Chapter 26 #2
On the rare occasions when my mother does spare me a glance, she looks at me like I’m nothing at all, like I don’t exist unless I’m an inconvenience.
Our interactions, or lack thereof, were always far from motherly.
They were cruel and filled with disappointment.
Like she’s internally cursing whatever twist of fate made me hers.
Sometimes, I wonder if I was ever even a daughter to her. Am I really just an obligation? A mistake she learned to tolerate?
Across the table, Kai sits as he always does—posture perfect, yet robotic in a way no one but me ever seems to notice.
He’s too good to be true, but at the same time, there’s something weirdly eerie about his stillness, like he isn’t entirely here.
He’s always been slightly distant, but after being sent away, something about him changed.
He’s colder now. Hollowed out. It’s strange how someone so physically present can feel so absent.
He sits between Will and Christian, a trio I have always found quite bizarre. They never made sense to me, not together at least, and yet they made it work. Now, I only ever see them together.
Kai and Will had formed an unlikely friendship a few years back, one that seemed almost inevitable.
Simply because Will needed Kai, and Kai needed Will. Their friendship, if one could even call it that, wasn’t surprising.
It was almost like they had passed the stage of friendship.
They had skipped that stage and landed directly in a place of understanding.
They got each other in the way that people who are equally broken understand each other.
They don’t even need to talk about it. They just knew.
I’ve always envied that about them. The way they can be silent together and still be seen.
Across from me, Christian listens attentively to whatever my father is rambling on about. Unlike most, Christian has the gift of genuine listening. He observes, absorbs, and retains information. A strategist.
A poet with a brilliant literary mind—one I can’t even begin to understand.
But despite Christian being Kai’s cousin, and living with him, they weren’t always close; something shifted between them over the years. Time, I suppose. Or necessity.
And then, of course, there was that other boy. The small one who hadn’t quite grown into his size, yet had the kind of confidence most people could only dream of. The one that had been so badly tormented at school at one point. Bullied in every sense of the word.
Liam. From the Grey family.
He was little, but tough, and had the kind of resilience that most people overlooked. He was brave, I’ll give him that.
At first, Kai had only watched. He never stepped in, never said a word. And then one day, Liam fought back.
I remember it like it was yesterday, because it was so sudden, so unexpected. One moment, he was getting shoved against a locker, and the next, he was throwing a punch, catching one of them—one of Kai’s so-called “friends”—clean across the jaw.
Hilarious if you ask me. I didn’t know much about his other friends, because as far as I know they were never really his friends, just puppets. They’ve always been expendable to him; in fact, I gather most people would fall into that same category when it comes to Kai.
And sometimes, I think, all of them do.
The kid he’d hit had stumbled back, dazed, more out of shock than pain, and Liam just stood there, fists clenched, breathing hard, his eyes burning. The others had waited for Kai to react. These were his people, his circle, and Liam had just made an enemy of them.
But Kai hadn’t been mad.
He hadn’t reprimanded him or stepped in to put him back in his place. Instead, he had watched, something almost amused flickering in his expression, and then, of all things, he had smiled.
He was impressed, I realized. As if something in Liam’s defiance had pleased him.
That was the moment everything changed, and Kai took him under his wing after that. He made sure no one touched him again, and no one ever did.
There isn’t a single soul in that school that would go against Kai’s wishes. It would be suicide, socially speaking. It’s a kind of superpower, I guess. To have everyone bend backwards at your will.
Even then, I think we all understood he wasn’t quite like the rest of us. He had that particular sort of mind—strange, beautiful, and slightly out of reach.
He has always been, to put it plainly, something otherworldly.
And yet, it didn’t matter how often I’d watch him, I could never understand him in the slightest. And the moment you think you do, he’ll prove you wrong.
Like the time a few months back when he shocked the whole world and buzzed all his hair off.
I still don’t know why he did it. He didn’t even warn anyone or explain why. Kai hadn’t even flinched when Berlin had walked in on him that day and screamed the rooftops off.
One morning his hair was light brown and falling into his eyes the way it usually did. And the next day, it was gone.
Completely gone.
But what had stuck with me the most wasn’t even the act itself—though it was shocking, and god, he’d been beautiful with that hair—it was the way he carried himself after. Head high. Shoulders back. Like it wasn’t a loss at all. Like he didn’t even care.
He’d stood up to his father, I realized. In his own way. And that took courage. Because Gabriel Steele isn’t the kind of man you defy lightly.
It made me admire Kai even more, even as I wondered why.
Beside my sister, Kym and Wren sit quietly, glancing at each other every now and then. They’ve been getting along pretty well lately, which shocks me slightly, since Kym always seems so reserved.
Maybe even a little mean. At school at least.
People always complained about her, the students especially. Said she’s mean. That she’s a bully. That’s what others would call her—a bully.
She had quite the reputation, and because of that, it kept people from getting too close.
Me included.
But here at home, she’s much more careful.
Stiff. Unnervingly still to the point it’s almost worrying.
There’s always been a fear in her, a tension like she’s standing on the edge of a cliff, waiting for the wind to push her over.
I used to think she was just paranoid, then I saw her bare-faced in front of the bathroom mirror in school for the first time.
Now I understand.
Probably should have guessed earlier with the way Will is.
Paris
Four years ago
For some reason, I can’t seem to get my mother’s words out of my head. For some reason, I never could.
I tell myself I don’t care. That I hate her, that I hate all of them. And maybe I do. Maybe I should.
But hatred is not a door slammed shut forever, it’s a messy thing. An unpredictable one too. And the truth—the awful, pathetic truth—is that I want my mother’s approval more than I hate her.
Because hatred doesn’t ache like this. Hatred doesn’t leave you waiting for a glance, a word, some small scrap of acknowledgment.
Hatred doesn’t make you hold on to the memory of a hand that used to reach for yours, of a voice that used to say your name softly.
Hatred doesn’t keep you awake at night, wondering what you did wrong to make someone stop loving you.
There’s a need behind the anger. A gnawing need. I still want them to see me. To acknowledge me. To care.
It’s useless, of course. I learned a long time ago that they wouldn’t. If I were bleeding out at their feet, they wouldn’t so much as flinch. I’ve always been the uglier, stupider, irrelevant sister. A ghost.
I’m a ghost at home, a ghost at school—silent, unseen, and unworthy of anyone’s attention. No one ever cared. No one wanted to. And so, eventually, I stopped existing in the ways that mattered. Maybe I never existed at all.
The rain is falling when I step outside, and I let it soak through my clothes, let the cold sink deep into my bones.
It’s a beautiful thing, a comfort. It has a way of washing away things I don’t want to feel.
I don’t notice him at first. But then I do.
Kai Steele.
He’s leaning against a tree, hands in his pockets, drenched but unbothered.
There’s something alarmingly off about him today, like his mask has cracked just enough for something else to show through.
Something raw. Something almost broken. He looks different today—not charming, not detached.
Just sad. And I don’t know what to do with that.
“Hi,” I say, my voice barely more than a whisper.
He doesn’t answer, and I wonder if he even heard me, if he’s just going to ignore me like everyone else. Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe I should just keep walking.
Then his eyes meet mine. Beautiful, stormy, tired. There’s something vulnerable there, something I’ve never seen before.
“Y-you like… the rain too?” I ask, feeling ridiculous the second the words leave my mouth.
I want to curse myself for the stammer, for the pathetic attempt at conversation. For years, I’ve learned that speaking only leads to disappointment. It’s better to say nothing at all. But there’s something about the way he’s looking at me that makes me not care for once.
“My mother likes the rain,” he says finally, his voice quieter than I expected. He doesn’t look at me when he says it, and I’m grateful for it.
“So does mine,” I admit.
I don’t know why I say it. It’s not a lie, but it feels strange on my tongue, like a memory that doesn’t quite belong to me anymore.
There was a time when she loved me. When she loved both Berlin and me equally.
She used to take us outside, let us dance in the downpour, laugh as the sky spilled over us.
But that was another life. Another version of her. One that no longer exists.
Kai looks at me then, really looks at me, and I watch as the rain drips from his hair, runs down the sharp angles of his face. Then, instead of speaking, he nods toward me—toward my arm.
To the blood. The scars.