by Nina Lincoln
Was it all a lie? Did I miss the signs? I don’t know, but it clouds those things I clung to when I had nothing else, making even this something to regret. I think maybe he never truly loved me, and that’s the most devastating of all.
In a way, he defines those years for me, and if I don’t have that, what do I have?
“Hiding?” Griffin asks silkily, appearing through the threshold.
Glancing his way, I sigh and look back to the sky, mourning the loss of the peace that for once was soothing my soul. He returns my absent stare with a smirk as I turn away.
“Perhaps.” I’m so tired, I hardly stir when he steals the beer from my grip and drinks it down with a grimace.
He’s dressed in nice jeans and a button-down shirt, his tanned arms yummy under the stark white fabric. I allow myself a brief once over, admiring his beauty before turning away with a silent sigh.
“This shit is old.”
“Mm,” I murmur.
“What are you doing in here?”
Arching a brow, I give him a snide stare. “Looking at the stars?”
“Right,” he says rudely. “Why?”
“Why not?”
“Because we’re not fucking thirteen anymore. Wishing on stars is stupid,” he says, glancing away with a frown.
I can’t help a caustic laugh at that. “I didn’t say I was wishing on anything. What’s the fucking point?”
“Exactly.” He grimaces, pulling his knee up to his chest from where he’s sitting against the wall.
“Whatever,” I mutter, ignoring the heat I can feel emanating from his body just a few inches from mine.
Of course, with his proximity comes images of what we could do alone up here. Thankfully, I have some restraint because I hardly need to fuck him again, even if my body is loose and heated in anticipation of the pleasure, I know he can give me.
“Remember when Max fell out of the tree?” Griffin rumbles, his mouth quirking up in an uncharacteristic smile.
The sight creates havoc in my system, and I cover the reaction with a hesitant chuckle. “Yeah, I thought for sure he broke something. Always the daredevil trying to be funny.”
Max was horsing around that day, and it only stands out for me because of that. By then, I was so caught up in my confusing feelings for Griffin that I hardly noticed anything outside of the way I tingled in his presence.
If I recall, that’s the day he looked at me with a new twinkle to his eye, and the butterflies became a swarm of bees in my stomach as he settled me into the fort and made sure I was wrapped up tight in a sleeping bag, warm and cozy.
He always did those things, catered to my needs, and it filled my soul in a way I can’t describe all these years later. But maybe even that was a lie—maybe every time he looked at me, it was with the intent of winning a stupid bet, over fifty fucking dollars.
If so, he was fucking diabolical even at thirteen.
We lapse into silence for a while, each lost to our own thoughts until he breaks it suddenly, and I jump beside him. “How did you get it back?”
“Get what back?”
“The necklace. I know you gave it to Bobby. I saw it on his sister’s fucking neck,” Griffin says coldly.
“That’s not possible,” I say. “The only time I didn’t wear it…”
Turning away, because I feel like I’m revealing more vulnerability to the jerk who doesn’t deserve it, I sigh into the universe when he keeps going.
“When?”
“When I had my surgery, for my tonsils. I should go,” I say, pulling myself up and toward the door.
“I saw her wearing it, Halsey.” His insistence makes me pause, while he searches my eyes for what I don’t know. He doesn’t believe my truths because, to him, they’re all lies.
Stopping with a grunt, I turn to him with an impatient stare. “I don’t fucking know, Griffin. Why does it even matter? It could hardly have mattered to you if you were willing to give it to a girl for a bet.”
He runs his hand over his face roughly, hiding his grimace. “Because it doesn’t make sense.”
“Nothing about this makes sense,” I say, stepping up to the ladder and turning around to back down the rungs.
Just before my head disappears from the hole, I stop and say, staring at my hands clenched around the wood. “You know, I thought all this time that maybe I did something wrong. I thought, maybe with time, you’d come to see I was still me, waiting for my friend, but as it turns out, you were nothing but a lie, and I’m nothing but a stupid fucking idiot.”
∞∞∞
The ride home after the break is quiet, each of us clinging to our corners. Griffin and Max sit strained in the front seats, and I wonder once more what’s come between them.
Does Griffin know about the drugs? Or is it something else?
Has their time run its course much like mine did? As I stare between the two, sadly, I don’t know, but I wish it could have been different for us all.
We were good kids once upon a time, so how did we get here? And is there redemption?
As I lay in bed last night, wide-eyed and brooding, I remembered the week I was out for my surgery.
I didn’t want to take off the necklace Griffin gave me, insisting it was my good-luck charm, to which my mother gave me her standard impatient look, and I gave in.
And after the procedure, as I lay miserably in my bed, sore and jealous of Griffin and Max out and about, I noticed the flowers beside my bed.
I smelled the beautiful blooms with a thrill, reading the card and wondering if maybe Griffin had come around and sent me flowers as he did once before when I had emergency surgery for my appendix.
But this time, the flowers weren’t from Griffin, and heartsore, I turned away from my mother’s handwriting on the card.
That was a miserable week for me, but now that I think back on it, it was one of the few times that Max was kind to me, visiting me and telling me stories to make me laugh, which, although burned my sore throat, were thrilling to my sad heart.
Now I’m left wondering if his unusual act of kindness was just that or something more nefarious, and if so, why?
Did he take my necklace and give it to Bobby’s sister?
Chapter Eighteen
No one listens because they don’t fucking care.
“Walk me through the events, Halsey,” Dr. Marks says in his gentle voice.
Mulishly, I twist my lips and smile. “I’m not ready.”
“Halsey, if you can’t speak about the incident, you can’t move past it,” he says in a patient tone.
“Who’s to say I’ll ever move past it? I mean, how do you move past that?”
“It’ll always be a part of you, yes. But you give it power now. Take that back, Halsey.”
Squirming in my seat, I press my lips together. “I’m not ready.”
He sits back with a sigh, and I bow my head, feeling inexplicably guilty. I know he’s trying to help, but in this, I cannot budge. Maybe…someday.
As it is, I live it in my dreams anyway, and it’s not fucking going away.
“Very well, maybe next week. It’s time to end for today.”
Nodding glumly, I grab my bag and head for the door, unable to shake the dark cloud hanging over my head. The events over break still weigh on me, and I’m desperate to make my mother see, but exactly how remains a mystery to me.
Morosely, I sit down in Psych and stare at the board. It’s days like today that I’d like to crawl into a hole, but I know to do that would be giving in, and I refuse to give up even if I don’t want to put into words what can never be taken back.
Griffin sits beside me without a word, and Hogan slides in just as Dr. Marks enters, saving me from having to make small talk.
“Okay, folks, today we are going to do a little experiment,” he says, glancing around the room, his eyes narrowing a fraction when he crosses over me before he continues, “Okay, count off for me.”
When all is said and done, I’m pai
red with some burly dude who smiles at me with shiny white teeth and looks me over with a wide grin.
Rolling my eyes, I glance away and meet Griffin’s cool glare across the way, but before I can respond, we’re handed slips of paper.
“Talk out the scenario with your partner. Really dig deep. This is what psychology is, people,” Dr. Marks says.
“Hey, I’m Mike.”
“Halsey.”
“Okay, so uh, we’re supposed to talk about our biggest fear,” he says with a chuckle.
Sinking in my seat, I glare at my fucking diabolical counselor, wondering if this is on purpose, but he’s not paying attention.
With a sour smile, I face my partner and mumble, “Okay, you first.”
“Okay, um,” he chuckles again, uncomfortably. “Don’t tell anyone, but I’m fucking terrified of spiders.”
Huffing out a laugh, I nod, even though the statement feels disingenuous at best. Whatever.
“How about you?”
With a sigh, I glance around and spy Griffin leaning toward his partner with an intense expression on his face, and jealousy clenches my heart as I say sadly, “Never being loved.”
The next round is more straightforward, as we switch partners, and I’m asked about my most outstanding achievement, to which I admit is the paintings I created in high school.
After that, it’s a whirlwind until we get to our last partner, and I’m sitting across from Griffin.
We eye each other uneasily, our past too broken to feel comfortable sharing our truths. Although Griffin’s eyes are cool, his customary smirk is absent as he clutches the piece of paper in his hand and reads it with a frown before saying out loud, “What you’re most ashamed of.”
Leaning back in my seat, I cross my arms over my chest and contemplate my answer. The truth or a lie? Does it matter? Griffin already has all the pieces of me. What’s one more?
Glancing down at the desk, I trace a swirl in the wood, my voice raspy. “Letting someone else hurt me.”
There’s a pregnant pause before he clears his throat because probably, he assumes I’m speaking of Jason, and I do regret that night vehemently, but more than anything, I regret giving a piece of my heart to a boy who threw it away.
“Hurting someone I loved,” he says gruffly.
Glancing at his face, I stare into his beautiful hazel eyes, my heart pumping in my chest at the darkness I see there, but it’s broken when Dr. Marks calls out, “Okay, time. Now, write a one-page paper about what you learned for the next class.”
With that, he dismisses us, and I grab my stuff in a daze. Griffin could just as easily have been speaking of anyone else, so why do I feel that confession was about me? And what does it mean?
“C’mon, I’ll take you home,” he says behind me.
He drops me off without a word spoken between us, and I escape to my room, distracting myself with homework to keep the painful hope at bay because hope is not something I can afford to have.
This is confirmed when later that evening, the sounds of Griffin fucking some chick come through my wall again. With a sigh, I cover my head with my pillow. My comforter and sheets, although washed, are still spotted with black paint that I left as is because in some way, it’s a reminder of my rage. But it doesn’t help, and I stare at the wall for hours while they have marathon sex on the other side.
∞∞∞
I wake the following day to the sound of laughter and roll from my bed curiously. The deep rumble of Griffin’s voice followed by Max’s inspires me to peek my head out the door and listen as they talk.
I haven’t heard or seen them truly spend time together in weeks which makes this even more of a curiosity.
“She was so fucking scared I thought for sure she’d refuse,” Max chuckles.
“Yeah, me too. But I’ll give her this. She never backed down from a challenge,” Griffin says, and I cock my head to the side at the softly spoken words.
“Mom was so mad, she practically had steam coming from her ears, but Halsey talked her out of grounding us. She always could get out of trouble.”
Do I detect a hint of grimness in his tone? And what are they talking about?
Frankly, it could be anything because those jerks were always daring me to do shit, and it’s true I never backed down. How could I?
I had to prove myself to the boys, or so I thought. Now I can only shake my head because I never proved shit, apparently.
“Well, at least we lived to see another day. Although I nearly had a heart attack when she fell. Shit,” Griffin says quietly.
“Yeah,” Max says, and they lapse into silence.
Backing away, I sit on my bed for a while before stepping into the shower with a sigh. My muscles hurt from sleeping tensely last night, and my head is a confusing jumble of pictures that tortured me all evening.
But on the other side of it is peace because I’ve come to realize that I can’t change us. We’re all damned, and I have to let go of what I continue to cling to.
And with this catharsis, I settle in and paint, adding the images on the wall as they tell a story I can’t bring myself to say out loud.
Jason, in the form of an evil hyena with his lackeys around him, leering over a broken girl lying on the ground, hiding her shame in her hands, the gold strands of a delicate necklace peeking through her fingers.
By the time the week is through, I’ve painted half the walls, and with a fatalistic shrug, I close up the paints and collapse into bed, not emerging until Monday morning when pounding sounds at my door.
“Get up! I don’t have time for this shit,” Max growls through the door.
Rolling my eyes, I open the door and duck from the fist raised to pound again.
Looking me over with distaste, he grunts, “Let’s go.”
Glancing at the clock, I look to him with a frown. “It’s not even 7:00 a.m.”
“Whatever, I’ve got things to do…” He trails off, his eyes widening as he takes in the room and the walls decorated in the scenes I’ve been creating.
Now that they cover the walls and not just the first scene by the door, they’re hard to miss.
“What the fuck did you do?” He pushes past me, knocking me in the shoulder as he enters before turning in a circle.
“Nothing,” I say lamely, flinching when he swings toward me with an incredulous expression.
“You’re fucking crazy. That’s it. I’m calling Mom.”
“No!” I cry out, grabbing his arm.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” he says, pulling away roughly.
“No, Max! You can’t! If you—if you call Mom, I’ll tell her,” I say tremulously, backing up a step when he looms in my face.
“What did you just say?”
“You heard me.” Damning my shaky voice, I stare into the eyes of my brother, but I don’t recognize him anymore.
As I suspect he doesn’t recognize me.
“You little bitch,” he breathes, grabbing my arm.
Wincing, I pull away, but he just holds me tighter.
“You think you can threaten me?”
“It’s not a threat, but I’m not going to sit by while you tattle on me when you’ve got your own damn secrets.”
With a grimace, he pushes me away. “Fuck you.”
Stumbling back, I hit the bed and sit down, staring at him with wide eyes as he approaches, but we both pause when the front door opens and closes. Max is still glaring at me with hate-filled eyes when Griffin pauses outside my door. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Max says, turning and pushing past him.
Refusing to glance up, I wait for what feels like forever before Griffin, too, walks away, relieved when he doesn’t mention the paintings and, if I’m honest, disappointed at the same time.
This is my truth, and maybe I defaced the walls, but the suffering bleeding through the scenes is real, except no one is acknowledging it but me. Sometimes I feel fucking invisible, but maybe I have no one but myself to blame. After all,
no one truly knows what’s behind the mask, so how could they begin to see?
With a sigh, I gather my things and follow Max out to his car shortly after. He doesn’t mention our altercation, and neither do I, walking away grimly when he drops me at the clinic.
Chapter Nineteen
Some sins can never be washed clean.
Shivering in the cool air, I make another lap of the quad, relieved to find that where before the thought of being in the open air made it hard to breathe, I can do it now without the same pressure on my chest.
Maybe I am making progress? But it’s fucking cold, so I hurry it along, anxious to get home and eat before the guys return, but my hopes are dashed when I spy Max’s car in the drive. I’m hesitant to be alone with him because he’s fucking insane when he’s high, and with Griffin not home, he’s likely to be doing it now.
Cautiously, I let myself inside and tiptoe to my room only to come to an abrupt stop when I spy my brother fucking none other than Miranda on the couch, but most disturbingly, there’s blow on the coffee table—they got high together.
Neither of them notices me, and I back out quietly, retreating down the block. Something’s got to give with Max, and I don’t know what to do, but if I do nothing, he could die. He’s hanging around thugs, and his behavior continues to get riskier.
Still, I’m stuck on his friend’s threats and the horrific reality that my brother stood by and did nothing while his companion threatened to rape me. The insanity of it blows my mind.
Now he’s fucking Griffin’s girl, but why? Why would he betray his best friend?
I’ve sensed a distance between them that was never there before, and now I have to wonder if Max is pushing Griffin away, too? And if so, is it related to his discovery of the adoption? Our past? Or something else?
Settling on a bench at a small park near the house, I shiver into my jacket as I wait it out. I’m tired of the deception, and I could have just as easily escaped to my room but being around Max when he’s like this feels skeevy at best and unsafe at worst.
And what the hell is Miranda thinking? If she genuinely likes Griff, fucking Max isn’t going to win her any favors, although Griffin isn’t exactly exclusive. Maybe neither of them cares?