I march with steam towards the bathroom, and without a pause or a breath or any other thought, I start snipping away the long tresses of my hair.
The same ones that resemble my mother.
I can’t do anything about those fucking muddy brown eyes, that are also a mirror of her but everything else, I can change. A steely kind of anger washes over me so much so that I don’t feel anything as I cut it all to the floor.
I snip, snip, and snip until I feel like I don’t look like her anymore. Until I no longer see her reflected back to me.
I don’t feel like it’s a huge moment for me, because it’s not. I don’t think its life changing but I do fucking know that I feel nothing at all. I don’t bother crying. I don’t show any emotions as I cut seventeen years of hair growth away.
Of course, I had the occasional hair trims from the hairstylist but I have never had a haircut like this before. I have no idea how many inches I take out but I keep going, my chest heaving fast and hard.
My chest is twisting so bad and I feel like I’m being suffocated. Like someone’s fist reached in and is squeezing the life out of me and now I’m bleeding all over the floor, the physical evidence being the tresses of hair at my feet.
Without wasting another second, and feeling like I might just drop dead right then if I stare at myself. . .at her. . .for another second longer, I drop the pair of shears in my hand after what feels like hours which is really minutes, on auto-pilot.
With my mouth wide open, gasping for breath, I start backing away from the mirror, feeling the soft tresses of my hair scattered on the floor swishing under my bare feet.
I look down as if struck by morbid curiosity and see my life on the marble floor of my bathroom but I keep backing away. I don’t bother looking at myself or how my hair looks now in the mirror.
With my chest heaving as if I just ran a marathon, I turn away and run out of my bathroom, heading straight towards my closet without even thinking about it.
I ignore the multiple mirrors around the closet. I ignore the lights that are glaring down at me. I ignore everything because I just need to go.
I need to go.
Now!
I dash straight for the fucking hidden door that is in my closet and pull it open, flying down the cold stairs, ignoring the fact that I’m barefooted, wearing nothing but a long sleep shirt and shorts underneath as I run for the road.
I ignore the morning dew of the grass wetting my feet further as soon as I run across the lawn, bursting out of my side of the house but I hardly feel it at all as I keep on running.
I don’t have a jacket on, but I hardly feel the cold morning air of Westbrook Blues as I keep on running.
I’m blind in my breaking apart but I keep on running.
I'm falling apart but I keep on running.
I run past the Montreals’ mansion, past the Eastons’ mansion and even past the Kings’ mansion.
I keep going, my heart pounding so hard against my chest it’s so damn painful but I keep going.
There is a scream lodged in my throat, in my soul really, but I dare not let it out yet. I keep running like the hounds of hell are chasing me.
I keep running even as the sunrise is about to break the dark sky, but the darkness is still there.
The darkness is so thick and deep within me and around me, there is no light. There is no light in Westbrook.
I gasp again as tears start blurring my vison but I keep on running, pushing myself as I go flying up the road. I’m blind to the promise of what might just be a glamourous morning but I know with the rising of the sun, this day will only be cementing an ugly fate and devastation for me.
Because with that cutting of my hair, it hit me that I’m not wanted.
I’ve been lied to by everyone around me.
I have no idea who my father is.
I’ve been raped, abused, molested and then cast away.
My mother never wanted me.
She cast me away in a mental institution and never looked back.
I lost my brother.
I had another sister that I was separated from birth.
I’m alone. . .
A whimper escapes my lips as my soul shatters but I hold it in. I’m almost there. I keep running until I reach the one place that I was hoping to come back to once I had answers, but I have more piles of lies exposed as the devastating truth.
Opening the wrought iron gates, I run straight for the part of the estate’s family burial plot where my brother was laid to rest.
As soon as I reach his resting place, I collapse right there by his stone covered in morning dew. The stone is cold but I don’t even feel it as with all the painful, agonizing anger within me, I start pounding against the fucking headstone that they placed there with a fucking simple inscription that I can’t read with the tears that blur my eyes.
“How could you?!” I scream.
“How could you leave me?” I demand, my heart breaking in a million, unrecognizable splinters.
“How could you leave me with her? How could you leave me with a mother like her?” I scream in frustrated anger. The scream becomes breathless but I don’t allow myself to take a moment, I just keep on pounding and keep screaming.
“How could you lie to me? To me, George?” I cry, screaming to the heavens or hell. I don’t know where the fuck he is with that lying mouth of his.
I’m so damn angry at George, I don’t even know what to do with myself. I’m angry at Ace. I’m angry at Emmett and Noah. I’m fucking angry at myself because this pain. . .this pain is not going anywhere, now lodged deep I me and I feel like I’m losing it.
I throw my head back, open up my mouth and let out a scream that deafens my own ears.
I ignore the lone wisps of my hair that are shaking out of my hair as a result of my impromptu haircut. I ignore the coldness seeping into my bones.
I ignore the shiver that wrecks through me. I ignore it all.
I look like her. . .
“Why did you leave me. . .” My voice breaks at the very end and I beat at my chest, feeling like I can’t breathe as intense pain grips my heart, and starts to move through my system like it’s been lodged there the entire time.
It feels like I was had it buried under more shit since I came back. Since I lost my brother. But now, now it’s here to make me feel. To make me fall and to drown me in it.
I’m alone. . .
“Why George?” My voice drops to a broken and painful whisper, as if I’m begging for answers. Begging for understanding. Begging for love.
Begging for my brother to come back and be with me again.
Begging for more time with him.
Begging for something. . .
“Astraea."
I immediately still as soon as I hear a feminine voice behind me. Not today satan.
“You have some nerve coming out here.” I grit out, spitting fire as I jump up like a tigress preparing to devour.
Today, she’s going to get it. Today I don't fucking care that I look like I should go back to that mental institution in London. I don’t care if I look like I’m off my meds, of which I am. I don’t care about any of it but I’m so fucking ready to give this conniving, manipulative bitch a piece of my mind and clobber her to death because she did this.
She put my brother in the ground, if all the investigation and secrets he kept are any indication. She did this, damn it!
But as I turn around, I come face to face with a short, voluptuous, kind hearted woman with a soft, sad and heartbroken smile on her Noah like face. She definitely isn’t who I was expecting. I was going for either Amanda or Denise, whichever the universe decided to serve on a platter first, the setting is fitting and I was ready.
“Mrs. Montreal.” I gasp out, all the adrenaline I had just mustered up comes crashing down just as instantly and I feel so depleted and messed up that I can’t even hide my face or the tears that are running down my face when I vowed never to cry in front of anyone, ever.
“Oh my dear, what have they done to you?” She whispers, her kind, soft voice shattering a part of me that I didn’t know was there.
Amanda should be speaking to me like that.
My own mother should be a mother, but she isn’t.
“Uh, I’m sorry.” I start but my voice is so damn low, broken and scratched so I clear it and try again but the tears come rushing down again and I can’t even speak.
“I didn’t know. . .” But I can’t even finish that.
She quickly steps forward and wraps me in her arms. Her embrace is warm, caring, soothing and everything a mother’s embrace should be.
Everything that I don’t remember my mother doing for me.
And that’s when the real breaking comes.
It rushes through me like a tidal wave that has been building up for miles, knocking the wind out of me until Noah’s mother and I sink down to the manicured grass close to my brother’s grave, because my legs can’t keep me up anymore.
“You’re not alone.” She whispers in my hair with her arms wrapped tightly around me. Her short but warm embrace is so tight I can’t help but feel free to shatter.
She rocks me back and forth as I cling to her like a wounded, battered and bruised child. She holds me like a mother should. She holds me like she cares deeply and knows what I’m going through.
She just holds me.
I have no idea how long she holds me or how long I cry but by the time I raise my heavy and now hurting head from her warm, wet bosom, dusk has given way to a beautiful sunrise.
“Oh my god.” I start, sniffling, feeling my cheeks grow warm with embarrassment. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Montreal.” I quickly apologize.
“Oh hush, I stopped being that dreadful name a long time ago.” She rolls her eyes, passing me a soft handkerchief of sorts to wipe my nose. “If you know what’s best for you, you better start calling me Christina, or Chrissy, I’m not picky.” She chides but her voice is calm and cautious, looking at me with a sorrowful smile on her beautiful face.
“Christina.” I quickly correct myself, not wanting to offend her. I don’t even know how to act around this kind of authentic love from a maternal figure.
“Oh my sweet Astraea.” She starts, her own eyes now blurred with tears. “You don’t even have a coat on.”
I look down and notice the goosebumps all over my arms, only now feeling the biting cold.
“It kind of slipped my mind in my. . .”
“Haze of pain and anguish.” She finishes, wiping the tears that are falling down my right cheek. “I’ve been there too.” She whispers.
It hits me then that this woman is still grieving and she was probably here for her late son.
“I’m sorry for disturbing your time with Craig.”
“Oh, hush, I was almost done anyway.”
I look down, still feeling like a fool for lashing out at the world and at a dead person the way I just did. Christina grabs both of my hands then, to grab my attention.
“Sweetheart, it’s okay to be angry with your brother.” She starts as if she knows the direction of my thoughts.
“Yeah, as if that’s normal.” I start with a barely there chuckle. “Who gets angry at someone who is no longer there to pacify that anger?” I can’t help the way my voice hardens at the end.
“It’s more normal among the loved ones that remain after they have lost a bright light.” She comforts.
“God knows with each rise of the sun I’m always up here, you would think that as time passes, we get over it but we never do. Some mornings, I just want to peacefully remember my son. And then other times, I feel like I was robbed of him. . .” She breathes out looking past my shoulder with pain in her eyes.
“But the truth is Astraea, we can’t possess people. We can’t keep them with us as if they rightfully belong to us even though in a way they do.” She sternly says as she turns to look at me dead in the eyes, the heaviness of her words reaching around the parts of my heart that I didn’t know I had. Parts of me that have been left dead and barren, cold and a wasteland that I never bothered to tend to.
“We can only experience them in the limited time that we’ve been given with them.” She finishes, her emerald eyes watching me. Her brunette curls blowing softly in the cold breeze, her beautiful features much like Noah’s, stare back at me.
Christina was once a model as well as a big shot movie star who left it all when she got pregnant by a wealthy playboy from Westbrook, who turned out to be an immature, deadbeat jerk who walked out on Christina and her queer son, and sweet Noah who used humor to dislodge and bury the pain in him, never facing it or dealing with it. I guess that’s why we connected so well.
“We didn’t have enough time though.” I cry.
We never even had time with another sibling that we were both with!
“Did you know we were actually born as triplets? And of the three, I’m probably the only one alive?” I gasp out, my anger coming back.
Christina’s face morphs into shock.
“Yeah, the almighty, her highness Denise King served that up to me on Friday night.” I explain, as she unbuttons her coat and then drapes it over my shoulders. I notice then that she had another one just underneath the heavier one.
“Ah, that’s what Friday dinner was about. I didn’t think she would beat the boys to tell you though.” She says absentmindedly. Your hair. . .”
“I cut it in a hurry.” I explain. “But what do you mean by she beat the boys from telling me?” I question, watching her face twist with a wince.
“Oh dear, I’m so sorry. I know it feels like the world is conspiring against your happiness and wellbeing right now.”
That’s an understatement.
“But the truth is, there’s a lot that has been happening since before you were even born.”
Why then does it feel like I’m the one paying for sins of people that I don’t even know? I don’t even know my father? Hell, just the thought of who it might be, chills me to the bone. My mother did sleep with the fathers of two boys that are so close to me, that the questions are swarming in my head like a damn beehive. But before I can think more of it, I slam that door shut, refusing to take a peek.
“Come on, I’ll drive us back home and you can shower and change then we can talk.” She offers as she stands.
“I don’t want to go back to that house.”
She doesn’t bat an eyelash nor does she look at me funny or like I’m crazy for saying that.
“You and Noah used to share clothes all the time, I’m sure you fit all that Gucci shit he buys himself, looking like a damn slut in that get up.” She groans with a smile on her face.
I start giggling, knowing exactly what she means by that. Noah knows how to set a thirst trap for all the girls, even in his school uniform.
“He does say he has a lady’s man reputation and image to keep intact.” I say as she helps me to stand up and we start making our way to her car that I didn’t notice when I ran through the gates.
“The only thing he should be concerned about keeping intact is his boxer briefs. Bringing around some poor, love struck little girls to my house just to send them away in the morning.” She shakes her head. “I need to get that boy tested. Again.”
I try muffling my laughter but Christina is a riot much like her son. Brazzen, kind, funny and no fucks given.
“That boy is going to be the death of me, I swear.” She mutters to herself.
“By the way can you tell me something about this girl Noah’s been texting and writing these notes to.”
I raise my eyebrow, intrigued like no man’s business. So Noah has been writing notes to some girl. Tease material! Give it all to me Christina, I’m going to make your son pay for lying to me!
“Do you know this girl called Kim Possible? According to a Google search that I did, she’s a cartoon character.” She says with a frown and I stop breathing as laughter builds in my belly.
“Is it possible t
hat my son is a horny piece of shit, having a boner for a cartoon character?”
With that visual in my mind, I don’t bother muffling my laughter. I throw my head back and let loose, tears leaking from the corner of my eyes.
And suddenly, my chest was lighter.
I can face whatever was coming my way.
“I was wondering when you were going to use that secret path you and Noah created back in the day when you were a little bit too adorable to get mad at, stupidly thinking that no one knew about it might I add. You used it to come next door to see me and I have to tell you, I was waiting for you to do that again like you used to.” Christina starts without turning around to look at me as I walk into the kitchen after taking a hot, long shower in one of the guestrooms.
“Uh, you knew about the path?” I question, my eyes widening. Shit, we’re in trouble.
Because one, the path cut right through Christina’s pride and joy, practically the center of her life if I remember correctly. And that was her well-tended to—by her of fucking course—rose garden.
And second, Christina loved that damn garden. With her whole heart.
“Of course I knew. God knows I was so angry when I found my precious pink cabbage roses dead on the ground, with evidence of two pairs of little feet, one of them being a pair of rain boots that so happened to trek across the foyer of my house every other day.” She says in a hard, accusatory voice as she turns around and looks at me with a hard gaze, pinning me to the spot.
Oh shit.
“Uh.” I start, feeling guilty as hell.
“Yes?” She raises her eyebrow.
And now I’m about to pay for our sins. This was not what I was expecting when she invited me back to her home.
“Uh.” I start again like a broken record. Shit, broken records have much more guilt confidence than I do. Get a fucking grip, Astraea, I was just a child. And it wasn’t my fault!
“Well you see, Christina.” I say, looking around the kitchen, wondering if I should just backtrack now and leave before she really blows my head off. Christina was known all over the estates to being a really scary woman whenever she got angry. And that’s saying a lot because, Christina wasn’t a woman that you could easily make angry. So imagine how it is WHEN she’s actually angry. Like she is now.
Vicious Hate (Westbrook Blues Book 2) Page 14