AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Her question gave me pause. “Kin—”
“No.” She stopped to face me. Her voice was soft, but her eyes were blazing. “I don’t want some bullshit answer. And I don’t want to hear how you didn’t want to hurt your sister. I get that. Hurting Kassa is the last thing I would want to do, too. But you didn’t tell me. There was nothing about you talking to Eden that would have hurt me, yet you kept it from me. For almost a year now, you were sneaking around, and you slowly broke me. There were days I didn’t even know why I was still with you because you were hurting me with all the secrecy and your fucking moods. So explain to me why I, the woman you claim to love, was left in the dark.”
I opened my mouth, but for once, I was at a loss for words. There was no answer that would appease her. I honestly didn’t know why I hadn’t told her when I’d happened to run into Eden at a party in Miami. All I’d known was that I had to keep Eden a secret from Kassa.
Back then, I wasn’t even sure if it was safe for Eden to be around Kassa. My memories of my older sister were frayed and jumbled. She was taken away by child services before they stepped in to take Kassa and me away, and I thought it was because Eden had tried to hurt Kas. I wanted to protect my little sister, and Kin, from Eden if she was really as unstable as my memories made me think she was.
Now I knew that wasn’t the case, but I’d still feared Eden’s existence would hurt my baby sister. Especially when Kassa went through her miscarriage, and there Eden was, pregnant.
“Well?” Kin’s sharp voice commanded my attention. “I’m listening, Jace.”
“Baby, I swear…” My voice trailed off, and her eyes filled with fresh tears.
Scrubbing her fists across her cheeks, she laughed brokenly. “Yeah, I thought so. Have I really been deluding myself all these years thinking we had an actual chance at forever?”
“Kin, no!” The distance between us disappeared, and I grabbed her arms. “You are my forever. I’m sorry I kept this from you, and I swear it won’t happen again.”
She shrugged off my hold and stepped back. “I didn’t matter to you. All this time, you were holding on to this secret, and you didn’t even try to tell me about it. I wasn’t important enough to be in the know about what was going on in your life. Once again, I didn’t come first with you.”
“It wasn’t like that,” I tried to explain. “I just didn’t want to burden you with Eden’s shit. Her life was fucked up and I want
ed to help her, but I didn’t want to drag you into the middle of it.”
“I’m your girlfriend. I want to help you when something is bothering you. We’re supposed to be a team, damn it. Only, you’ve shown me you obviously neither want nor need me to be a part of that team…if I ever was.” Her tears fell faster, and I suddenly felt like I couldn’t breathe.
I was losing her. I could feel her slipping further and further away, and I had no idea how to stop it.
“All you had to do was confide in me, Jace. I never would have told another soul about Eden if that was what you wanted. At least then I wouldn’t have thought you were cheating on me. I wouldn’t have been caught off guard yesterday and thought you had gotten someone else pregnant.” She turned away from me, her shoulders shaking. “And I stupidly put up with all of your shit this entire time. I told myself you loved me and there was a perfectly good reason, and I was right. I was fucking right.”
She jerked around, facing me with the full blast of her hurt shining out of her eyes. “Only, you’ve broken my heart even more than it was when I thought Eden was your side chick. You’ve held a part of yourself back, refused to let me be involved with what was going on in your life, and now I realize the truth. I will never have all of you.”
“Kin, stop. You’re pissed, and you have every right to be, but don’t say things like that. It’s not true. You know I love you.” I tried to pull her into my arms again, but she shoved me back.
“You love me, but not enough. I will never come first with you.” She closed her eyes, shaking her head so hard her hair fell into her face.
Angrily, she pushed it back, and when she opened her eyes, they were blank. “Do you even want to marry me, Jace? Has that even crossed your mind?”
I gulped, feeling the blood drain from my face, and another tear fell from her eyes. “Is that what you want?” I asked, avoiding answering the question, trying to hide the fact that the mention of getting married was making my palms sweat. I loved her, but it was too soon to think about marriage. We had our entire lives to get married. Our careers were just beginning to take off, for fuck’s sake. “You want to get…married…now?”
“Relax,” she told me in a voice devoid of all emotion. “I can see the panic trying to choke you. You’re off the hook, Jace. You won’t ever have to worry about it again, trust me.”
I was fucking this up even worse now and all because I’d kept my sister from her. Now Kin was talking about marriage, and I didn’t know what the right answer was to fix what I’d broken between us. What I was still breaking. “Kin, I love you. I’ve loved you from the first moment I set eyes on you.”
“Sometimes, love isn’t enough. I was crazy to think it was. You don’t even want to live with me.”
“Why are we talking about marriage and living with each other?” I demanded, frustrated.
“Because that’s the next step, you idiot,” she exploded. “We’ve been together for three years. Everyone around us is getting engaged or married. They are moving forward with their relationships, and you won’t even discuss moving in together.”
“Because there isn’t any rush,” I told her with frustration. “We know we’re going to be together for the rest of our lives, Kin. My future revolves around you. Baby, you’re my forever. I’ve always known that. So why do we have to rush to whatever finish line everyone else is hell-bent on getting to?”
“You think marriage is the finish line?” she choked out.
“Isn’t it?”
“No! Death is the finish line. Marriage is just the beginning of the rest of our lives together. It tells me and everyone else in the world that you’re committed to me and only me for the rest of our lives. Yet you’re sweating bullets right now just thinking about it.”
“Fine, if you want to get married, then let’s get married,” I yelled in complete desperation.
