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“I don’t…”
“No, you don’t,” I snap before he can say anything else. “You don’t know what he’s been through and why he ran away, but I do. So when I say let him go, you let him go.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I am. You will let him be, or I swear to God…”
Nixon narrows his eyes at me. I expect him to keep asking about it, but instead, he changes the subject.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I-I…” I shake my head, pressing my lips into a tight line to stop them from wobbling. There’s a soft sting from the punch I got there last night, but it’s nothing compared to the ache I feel in my heart every time I remember the look on Prescott’s face.
All this time. You knew.
No, he’ll never forgive me.
Not after he opened up to me about Gabriel and what happened to him. Then again, why should he? So he can watch me die from the same disease that took his brother?
“I just couldn’t.”
“What the fuck, Jade?!” Nixon yells, the vein in his forehead popping.
I flinch back. It’s not even the fact that he’s pissed at me. I’ll take his anger any day of the week over this utter heartbreak that’s written all over his face. That’s my undoing.
“Because of this,” I force the words out. They’re so quiet they’re barely audible. “Because of this, Nix. You are happy. You arefinallyso happy, and I couldn’t bring myself to break your heart all over again with my suspicions. Not this year, when everything is finally going your way, and you have to focus your attention on footba—”
“Screw football!” Nixon yells, waving his arms around in outrage. “I don’t care about freaking football; I care about you. I care that you’ve been keeping all of this a secret. What the hell, Jade?”
“It’s fine.”
“Stop saying that!” Nixon yells, running his hands over his face. “It’s not fine. You’re not fine. You’ve been a mess for months! For months I’ve been watching you do crazy shit from afar, unable to stop you. But the pit fight was the last straw.”
“How did you even find out?”
“From freaking Instagram! Some of the guys were there last night, and like the idiots they are, they posted it all over their stories. That’s how I found out. I thought I was crazy. It couldn’t be my baby sister who was fighting in some shitty bar, but something nagged at me to come and check anyway. To make sure that you’re okay. The joke’s on me, though.” He looks at me.Reallylooks at me, his eyes not missing a thing. “How long did you know?”
Wrapping my arms around my middle, I look away, so he won’t see the tears burning my eyes.
“For how long, Jade? How much time did we lose?”
A knot forms in my throat, but I swallow it down, pushing the words out. “Back in August. About the time when we moved in here.”
“Two months?”
I close my eyes, unable to stand the devastation on his face.
“You’ve been hiding this for two months?” Nixon runs his fingers through his hair, golden strands sticking up in all directions.
My throat bobs as I swallow, but still no words come, so I just nod.
“At least tell me you’ve been to the doctor. That you have a plan figured out on how to fight this.”
I keep my mouth shut.
There is nothing to say, is there?
Nothing that he’ll want to hear.
