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“Why not?”
Because I’m damaged. Because admitting my feelings leaves me vulnerable, because loving someone means I give them the power to hurt me.
“That’s quite the scowl.” He shook his head. “So let me get this straight. You lose everything that you are, including your name. This woman takes you in, takes care of you when you have no money.”
“She didn’t have any either,” I said. “She took a job she didn’t want to support the both of us.”
He nodded. “So she was basically a saint who put up with your sorry ass and assumed the best in you. So when the press attacked her, and she got scared, you made zero effort to return the favor.”
I pressed my fist to my chest and tried to rub away the pain there, but it did nothing to help.
I’d screwed up. It was too late for an apology. Nothing could fix this.
“Do you think she loves you, too?” Jasper asked.
“How could she?” It was too much to hope for.
He shook his head. “Because after everything that’s happened, you just might be the luckiest of all of us, finding someone who will accept you for your flaws and bring the happiness that nothing else can. Don’t you want to find out?”
My life was meaningless without her. If there was even a glimmer of a chance to get her back, I had to try.
“I know what I have to do,” I said. I had a lot of fixing to do. It all started with a phone call to Layana.
FORTY-FOUR
MORGAN
My dad promised that he’d be here when I was ready to talk. I didn’t know that I ever would be.
For the better part of a week I lay in that bed, staring at the walls, remembering the life I’d had here in Cricket Falls, the one I’d run from when I went to Epiphany. I’d told myself back then that I was being brave, running toward my dreams, instead of just away from my mistakes.
But that wasn’t the truth.
Just like now, I was running, hiding, and lying to myself.
Time, and phone calls to Layana, had helped me see the truth.
It wasn’t Oscar’s fault that he was born into money, and with time I kept questioning if he’d actually lied to me. He hadn’t known who he was, so how could what he’d told me be a lie? I hadn’t given him a chance to explain when he’d frozen his company’s finances. And there probably was a reasonable explanation for everything, one I hadn’t been willing to listen to at the time.
And now it was all over, because even though I knew his greatest fear was abandonment, I’d still left him.
I missed everything about him.
I missed my wild and crazy life in the city, including the reality show and the wonderfully weird people I’d met there.
Here, I was nothing but a broken mess, and I couldn’t go on forever like this.
I needed a plan, a way to start putting myself back together again. I needed to find an accounting job, and the strength to apologize to Oscar even though it wouldn’t change anything. It couldn’t. But he still deserved to hear the words.
For now, I only had enough strength for getting out of bed, feeding Miso, getting dressed, and heading to the coffee shop for my first day on the job.
The security Oscar had hired for me still watched from a distance. It wasn’t necessary here, but I appreciated the fact that after what I’d done, he was still trying to protect me.
At the shop, I put on an apron and busied myself cleaning already-clean tables and refilling the mostly-full sugar container.
I climbed up on a chair and turned on the TV in the corner. The mugshot on the screen made me pause. The guy looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place where I knew him from.
I turned up the volume.
