’ve searched the whole greenhouse and haven’t seen her.
The smoke becomes too thick, and I run outside to the sound of sirens and heavy trucks crunching gravel. Walking around the side of the house, I see the lights, but everything feels fuzzy, and my vision waves in and out.
“Dad…” I feel faint like my body can’t hold itself up anymore.
“We’ve got one over here!” Someone’s lifting my head up, placing a mask over my nose and mouth. Their voices are loud, but I can’t understand what they’re saying. “Fauna!” I hear Dad clear as day, my eyes pop open, but I can’t sit up. Can’t move as I see my father carrying a body out of the house.
Screaming, so much screaming, her name, her nickname. His arms look like they’re on fire, and I want to go to him, but the person whose words I can’t understand is keeping me pinned down.
“You don’t need to see that,” the voice says.
My dad’s howling, beating on his arms, shaking the body he pulled out, and there are people surrounding him now. Trying to look at his arms and take him away from the body.
“Mom?” I think I say out loud, but I can’t be sure because no one answers. My chest feels funny and tight, like I can’t catch my breath. Because my brain knows who that is.
My mother.
My beautiful, kind mama is lying unmoving on the ground with my dad by her side. The smell of acrid, sulfur assaults my senses.
My eyes water, my chest seizes, and I think I’m shaking. I can’t breathe. Air won’t pull into my lungs. Everything starts to swim, and I choke.
“Fauna!” I’ve never heard my dad’s voice so much as waver, so when the crack in his voice happens as he wails, it feels deafening like the whole world stopped and waited for him to take his next breath.
And, I think the world might be waiting for me too.