AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Inanely because it was probably the least important to address of what he’d just spewed at her.
He laughed, bitterly. “That’s all that matters to you, isn’t it? The life you’re building without us. The life you’ve built with your friends. Replacing us. Replacing us with newer, better models that can cut really big checks.”
Her inhale was so sharp that when she glanced down, she expected to be bleeding.
She wasn’t.
Of course, she wasn’t.
“So,” she said softly, the numbness gripping even more fiercely, “Are you jealous of the life I’ve made—that I’mmaking—for myself? Or do you really hate me so much?”
Now the bitter disappeared. “T, I didn’t mean—”
“Is that what you think I am?” The numbness threatened to retreat, but she gripped it tightly to her, a sheet clung to her breasts after meaningless sex, a jacket pulled taut against bracing winds. Because her eyes were stinging, and she needed the numb, needed it to fully submerge her. “You really think that I’ve been working so hard just formoney? You really think that my dream is nothing more than what I can con out of people?”
His eyes widened. “Teresa, honey. I lost my temper. I—”
She turned her back on him, reached for the lock on the door, and disengaged it. “You didn’t.” She sighed. “You know why it’s a chore for me to spend time with Mom? With you?” She didn’t wait for him to answer, just pressed on, because as much as she was clinging to the numbness…
It hurt.
“Because you look at me likethat.Like I don’t belong. Like I can’t ever be one of you.” She pulled open the door. “I’m just a burden, an object to take care of. Not a person. Not a woman. Not an adult. Just another obligation.”
And she couldn’t live with being that.
“Teresa,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
She couldn’t look at him. “No,” she whispered back, “you shouldn’t have.”
He reached for her. She saw it out of the corner of her eye and stepped back enough so that his hand didn’t make contact. “I’m sorry.”
“There’s truth in anger.” She turned for the kitchen. “Just like there is some truth in me not wanting to be like Mom. I want to make my own way. I want to at least try for what I’ve dreamed of. But…” She shook her head. “You’ll never see me as anything but your sick little sister, will you?”
“We almost lost you.”
That was true. She’d almost died—a freak infection that the doctors had barely figured out how to treat in time.
But they had.
She was here. She was alive.
She’d been alive for two decades since.
Been smothered in this cage they’d built, until she escaped, until shelived.
She wouldn’t go back.
“Youdidn’tlose me then,” she said then added, truth strengthening her tone. “But I’m…” A sigh. “If it keeps going like this, you will. You will lose me.”
He went stiff, like a shock had gone through his body, but then he recovered, and this time she didn’t dodge the hand that gripped her arm tightly, anger in his voice. “If you keep pushing everyone away, you will end up alone, T.”
“That’s the thing, Gabe.” She stepped back out of his hold. “I’mnotalone. You guys just refuse to see it. Refuse to be part of a life that isn’t what you think Ishouldwant.”
His lips parted.
She shook her head, exhaustion practically dripping out of every pore. “Go home,” she said on a sigh. “Just go home to your perfect life, your expectations I can never live up to. Stop trying to cage me, to turn me into something.”
And…
