Chapter 35 Don’t Blame Me! #3
Relief washes over me, but it’s tangled with sadness, leaving a bittersweet ache lodged in my chest. I sniff, swiping my face. “I hate you.”
Rachel pulls me into a hug, squeezing me tight. “Bitch, why are you crying? I’m coming back. You're a big girl, and you’ve got a really big, hot dude who’s totally going to wine and dine you as soon as I’m out of the way.”
I groan against her shoulder. “You’re ridiculous.”
She pulls back just enough to look me in the eyes. “No matter what happens, just know, you can do this. You don’t need anyone.”
I swallow hard. She’s wrong. I need her, but I don’t say it. Instead, I nod, dragging in a shaky breath as we both swipe at our tear-streaked faces.
She leans over, grabbing the envelope I set on the table, and her sly smile creeps back in. “Alright, enough with the waterworks. Let’s open this and see what kind of mystery Kane dropped on your doorstep.”
A nervous flutter replaces the ache in my chest as I pick up the envelope, my hands are trembling slightly as I slide out the papers. My eyes skim the contents, and my pulse quickens with every line. Then, I freeze.
“What?” I whisper, my voice barely audible over the pounding in my ears. My fingers tighten around the papers as Rachel leans in, scanning over my shoulder.
Her expression twists in confusion. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
My mouth goes dry. “I—I don’t know…” The ground tilts, and I can't seem to steady it. “I've seen my birth certificate before. It had their names. I know it did.” My voice rises slightly. “This… this can’t be right. And why does this say I was born in Scotland?”
The confusion rises, fast and overwhelming. My hands start to tingle, and I can feel the static creeping under my skin as my chest tightens further, making it hard to breathe. I grip the papers tighter, and my voice is barely above a whisper this time.
“Why don’t I have parents?”
Rachel’s hand brushes mine, “Rave… there’s got to be more to it,” she says gently, trying to anchor me before I completely spiral. “Remember, this was before the guys had the information you just gave them. Once they add the new details, I'm sure more will come to light.”
Her voice is steady, but it doesn't stop my stomach from twisting. I think I'm going to be sick.
Why wouldn’t my grandparents have told me this? Why are there no answers, just more fucking questions?
“Honestly, I’m not worried,” I lie, forcing everything into a box and shoving it somewhere deep. “Like you said, if anyone can dig up more information, it’s them.”
I stretch, forcing a yawn past my lips, but exhaustion barely makes a dent in the chaos rattling inside my head. “For now, I'm calling it a night. Let’s focus on having some fun while you're still here, yeah? They can figure out the rest.”
I tack on a smile, hoping it masks everything I don’t want her to see.
She throws her arms around me, squeezing tight. “YES!” She all but yells, with an energy I wish I could match.
When she pulls back, her voice dips into a softer tone. “Do you want company?”
I shake my head, managing another small smile. “Nah, I'm just gonna crash.”
She nods, satisfied. “Okay, goodnight. You know where to find me.”
I wait until her door clicks shut before letting out a long breath, shutting my own door behind me. The second I do, I collapse onto the bed, still clutching the envelope and all its damning contents and finally let myself feel it.
The frustration, the confusion, the gnawing unease that hasn’t left me since the second I opened that fucking envelope. Let's be real, it's been since I got here.
My gaze drops to the Scotland birth certificate. My name's on it, but below it, where parents should be, is a blank space.
I flip to my U.S. birth certificate. Same name. Same missing parents.
Frustration knots in my stomach, I’m about to toss it aside when my fingers catch something stuck to the back of the U.S. copy.
It's another birth certificate.
This one lists the same details, but with the names of the people I’ve always known as my parents. Relief washes through me for half a second before suspicion kicks in.
What in the actual fuck is going on?
My hands heat as I stare at the papers, my thoughts are spinning too fast to keep up. The edges of my vision blur slightly and the room tilts in a way that makes my stomach hurt.
A whisper brushes the edge of my mind, so soft I almost convince myself I made it up. I jerk my head up, looking around, but shocker, it’s empty. The chill that's crawling up my spine says otherwise.
My eyes drift back to the Scotland certificate, and that’s when I see my birthday.
6/31.
I blink, staring at the date like it’s going to rearrange itself into something logical. Something real. But it doesn’t. There’s no such thing as June 31st.
My chest tightens, as I shuffle through the rest of the papers, each one sparking a different memory, and a different wave of emotions.
My fingers flip through the pages and I skim over something else. There's a copy of my recent run-in with the law. Heat rushes to my cheeks when I think about Kane or even Cam coming across these. Wish I could’ve been a fly on that wall.
When my eyes land on the papers about Mike, my curiosity gets the better of me. I never would’ve guessed some of this about him. He’s come a long way, turning his life around, building something for himself.
I didn’t expect to feel respect for him. And yet…
I set the papers aside, getting up to turn off the lights. I crawl back into bed, and stare out the window while my thoughts spiral. I try to make sense of everything that I just read, but none of it makes sense. If anything it's more confusing.
This is getting out of hand.
The knot in my chest cinches tight. I try to breathe slower, but my lungs don't want to listen. Then it's back—the tingling, crawling through my fingers and winding up my arms like a lit fuse on the wrong end of a bomb.
This has to be a sign of too much stress. Too much shit piling on at once, and too little sleep.
I don't even notice when the tears start this time. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to breathe through it, but they just keep coming. I haven’t cried this much in my entire life. And yet here I am, unraveling at every turn.
Everything I thought I knew, everything I believed about myself, feels like it's been built on half-truths and carefully constructed lies. And now that I’ve started pulling at the edges, the whole damn thing is unraveling faster than I can keep up.
I don’t even know what to believe anymore.
The more I try to piece it together, the more untethered I feel. It feels like I'm floating in the middle of a storm with nothing to hold onto. It’s disorienting and no matter how much I tell myself to stop, it doesn’t change anything.
Hopefully, Cam finds something because if he doesn’t I don't know what the hell I’m supposed to do next.
For half a second, I wonder why I'm even doing this. Why I keep yanking threads when I could have just left them alone, let them sit here, neat and undisturbed, never questioning the life I already had.
I could just go home and pretend none of this ever happened.
It’s not like my life was bad before this. It was fine.
I was happy… wasn’t I?
I’ve spent my entire life not knowing who my parents were, and it never mattered before, so why should it now?
Except that’s a lie, too. Because even as I try to convince myself that none of this should matter, that knowing or not knowing shouldn’t change anything, I can feel how wrong that is.
There’s something here. Something telling me that if I leave now, if I walk away from this without seeing it through, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.
I can’t leave.
I shut my eyes, exhaustion pressing heavy into my bones. The mattress does its job and swallows me whole while tears slide down my cheeks. I don't even bother wiping them away.
They don’t change anything.
Just as sleep finally starts to pull me under, a low bark echoes in the distance, followed by a long, slow howl.