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“I—”
“You’re getting whipped by your sister and your mum for cheating when you didn’t. Fuck’s sake, do you think it’s penance or something? Do you enjoy punishing yourself?”
My eyes are bleary as I stare back at him.
“It’s nothing I can’t handle. Sophie’s going through worse.”
The two of us sit in silence for a few minutes as I stew. Tanner’s right. In a way, I do enjoy punishing myself when I see the disappointment in her and Mum’s eyes. Because it reminds me that I’m still able to feel. Even if it’s the coldness of someone else’s disgust digging into me.
It means that Sophie didn’t take away my ability to feel.
She left that one thing.
Just one.
One thing I refuse to let go of no matter how much it burns to embrace it.
Because when she left… she tookeverythingelse.
I swipe up my phone, expecting Maddy to be announcing she’s on her way. But the words on the screen make bile thrash its way up from my stomach.
Maddy: You need to get to Mum’s. Dad’s here and something’s going on.
No further explanation is needed for me to be grabbing my jacket off the back of my chair and gritting my teeth as relay her message to Tanner.
“I’ll come with you.” He’s on his feet a second after me, but I place a hand on his shoulder and shake my head.
“No. My father’s all mine.”
“Don’t do anything stupid,” he warns as I stride toward the door.
“Like?”
“Kill him.”
I huff out a grunt. “That’s too easy for him, Tan. I’d rather watch him suffer.”
I tear up outside Mum’s house, screeching to a halt and flying out of my Range Rover like my life depends upon it. I sprint to the wide-open front door.
There are two giant suitcases in the hallway.
“Came back for his shit, did he?” I say as Maddy rushes down the hall from the kitchen to meet me.
“Yeah, Mum called me,” she says in a rush as there’s loud banging from overhead. She glances at the vibrating ceiling, where the light fitting is swinging with each loud thump. “She’s up there with him. Trying to talk him out of it.”
“What?” I screw my face up, white rage racing through my veins. “She seriously wants him back? Now?”
“No.” Maddy shakes her head, her eyes shining. “It’s not that. She doesn’t want him to leave because she can’t bear to see him hurt you again. He’s—”
Another loud bang overhead steals her attention.
“Spit it out, Sis.”
She swallows and drags in an audible breath.
“He’s leaving with Sophie.”
The air is punched from my lungs in an instant at the same time as my head swims like it’s being held deep below the surface of icy water.
