“He asked me to Homecoming.” A giddy expression washed over her. “I mean, I told him I’d think about it. I didn’t want to seem too eager, you know? But it felt right, Harleigh. It felt… wonderful.”
Guilt and shame rose inside me, choking the air from my lungs. God, I was a horrible person to make this about me. But I needed her. I needed Celeste more than I cared to admit. But I couldn’t burst her bubble, I wouldn’t.
“Anyway, if we do end up going together, we can all go. Maybe you can ask Nate or—”
“Nate?” My attention snagged on his name. “Why the hell would I ask Nate?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “You two seemed kind of close tonight.”
“Yeah, well we’re not.”
“Sorry, I just thought—”
“You don’t have to worry about me, Celeste,” I said, relieved it was dark enough to hide the truth in my eyes.
“Nothing will change,” she said softly, cushioning the words with a half-promise.
Because we both knew love changed everything.
And not always for the better.
The next morning, I watched Celeste at breakfast, glued to her cell phone, a dreamy expression plastered on her face. And the pit in my stomach I’d fallen asleep with only grew.
It was already happening. It would start with some flirty texts back and forth, and then Miles would ask her out. Before long they would be inseparable, and I would be the third wheel to their fledgling relationship.
A burden that would eventually suffocate them.
“Who’s that?” Max asked, flicking his head to his sister’s cell phone.
“Miles.”
“Please don’t tell me you’re finally giving Mulligan a shot?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Oh come on, Sis. You’re not that dumb. Mulligan has been trailing you around like a lost puppy since eighth grade.” Her cheeks pinked as she muttered something under her breath, making Max chuckle. “So predictable. Shame you both have to babysit weirdo.”
“Max!” Celeste fumed, sending me an apologetic smile that did nothing to ease the knot in my stomach.
She’d given him hell for revealing my secret to his friends but Sabrina had quickly put an end to their fighting. Not that I’d expected anything else.
“What?” He shrugged wearing a mask of innocence. “I’m only saying what we’re all thinking. Although if the rumors are true, maybe Nate can keep her company.”
Celeste came to my defense. “Shut up, Max. It’s not even like that.”
“Oh, come on—”
But I was already out of my seat, heading for the stairs and my room beyond that. I couldn’t sit and listen to his cruel words, even if they held some degree of truth.
Tears stung my eyes as I headed straight for the roof terrace, slamming the door behind me. Going to the balustrade, I clenched my hand into a fist, hard enough that my nails cut into my palm. The pain was an instant relief, soothing the storm raging inside me.
I breathed in for four seconds, held it for seven, and exhaled for eight, repeating it over and over until the rapid beat of my heart slowed and the tremors running through me began to ebb away.
Of course Celeste wasn’t going to be around forever. It was silly to think she would be. But she’d been my crutch ever since I’d gotten out of Albany Hills. It wasn’t that we were half-sisters—that didn’t really matter to me at all—it was that she had chosen to befriend me, to get to know me beyond the awful introduction we’d had last year, when I’d first moved here.
It was more than I could say for my father, Sabrina, and Max. Even Mrs. Beaker had kept her distance, acting polite but wary around me. And I got it, I did. I’d freaked out last November, and I’d scared them all. But I was trying to do better, trying not to lose myself to those thoughts again.
Stop. Breathe. Focus. Focus on something positive. A small achievable goal to give you purpose. But I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t find something in the shadows closing in around my thoughts, blotting out all the bursts of light. If I didn’t do something, I’d quickly find myself at the bottom of a black hole so deep, I would never crawl back out.
Pulling my phone out of my back pocket, I scrolled through my short list of contacts and found her number, hitting call. It was early on a Saturday morning. She wouldn’t answer, but that was okay. Things weren’t at crisis point… yet.
Her automated message kicked in and I waited for the beep. “Hi, Dr. Katy. It’s Harleigh. Harleigh Maguire. Something happened, and well, I think I need a session. I’m okay… but I feel… I feel restless. Anyway, I’ll talk to you soon hopefully. Bye.”
I hung up and stared out at the horizon. I didn’t want to relapse. I didn’t want to end up back in Albany Hills again. But it wasn’t something I could necessarily control.
The emotional pain of finding my mom dead, of being ripped from my life in The Row, and being abandoned by Nix, was something I didn’t allow myself to feel often. It creeped up on me sometimes though, striking without warning, like a huge weight being dropped on me, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t escape out from under it. I’d gotten good at distracting myself from those intense feelings. Whether I refused to let them take root or focused on inane things instead, I’d learned to manage them.
To live with them.
But seeing Nix again, being forced to face the truth of the last nine months and having the intimate details of my life banded around school… it was too much, and slowly every defense I’d built over the last few months, even my coping mechanism, was being eroded away.
I wanted to be strong, to believe that I could do it. But the truth was, I was tired.
So freaking tired.
My finger ran absentmindedly over the ugly raised scar along my wrist. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t. I hadn’t wanted to last year either, not really. But things had gotten too much to bear. The pain and grief and heartache had become a living breathing thing inside me, blotting out every shred of light until the darkness had slowly consumed me until I was desperate for a way out. A way to make it all stop. Just for a moment.
I wanted to believe that things would get better. That one day, when I was far far away from Darling Hill, I would be happy again.
But sometimes, I found myself wondering if maybe it would be just better to end it all.
Nix
“Nix, sweetie. What the hell happened?” Jessa picked up my hand, balking at the sight of my busted knuckles. They had started to heal from my disastrous fight with Meathead at Busters, but I’d split them open again, teaching Chloe’s friend Dan a thing or two about how not to treat women.
He’d taken her to some party, gotten her wasted, and tried to fuck her in the bathroom. When she kneed him the balls, he’d gone and found another girl to stick his dick in.
I’d lost it.
Not even Zane could pull me off the asshole. I didn’t always get things right, but Chloe was as good as family and the thought of some entitled douchebag putting his hands on her was like a red flag to a bull.
“Don’t worry about it,” I pulled my hand away and tucked it under the counter.