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Everyone knew. Everyone conveniently turned the other way.
It’s my job to keep your heart pointed toward heaven.
If I’m sure of anything to the depths of my soul, it’s that if there is a heaven, Jason isn’t pointed toward it. Neither am I.
I shudder, trying to keep my brain on task—an impossible feat sometimes. “You’re going to have to meet her, Ma.”
“Off you go, then,” Mom says, irritation coating her words. She’s pissed about Jess. “I need to get dressed.” She shoos me out of the room and down the hall, shutting her bedroom door behind me.
I open my mouth in a silent scream and clench my fists as I spin to face the attic stairs.
My whole life, I’ve always felt like an outsider. I love my siblings. I love my mom. But I’ve never fallen into place like they did. Now that Nova is here and I’m seeing her be absorbed into my family, it’s like I’m seeing them for the first time, too.
I consider forcing Mom into a room with Nova to demand she acknowledge this, but nothing about that mental picture seems appealing.
Maybe I can keep them apart forever?
A low growl tears through my chest at my frustration, and I slam my palm against the wall. It fills me with shame to admit it, but I’m embarrassed by my family.
I jog up the stairs and dive face-first onto my bed, wanting to hide or run away or disintegrate.
The day I slept with Nova, I accused Xan of pretending he wasn’t a Stryker. To stop fighting against what everyone says about us—what we prove to be true over and over. But I’m no different than him. I’m worse, actually. Because Xan at least pretended to be something different.
I only have the balls to wish it.
