“I’m not having this conversation, Phoenix. He’s stressed, under a lot of pressure. Sometimes he struggles to control himself.”
She didn’t need to tell me that. I had enough scars littering my body as evidence of Joe Wilder’s regular lack of self-control.
“Fine,” I snapped, barely reining in the anger vibrating inside me. “But I can’t help you if you won’t help yourself.”
She glanced up and gave me a sad smile. “Sometimes it’s harder to walk away than it is to stay, Nix.”
“Yeah, I know.”
And I fucking hated it.
Jessa wasn’t my mom. But she was the closest thing I’d ever had to one. I was supposed to protect her. I had protected her more than once over the years. And it always ended up the same, with us both taking a beating.
We both knew to pick our battles now. When to stand our ground and when to stand down. But when I saw her like this, her fake smile and haunted eyes, I wanted to take the steak knife from the block and gut my father like a fish. It was the least he deserved.
Sometimes, I wondered how much of him I had inside me. How far it would take to push me before I snapped.
Rubbing my temples, I let out a steady breath, forcing some of the rage out of me. “I’m going out.”
“Oh, I thought we could—”
Dejection washed over her, and I felt like an asshole. But I didn’t trust myself enough to stay.
“I can’t be here, not when he… I’m sorry.”
“I understand. Please… don’t make a thing out of this. He already apologized.”
My teeth ground together so hard my jaw hurt. “Yeah, whatever. I’ll see you later.” I stalked down the hall to my room at the back of the trailer. The same room I’d grown up in. Same peeling gray walls and mildew encrusted window. The view at least was better than some trailers, overlooking the edge of the trees leading down to the reservoir.
I grabbed a black hoodie off the back of my chair and a packet of gum off the desk and got the fuck out of there before Joe returned.
And I did something really fucking stupid.
Maybe even more stupid than what I was about to do.
If The Row made my chest constrict as if I was being crushed under a concrete block, being in Old Darling Hill made my skin feel stretched too tightly over my bones. My car, even though I tried to keep her clean and tidy, stood out against the pristine vehicles lining the streets and parked in big sweeping driveways.
I felt like an exhibit in a zoo as I cruised toward the other side of the neighborhood, the strange glances and pursed lips brushing up against me like shards of glass. People knew I didn’t belong here. Whether it was my car, my black hoodie, or inked skin, they took one look at me and branded me an outsider.
It bothered me more than it should, and the reason for that was one I didn’t want to admit to myself. One that was looming ahead as I drove toward the gated estate, taking a left turn down a dirt road that ran perpendicular to the fenced perimeter.
I’d been here before. More times than I was proud of. I knew if I drove a little further, there was a hole in the privet that gave me a clear view of the house and the driveway.
The house she lived in now.
I parked and ran my hands around my steering wheel, trying to ground myself. The first time I’d come here, I’d almost puked over myself. Not my finest moment but realizing I had lost Birdie to… to this was like a punch to the gut. Of course she’d chosen this place over The Row.
What normal person wouldn’t?
Except I never ever considered her as normal. She was… Fuck, it didn’t matter.
It was done.
We were done.
I needed to get that through my thick skull.
And yet—
Movement caught my eye through the privet and a flashy sports car rolled to a stop outside the house, followed by a Range Rover. A girl climbed out, the daughter if my research was correct. There was a son too. He was sixteen and his sister was a junior. And then there was Birdie.
Harleigh Wren Maguire.
The girl I’d always imagined would be by my side one way or another.
The guy climbing out of the sports car; him, I didn’t recognize. There was something about the way his eyes followed Harleigh, tracking her as she walked up to the house. My fingers went white as I clutched the steering wheel tightly as if it were the dude’s neck. She looked good despite the fucking awful blue and gray uniform they made the kids at Darling Academy wear. But seeing her like that, dressed up as one of them, standing on the steps of the huge fucking mansion, I wanted to roar at the world.
Harleigh wasn’t one of them. She wasn’t. But my eyes weren’t deceiving me. She was standing right fucking there. The same girl I’d always known and yet different somehow. I needed to get closer, to see her eyes. Her expressions. To hear her voice. It wasn’t something I wanted to do. It was something I needed to do. Like breathing air or drinking water.
Without it, I wouldn’t be able to rest.
To survive.
I wouldn’t be able to move the fuck on.
But I couldn’t exactly scale the fence and stroll up to them and ask for five minutes of her time. If she saw me. If they saw me…
No, I’d have to be patient. Bide my time and wait for the right moment.
They disappeared into the house and disappointment curled in my stomach, my mind running wild with scenarios about the guy. Who was he? How did he know Birdie? How well did he know her?
Anger bubbled in my chest, burning me up on the inside. I’d always thought of her as mine. Even when I hadn’t been old enough to realize what that word meant, the connotations it held.
Mine.
Mine. Mine. Mine.
Except she wasn’t mine now.
Maybe she never had been.
Nix
“What ya crying for?” I asked the dark-haired girl with the big green eyes. I’d been heading to my friend Zane’s trailer when I saw her, sitting on her porch steps, crying into her hands.
She went to my school, but I hadn’t talked to her before now. She was always on her own, doing a whole lot of nothing as she hung outside her double-wide, quiet and uncertain.
Like right now. She rubbed her eyes, blinking up at me. “I-I… nothing.” Her throat bobbed as she swallowed a sob.
“Is it your dad? My dad makes me cry sometimes.” He was a mean sonofabitch, always grumbling about something.
I knew he blamed me for my mom leaving. Not that it made any sense to me. It wasn’t like I wanted her to leave. If anything, we should have been a team, hating on her together. After all, she’d left us both. But no, he preferred to blame me. As if I chased her away.
I would never understand it, or him. But it was what it was. Joe Wilder was as stubborn as they came.
“I don’t got a dad,” the girl said through her tears. “It’s just me and my mom but she’s… it doesn’t matter.” She wiped her face with the back of hand.
“I’m Phoenix but my friends call me Nix.”
“I’m Harleigh Wren Maguire. But you can call me Harleigh.”
“Wren like the bird?”
She shrugged. “I guess.”
“Cool. Did you eat dinner yet? I’m going over to my friend’s house and his grandma makes the best hot wings in the whole of The Row.”