I lifted one arm, sliding her silk robe on it, repeating the action with the other arm.
“I have a secret,” she said the word secret like it cut her lungs coming out. “I don’t want to keep it anymore.” Her brows caved in anguish. “But my mom…the families…” she started hyperventilating.
I understood that, at least, having a secret.
I looked at her hands, her wrists, her arms. She’d mostly cut her hands, probably fighting to get the razor, so it wasn’t too bad, just a lot of superficial bleeding.
After cleaning up the wounds, I brought her to bed.
“I have a secret,” she whispered, her eyes rolling over to find mine. “Keeping it is ruining everything. But if I tell it, I’ll ruin everything.”
“Which option will hurt the least people?”
Her brow furrowed, and she turned back to stare at the ceiling.
“Do you have dreams?” she asked suddenly.
“Um…”
“I don’t have any dreams,” she mused softly. “That’s a lie, I dreamed he would love me.” She spun to me. “But I mean, my friend Aundi wanted to be an influencer. My other friend Pipa wanted to go to Paris to study fashion. I don’t have dreams like that. I try to think of one and it’s just blank. Black. Nothing.”
She waved her arms dramatically above her, as if envisioning the black nothing. I studied her. Maybe Lottie did have dreams, but she was like Grayson, and had kept them so close to her chest, that they’d become a secret to even herself.
“A poet,” I admitted quietly.
“A poet,” she repeated the words, like she was testing it out for herself. “That’s a nice dream.”
It was nice talking to Lottie like this, even though the circumstances that allowed me to lie next to her in her bed were just as dark as all the others in our twisted relationship.
Because for a minute, in this soft cottony bed, it did feel a little bit like before.
“Mostly…” I continued. “I want to be a mother different than mine. I want to have a family different than what I had.”
“That sounds really nice.” She rolled over, eyes locking with mine. “I have a lot of half-siblings,” she said. “I don’t talk to any of them. I don’t know anything about them. My mother…” Her brows caved again, pained. “To know them is to accept them and to accept them is to invalidate our own existence.”
She spoke the way Grayson occasionally did, like the words weren’t her own.
I reached out, touching her shoulder, trying to offer some kind of comfort. I should probably hate her, and she me, but all I felt was sorrow. I still remembered the girl who watched Grayson with twinkling eyes and who smiled at him when she thought he wasn’t looking. That girl brought Grayson to me, I stole Grayson from that girl, and now that girl is gone.
Her twinkling eyes were bruised, and her smile was withered.
“Why are you here?” She slashed wet brown eyes to mine.
“I had to bring you this.” I handed her the EpiPen and she froze for a moment, then she started laughing wildly, like it was the funniest joke, until the laughter died.
“Promise me you won’t tell Grayson or anyone else about this?” Lottie yawned.
She sounded like she was getting sleepy, which was good, I think. Good for her to fall asleep and forget about this night.
“Lottie…I…I can’t keep secrets from him.” Not ever again.
“Please,” her brows caved, begging. “I don’t want him to feel like he can’t hate me. He’s going to need to hate me soon. And you know him, he’s…”
For all the cruelty Grayson used as armor, he was incapable of hate.
Slowly I nodded.
At that, she seemed to relax. Lottie held a stuffed animal to her chest, a pale green one, and she stared at the ceiling. She looked too young, too broken. It reminded me of the portrait I’d caught Grayson staring at.