Ruined Castles (The Elite King's Club 8)

The front door unlocks, jolting us both out of our surprisingly intimate girls’ day, for people who don’t know each other at all. I watch as Jesse dumps his bike helmet onto the kitchen counter, ruffling his hair between his fingers before leaning down to untie his boots. Jesse and I have always had a non-sexual connection, people know that, but would Bishop still put a bullet between his eyes without thinking twice about it?

Absolutely.

“How was the studio?” Grace asks, and I start plaiting my hair to the side as Jesse walks into the sitting room, taking a seat beside Grace and giving off a whiff of oil and burned rubber.

“Good.” His eyes come to mine. “I know it has been a while, but there are a couple of people who have come in and asked for certain styles that I know you’d be good at.”

“Jesse…” I whine, at the same time my palms become clammy and sweaty and my shoulders tense. I do love art, and I’ve always found a home with sketching and drawing, but something about it now feels painfully like a memory. It’s not a broken heart that hurts after love; it’s the memories that you made. It’s the fact that Bishop has connected himself to every single thing I loved, and now I have nothing.

Nothing that doesn’t remind me of him.

Grace nudges Jesse with her arm. “Maybe give her a minute.”

A minute? I’ll most likely need a month.

Or two.

Two months later

I AM OFFICIALLY INTO MY second trimester. As time drifts on, I find new little tweaks about pregnancy that I find myself wanting to share with Bishop. It’s a pain I have no right to feel, I know that, but it doesn’t stop it from paralyzing me. So I’ve started documenting all the things I wish he could see. Maybe one day, I’ll show it to him. Maybe. But the thought of Bishop knowing I’m pregnant horrifies me, and that’s mainly because I don’t know if the baby is his. I won’t know until I give birth, and then what? Then I have to find a way to get his DNA to get them both tested? All while hiding the baby from him?

Sighing, I fall down onto the sand, watching as waves crash against the beach. I’ve come to love the peacefulness of the ocean and the endlessness that the edges bring. You don’t know what’s out there, but I like to imagine America is just over the edge. Not far, not close—just there. Losing myself in my art again is a pastime I didn’t realize I needed to relive until I picked up that pencil. If it wasn’t for Grace and her undying persistence throughout these two months, I don’t know if I could say I would be here right now—with the mental clarity I have. Jesse is a given, someone I know I can trust and rely on, but what I am dealing with is an emotion that only another woman can touch. I love Jesse, but there’s no way I would have made it through without Grace. She’s never made me feel like I’m seeing her as a therapist, because in actual fact, I’m not. She sits in my room at times, we go to the beach, the café, do everyday girl shit, and slowly, I’ve begun to realize what she’s doing is her way of therapy on me. By the time I figured it all out, of course, I had trusted her impeccably.

I flick through my apps on my phone, opening the camera and snapping a selfie. The salty wind whisks through the long strands of my hair, the setting sun casting a golden tan over my skin. My cheeks are glossy and red, my eyes wide and happy.

Am I happy?

I rest my hand on my already somewhat swollen bump. Happy enough to exist, and right now, that is enough. It has to be.

My phone starts vibrating in my hand and Tillie’s name flashes over the screen. The kind of warmth that floods through me is only that which comes from family. I’ve been keeping in contact with her and Tate a lot lately, as well as my parents. Nate has tried to call me a few times. I’m gathering it was after Tillie told him about the not cheating, and more, assault.

I hit ignore on the call just as I hear laughter from behind me. The sun is setting through the sky, blazing a glowing flare that could match the burning deep inside my heart.

I wrap my cardigan tighter around my waist, tucking my hair behind my ear and smiling at my friends over my shoulder. Jesse is carrying a box of Long Whites with one arm and tucking Grace under his other while kissing her on the top of her head. Behind them are Marama and Tuwhata. Marama is the receptionist at the studio and Tu is another artist. Quality not quantity, and when I say that Jesse and Tu have some of the best art I have ever seen—I mean it. Tu specializes in the traditional Tamoko. He did Marama’s, who has hers on her chin. One day she tried to explain it to me, and I sat and chatted with her for hours about the Maori culture as she educated me on the indigenous people of New Zealand and the racial discrimination that their people have suffered here. I’ll be taking all of my new knowledge home with me, including four new friends who I truly will miss.