A really long one that not only swells his chest but rolls his shoulders as well. Then, “It’s an old high school injury.”
It’s a testament to how much I’ve been dying to know things about him that he doesn’t even have to explain what he’s talking about.
I already know.
I already know he’s answering my question from yesterday. “Your nose.”
His jaw clenches as if he’s gritting his teeth before he throws me a short nod.
It’s enough for me, however.
It’s enough for me to glance at the bump on his nose and ask, “What happened?”
Again, he clenches his jaw and I know that he doesn’t want to answer. He doesn’t want to divulge anything regarding this and my heart twists in my chest.
My heart wants me to tell him to stop.
He doesn’t have to if he doesn’t want to.
But then he goes, “I walked into a fist.”
“Someone did this to you?” I gasp. “Someone beat you up?”
Because that’s what people say when they get beaten up, right? Not ‘I got into a fight’ but ‘I walked into a fist or a door.’
Again, a jerk of a nod to confirm my theory.
And holy shit, I did not expect that.
I absolutely did not expect that someone beat him up.
Him.
With all that he is. With all his muscles and bulk and the punching thing.
“But you punched him back, didn’t you? You beat him the fuck up for doing this to you,” I ask, because that’s the first thing I could think of.
That I fucking hope and wish that he beat that asshole up.
Whoever he was.
I already hate him.
“Given that I was laid up in the hospital at the time, no.”
At this, I have to press a hand on my belly. I have to press it really hard because what the fuck?
What the… Is he serious?
“He put you in the hospital?” My voice is loud, screeching almost. “I can’t… I… What happened? What… Who…”
In this moment, I don’t even know how to string words together.
I don’t.
My head is filled with all these images of blood and fists and broken noses.
The hospital.
I try again. “I don’t understand. H-how did it even happen? Who was he? What —”
“Nightmares,” he cuts me off, his features calm.
Which is totally insane because how can he be so calm right now?
How can he not be angry?
Enraged and shocked and all the fucking things that I’m feeling right now.
“But I want to know. What —”
“Your turn,” he says.
All calm and still.
But no less commanding and authoritative.
This man. My formidable devil of a guardian. Tyrant of a principal.
Whom I’ve hated for as long as I’ve known him but for the life of me, I cannot bear the thought of him lying beaten up and injured in a hospital.
A hospital.
God.
I give him what he wants then. I give it to him because I don’t think I can deny him anything right now. I don’t have the energy when all my attention is tied up in the fact that someone put him in the hospital when he was a teenager.
“It’s…” I take a deep breath. “It’s always the same thing. It’s… In my dreams, Charlie is still alive but somehow, I’m in Middlemarch. And I’m up on that roof, in the pouring rain like I was that night. Four years ago. And I want to leave. I want to get out of this town. I want to go back to New York. To Charlie. To my old apartment. Sleep in my own bed. I’m… I’m thinking that I’m wasting my time here. I have to get back because I have things to do. I have to... but…”
“But you can’t,” he finishes.
“No.”
“Because I won’t let you.”
I look into his eyes that at once look molten and hard. As hard as the muscles and bones of his face.
Hard with something akin to regret.
And like his concern, I don’t get that either.
Why is he regretful? Why’s he concerned?
When he hates me.
When he’s done all these things to me.
“No,” I say. “You’re never in my nightmares. As much as I like the thought of that. Because it would be poetic. Since you’re the one responsible for triggering them. So it’s only fair that you should be in them as well. But it’s not you. It’s Charlie. She doesn’t want me there.”
I hold his gaze for about two seconds after that, after my big confession, and drop it to the floor.
It’s a shameful secret, see.
All this time, I let everyone believe that my old life in New York was amazing. Yes, nobody wanted to adopt me because of my troublemaking reputation, but that’s okay. That’s reality. Because every celebrity kid is a little bit of a diva. No one wants to deal with them. But in reality, my own mother was included in that ‘no one.’
It’s not something I like to talk about. How unloved I was by the one person who’s biologically designed to love me.