My mom’s hands shot to her mouth as my aunt launched to her feet. Two pairs of eyes stretched and filled.
“Honey, I’m sorry. I didn’t… I didn’t realize you were there.”
“I might have it?” I repeated, a strange calm descending over me.
Bree reached out and took my hand. I watched without feeling as she wrapped both of hers around it. “Your mom has a type of Alzheimer’s known as familial, Liss. It’s caused by a specific genetic mutation that’s passed down through families. We assume it was our dad, because your grandma never suffered with it before she died, but our dad died young enough that he exhibited no symptoms.”
I stood, watching her lips move.
“It’s what’s known as an autosomal dominant pattern, Liss. Which means,” she broke off, her features crumpling under the strain of trying to hold everything together and deliver life-shattering news without falling to pieces. She cleared her throat, pressing her fingers to the tender skin, presumably to coax the words out. “It means that there’s a fifty-percent chance that you or Bella could have inherited it.”
Fifty-percent chance. One in two. A flip of a coin. That’s what it amounted to. I felt strangely disconnected from the entire scenario, an altogether different bubble closing around me. I couldn’t run, but I couldn’t seem to process this, either.
“There’s a test, Liss. You can undergo genetic testing to see if you have it. If you… if you wanted to. If you didn’t want to live with that kind of uncertainty. But—” Bree wrung her hands together in front of her stomach, flicking a look back at my mom, who remained silent, a flow of tears trailing down her cheeks.
“Right,” I murmured, my gaze slightly unfocused.
“It’s not something you need to think about right now. Or anytime soon. Or ever. If you don’t want to. I’m just… letting you know your options. There’s more to it, a lot more, and it’s something we can look into in much greater detail, whenever you’re ready. You can get counselling. You won’t have to deal with this alone. We’re all here. Whenever you’re ready.”
She was rambling, and I didn’t blame her, but I shut my eyes anyway, needing to block it out. The phone in my jacket pocket buzzed with a notification. I reached for it without thinking and held it out in front of my face.
Regret hit with a brutality I could barely withstand.
Leon.
I turned my back and walked away from my mom and Bree, their soft protests barely registering as I clomped heavily up the stairs, my legs thousand-pound weights attached to my hips.
I couldn’t remember ever wishing for moments of my life back or pleading for a do-over. Never once had I bothered to waste my time or energy. I wasn’t fanciful or deluded.
But if I could just go back ten, fifteen minutes, I’d shout those words at the top of my lungs so everyone within a ten-mile radius could hear, so he could hear them, just fucking once. And I’d tell him I felt them with every fibre of my fucking being.
Because now he’d never know. He’d never know that I loved him more than I ever loved anyone or anything in my life. No fucking way would I ever tell him.
Adrift in an unforgiving sea with an ocean of uncertainty spread out before me. What kind of life was that to offer someone?
The morning after I finally relented and decided to offer up my future to someone, it turned out I might not even fucking have one to give. I could almost have laughed if I thought the outburst wouldn’t push me over the edge; strip away whatever tiny fragment of my sanity I was still clutching onto and send me spiralling into an abyss I might never climb out of.
I couldn’t let Leon love me.
I wouldn’t let him love me.
And the only way I knew how to accomplish that was to make him hate me instead.
I’d seen it done.
I’d watched my love for my father turn to hate. And I knew exactly how to do it.
***
My hands shook as I closed the car door and pressed the remote lock, a cloying sickness churning in my gut. The hem of the short black dress skimmed the tops of my thighs, clinging to every inch of skin from my breasts to my ass.
Black boots, thick black kohl liner, black lips.
Black. To match the color of my heart.
“Jackson Bateman,” I muttered as I approached Danny’s front door where Jackson stood alone, smoking a joint. His brows rose at the sight of me as he took a long pull from the joint perched between his thumb and finger. “Always in the right place at the right time,” I said, emotionless.
He narrowed his eyes, tracking them down my body slowly before blowing a stream of smoke out the side of his mouth.