“We’re fine,” she cut me off, looking back at West. “He’s off right now…I don’t trust him. Will you watch him?” At my face, she repeated, “We’re fine. I swear. Neruda.”
Fist clenched, I watched them leave through the hedges. When they were gone, I looked back at West.
He stared at the ground, at the shards of green glittering in the sand.
“Just because you don’t get Story, doesn’t mean you have to become them.”
His gaze slashed to mine.
“We don’t have to become our parents. We don’t have to continue that legacy. Burning down our own houses. Killing our sons. Selling off our children. Excommunicating daughters and granddaughters. It can end with us.”
He looked back to the broken glass. “It will end with us.”
Forty-Five
STORY
I carried Lottie back to her and Grayson’s wing, but we stopped a few feet from the guards. Hidden in an alcove with a small bench, gold lattice windowpanes at our back.
“This is as far as they’ll let you go,” she said softly.
I swallowed, because I knew. Even if I had Lottie to escort me, they wouldn’t let me in. I was banned from being with Grayson as much as Grayson was banned from being with me.
“Thank you,” Lottie said.
“It’s kind of overdue. I was a shitty girl.”
“I was a worse mistress.”
We both paused.
“Do you think my brother is right?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“I think he is,” she said. “I think I gave up everything that made me me.” She stared down the long, lonely hallway. “I want to go back to before. I want to take it all back. Every action, every word, every thought that made me this person. But… I don’t know how far back I have to go.” She looked at me, fear and anguish ripping apart her pretty face.
God.
I knew that. I knew that so much.
How do you go back to before?
“Did it start when I loved him? Or when he first chose another girl? Or is it when my mother started telling me the reasons why it’s my fault he chooses other girls. Or is it when I started to love, really love, yet another man who could never love me—”
She snapped her mouth shut suddenly.
Another tense silence passed with only the sound of the soft breeze.
After a minute, she wiped her tears away and said, “How do I get rid of the rust on my heart, Story?”
“I don’t know if we ever get rid of the rust on our hearts,” I said. “Or if we do, it takes a lot of work.”
“It hurts.”
I nodded, because…yeah.
It did.