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Xander
The air crackledaround us as she stared at me, defiance burning in her baby blue eyes. Despite everything she’d been through, Peyton still had fight left in her; she still had the balls to stand off against me. This girl… Did she have any idea how fucking beautiful she was?
Fuck. I didn’t know where that thought had come from, but it hit me square in the chest.
She was beautiful. She was the kind of girl who pulled you into her orbit. I’d seen it with her friends, with Bryan, and that asshole Sean Farrow. Peyton lit up the room wherever she went, but the sparkle in her eyes had dimmed since the accident. She was lost… and she looked at me like she knew I was lost too.
“So…” she said, a faint smirk tracing her mouth, as if it was a foregone conclusion I wouldn’t send her back to her room.
“You’re trouble.” The words rolled off my tongue before I could stop them.
Something flashed in her eyes, but she shook it away, smiling at me. “That’s what life’s for, right? Living.” The sadness in her voice was like a punch to the gut.
I pulled out another smoke and lit it up. Peyton’s nose crinkled. “Do you really like those things?”
“It’s a distraction,” I said with a half-shrug.
“Maybe I should take up smoking then.”
“Nah, it costs a small fortune and the smell never goes away.”
She lifted her sneakers onto the edge of the table and folded her arms around herself, staring at the city in the distance. “I can’t stop thinking about it… about her…”
The words were small; too fucking small for a strong, confident girl like Peyton.
“I close my eyes and I see it, playing on repeat in my mind. And I can’t help but think it was her final ‘fuck you’ to the daughter she never wanted.”
The crack in her voice had me wanting to comfort her, but I couldn’t. And even if I could, what did a guy like me know about comforting a girl like her? I kept people at arm’s length for a reason—because my heart turned to stone a long time ago. It was the only way I knew how to protect myself from the constant ache. The hole left by the two people who loved me unconditionally.
My entire childhood was shaped by the people I loved leaving me. First my mom, then Cameron, then my dad. I spent the best part of ten years attending therapy, but nobody could fix me. And fuck only knew I hadn’t ever managed to fix myself.
“I’m sure your mom loved you in her own way.”
Peyton let out a derisive sound. “My mom was a selfish junkie whore who cared more about her next fix than she ever did me.”
I winced at the honesty—the gut-wrenching pain—in her voice.
“I’m sorry.”
“Why?” She glanced up at me. “It’s not your fault.”
“No one should have to endure that.”
“Yeah, well, the universe was all out of fucks when it dealt me my hand,” she snorted.
“What about your dad?”
“You mean the useless sperm donor that up and left when I was barely out of diapers and never looked back?”
Jesus. My jaw locked up as I imagined what she’d endured, what she’d been through. I knew a little of her history from Jase and Cameron, but I didn’t know the extent to which she’d suffered. I doubted anyone did. Because Peyton played her part. She put on her armor of fake smiles and sassy confidence and wielded them with perfection. The best defense was a good offense, and she’d got it down pat.
But this girl… the girl I’d pulled from the river was different.
Even I could see that.
“I’m just… ugh,” she ran a hand through her hair, yanking the ends in frustration, “I’m so freaking sick of caring.”
“Caring makes you human.”
