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LANDON
After I finally convinced Imani that staying at my place wasn’t a good idea, I pushed her ass through her bedroom window and hopped in after her. She smoothed out her shirt and dusted off her knees, yawning.
“Thanks for coming home with me,” she said. “You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”
“I actually”—I blew out a deep breath—“wanted to talk to you.”
She sat on the bed and patted the mattress next to her. “About what?”
“I … I don’t want …” I ran a hand through my dirty-blond hair and sighed. “I don’t want to fuck you up, Imani. Since I found out who you were, you’ve been drinking and sneaking out and doing shit that you never did before. If you stay with us anymore, we’ll fuck you up. I’ll fuck you up.”
“Landon,” Imani whispered, curling up in my lap and burying her head into my shoulder, “you’ve never been the problem. You and Allie are the only people that I’ve looked forward to talking to these past few months, and you’re the only one who knows how bad my mom is. Allie hasn’t even heard or seen her like that.”
Suddenly, tears streamed down her face, and I didn’t know what to say. For the longest time—before I found out that Imani was the girl I had been talking to online—I had thought she, along with the rest of the rich girls at Redwood, had it easy. I hadn’t even thought that they had any real problems, not any problems like I did with my family.
“My mom puts so much pressure on me to succeed,” she whimpered, body trembling in my hold. “I have to think about everything I do before I do it—to either make sure it is up to her standards or to make sure that she won’t find out about it. It’s constant, and I …”
She hiccuped and slammed a hand over her mouth to muffle her sobs. Body trembling harder, cries becoming louder, she wrapped her arms around me and hugged me as tightly as she could, tighter than anyone had ever hugged me before.
And I hugged her back.
Not because I felt bad for her, but because I knew what it felt like to live my life and always feel like I wasn’t ever good enough. This wasn’t a thing that kids from the Redwood slums experienced. Even rich girls like Imani faced it, too.
“You don’t have to be perfect for me,” I said gently into her ear.
“I know,” Imani whispered, voice trembling. “That’s why I …”
She paused, and I so desperately wanted to hear her say those three words to me that I had said aloud to Misty earlier. I wanted to hear that Imani loved me, too, because I had never heard those words spoken by anyone ever. Not Mom and definitely not Dad.
“That’s why I appreciate you so much,” she finished.
Disappointment washed over me, and those evil thoughts about not being good enough rushed through me—the seeds that Dad had planted years ago and watered daily. It fucking hurt. But while I slipped even lower into myself, I still held her tight because she hadn’t let go yet.
After wiping her tears, Imani kissed me on the cheek. “Don’t think you’re the problem because you’re not.” She glanced at the time on her phone and stood. “Please, stay with me. I want you to.”
I took her hand in mine. “Okay.”
When Imani disappeared in the bathroom to prepare for bed, I lay back on the bed and blew out a breath. I’d never felt this way before, and it made me nervous. Nothing had felt this good before, and if it did … it always came crumbling back down on me.
What if this was all a put-on? What if this was all an act to hurt me?
Imani’s computer screen lit up with a notification from Discord. I glanced over at it, my heart leaping in my chest and all those horrid thoughts racing through my mind. Desperately trying not to make the same mistake as before, I paced around the room and stared at the ground. But from the corner of my eye, I saw another message pop up on her computer.
God, did I have the urge to go over and check who it was.
Even after our heart-to-heart, even after everything, I still didn’t feel good enough. I still felt like any girl that I dated would cheat on me, would talk to other guys, would send them the same pictures that she sent me.
With Poison, I didn’t care as much. As much as I hated the thought of Imani being alone with João, I trusted João and Kai. We’d all been shit on by Redwood and made a pact to stay together and take down this town, one corrupt man at a time.
But someone other than João and Kai … scared me.
It was wrong. I knew it was.
I trusted Imani not to be like that. I forced myself to trust her.
Yet I still couldn’t quite get it out of my system.
Those thoughts were torture themselves.
