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Guilt slides across her face, and my gut clenches.
“You didn’t,” I whisper.
She looks away.
And that’s answer enough.
My eyes sting again, but this time it’s because I’m furious, because I cannot believe my sister would do this to me, would hurt me this way…and that she doesn’t even care enough to fix it. She only allowed herself to come along because—
I go ramrod stiff, gape at her.
My words are a hiss. “Tell me you didn’t.”
Her eyes, a familiar green I see in the mirror every day, darken with guilt. A sad sight, if only it wasn’t complete bullshit.
“I—” She licks her lips, presses them together. “They’re not just yours.”
Betrayal slices through me, but the fury slices deeper, exposing…
How done I am.
How stupid I was for dating someone like George.
A user. Just like my sister.
Selfish. Just like my sister.
Pathetic—no, that’s just me.
“You’ve really burned through everything I gave you?” I ask.
She flinches again. “But—”
“No buts,” I say. “No excuses. No…more. I don’t want to see your face or hear your voice and I-I—” My voice cracks and it takes everything in me to inhale, exhale, and have my words come out steady. “I don’t think I can ever forgive you.”
“George—”
“Is a fucking jerk,” I say. “But you’re worse.”
She shrinks back.
I move to the kitchen, to my duffle, to my hastily packed belongings, my memories of my parents, of my grandmother who stepped in and cared for us when good old Mom and Dad skipped town, leaving us alone in an apartment without food, without rent paid, all when Ash was six and I was eight years old.
Kids abandoned.
Alone.
Then not…because our grandma stepped in.
She died, though. Died and left us and we were stuck fending for ourselves again—I was stuck taking care of my sister and then, as an afterthought, myself.
Probably why we are here at this juncture.
I reach into the bag, pull out the black velvet box, and move back to my sister.
“Here,” I say. “Just take them and go.”
She snatches them from my hold, flips open the lid, all business, solely focused on herself.
