Missing Hart (18 page)

His eyes cut through me like razor blades as he shook his head.

“You’ve lied about so much that I don’t believe a word that comes out of your mouth. You blaming this fucking charade on Marissa when she isn’t alive to confirm or deny it makes me ill.”

Stepping out of the doorway he started across the room toward me, stopping just short of me and gesturing to the door.

“Get out of my house.”

My body was shaking so hard that I wasn’t even sure how I was standing. Reaching out, I grabbed his hand in mine and held on tightly.

“Don’t do this to us Dillon! I love you. I love you! I know I was wrong,” I sobbed, “and I’m sorry… I’m so sorry.”

Shaking free of my hand, he jerked his head toward the door.

“I told you to get out and I meant it. If I never see your lying face again, it will be too soon.”

It was like I was paralyzed. I couldn’t move, refused to turn to the door because I knew that if I left we would really be over. Reaching past me, he yanked the door open and gestured to it.

“Either you get the hell out of my house or I do. Which is it to be?”

“Please,” I begged, “Don’t… do… this. What we have is real. I love you. I’m only ever going to love you.”

He dismissed my words with a sweeping hand gesture.

“That’s the thing about high school. Everything feels like it’s larger than life and you pretend that things will last forever. You’ll have a new boyfriend before you know it and all of this will be nothing more than a funny memory to you.”

“THAT’S NOT TRUE,” I cried, “I love you with my whole heart and soul. I’m never going to think any of this was funny. Please. I’m begging you!”

“I’ve told you to get out and I’m not going to change my mind. I don’t want you here anymore. Leave.”

It was over. Nothing I was going to say or do was going to change his mind, at least not right now. On shaking legs I turned and walked out the door, almost jumping out of my skin when he slammed the door behind me.

I’m not even sure how I made it to my car, but somehow, I did it. I pulled away in a fog, unable to comprehend the fact that his love for me had turned to hate. I was sobbing so hard that it’s some kind of miracle that I made it home without crashing into something, but I just wanted my room so I didn’t stop driving. It was careless and stupid, but in the moment I didn’t care enough about life to stop.

My phone rang or buzzed alerting me to text messages the entire way home, but I knew it wasn’t him so I didn’t bother looking at the phone.

It felt like I’d been driving for an eternity when I pulled into my driveway. Throwing the car into park I yanked the keys from the ignition and ran straight for my bedroom. I knew that I’d have some time alone because my aunt was at work and Delilah would still be at work for a few hours longer. Throwing myself down onto my bed I curled into the fetal position and sobbed my heart out.

I had been stupid, so goddamn stupid, to have agreed to lie to him in the first place. I should have told him the truth myself long before now, and I couldn’t believe how incredibly short sighted I’d been. How had I fooled myself into believing that he wouldn’t be furious when he found out?

I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard my bedroom door fling open and then felt my sister jump onto the bed next to me as she started rubbing my back.

“What’s happening with you? What’s wrong?”

Having my sister see me like this only made me feel worse because now I was going to have to answer questions. I cried harder, unable to answer her.

“Dominique! You’re scaring me. What the hell is going on? I felt something wrong so I left work to come find you. I called you and texted you a hundred times and you didn’t answer me and now you’re crying so hard I’m afraid you’re going to pass out. Are you hurt? Do I need to call Mama?”

Shaking my head emphatically, I cried harder. “NO!”

Crawling over me she curled onto her side next to me so that we were face to face and she could hold my hand. It was our default position whenever we cuddled or comforted each other, but this time, it didn’t make me feel any better.

Nothing was going to make me feel any better because my heart was gone. Dillon hated me, and all of the joy and hope for the future that I had built up evaporated into nothing.

There was only one person that could ever make me feel better, but he wasn’t going to willingly speak to me ever again.

I cried until I had nothing left and it hurt to breathe, and then I closed my eyes and faded to black.

I woke up to the sound of my sister frantically whispering on the other side of the room. Opening my eyes I realized that it was very dark out which meant I had been out for some time. It hurt to breathe, my face was still wet with tears and my head was pounding.

“Damien, I promise you I don’t know what’s wrong with her,” I heard my sister whisper, “But what I do know is that she’s been crying on and off in her sleep for hours. Even unconscious she won’t let me touch her to see if she’s hurt. I need you here… I’m scared.”

A brief silence was followed by, “You’ll need to sneak into the house. She got really upset when I asked her if she wanted me to call Mama San. I covered for her earlier but if Sandra sees you, she’s going to know something is wrong.”

I wanted to tell my sister to leave me alone but no words came. Instead, I shut my eyes and blanked the world out again.

The next time I woke up, Damien was on my bed whispering my name. My eyes struggled to open long enough to connect with him. When I finally came to enough to see him, I started crying again. He had me up and into his arms in less than a second, rocking me back and forth on the bed like a baby as he kissed my forehead and begged me to tell him what was wrong. I felt his tears landing on my cheek to mix with my own and it broke my heart that I was hurting him now too.

I tried to speak, but only a croak came out, the hours of crying having taken their toll on my vocal chords. Finally I whispered, “Water.”

I said it so quietly that even I had barely heard it, but Damien understood. Lifting his head, he told Delilah to run and get me something to drink. I clung to him while we waited for her return and then I started to cry again quietly because my poor brother had to hold me up so that I could drink. It wasn’t right that I was falling apart so badly that my brother literally had to feed me water like I was a baby. I needed to get myself under control enough that I could calm him down and assuage his fears.

He didn’t let up until I’d consumed half of the bottle of water that Delilah had brought, even though I tried several times to push his hand away. Finally I’d had enough, and grabbing his wrist, I squeezed so that he would know I couldn’t take another sip.

“Ladybug,” he whispered to me, “Did someone hurt you? You have to tell me what’s wrong baby so that we know if you need to go to the hospital. You’re scaring me.”

Shaking my head emphatically I said, “No one hurt me physically. I… had…”

I tried to figure out what the hell I could say that wouldn’t result in my family asking questions that would lead to them finding out about Dillon. Finally I blurted, “I got into a fight with my best friend and now we can’t talk anymore, ever.”

“What friend,” he asked.

I shook my head, committed to keeping Dillon’s identity a secret. From the other side of the bed Delilah spoke up.

“It could only have been Leah. What happened?”

Damn her, I needed Damien to be satisfied with what little I’d told him and now he was going to have more questions.

“Who the fuck is Leah and what the hell did she do to you, ladybug?”

The thing about lies is that once you start telling them, they take on a life of their own. Before you know it, you’re adding onto them and they’re growing at a rate of speed that you can’t halt.

“She didn’t do anything,” I answered, “I’m the one responsible for this. I lied about something very serious and now our… friendship… is over. I won’t be forgiven for what I’ve done.”

“That’s bullshit,” Damien snapped. “You let me talk to this girl and tell her how badly you’re hurting right now and if she’s a true friend, she will be here.”

I started to cry again, overwhelmed by how out of control my life was getting.

“No Damien, you won’t be talking to anyone. I’m accountable for my own actions and I don’t need my father figures jumping into the fray and making me look worse than I already do. I just need to be left alone for a while. I’ll be okay.”

“No,” he said, “you’re not. You’ve never been less fine ladybug, and I know that you’re lying. Don’t you know that there is nothing that I wouldn’t do for you? Whatever is wrong, I can fix it. I won’t stop until whoever did this pays for hurting you.”

That was exactly what I was afraid of.

“I’m not lying. I’m upset and I’m allowed to be upset. You can’t jump in every time I shed a tear.”

“The hell I can’t!”

This was the problem with my brothers. They had absolutely no off switch where Delilah and I were concerned, and if they thought we were hurt or upset, they lost their ability to be reasonable. Damien was only nominally easier to deal with than Dante was once his “Papa Bear” radar went off. I knew some daddy’s little girls who were less over-protected than my sister and I were, and that was saying a lot.

“Damien, please, you are the one upsetting me right now and I can’t handle it. If you want to fight with someone who’s hurting me, go into the bathroom and yell at the mirror. I’m an adult now. You have to let me deal with the repercussions of my own mistakes. I did what I did and now I need to find a way to deal with the consequences. Please don’t make this harder for me than it already is.”

His jaw clenched and unclenched at least a dozen times before he gave me a curt nod to acknowledge that he was going to let it go… for now.

“You and Delilah are my life, ladybug. Don’t shut me out.”

Shaking my head, I promised that I wouldn’t.

Wrapping my arms around him tightly I sat up to kiss his cheek before laying my head on his shoulder and closing my eyes again.

I woke up when I felt my bed shifting. Opening my eyes I found myself looking into Dillon’s blue eyes. They were filled with love and concern, and my heart filled with joy. Sitting up I threw myself into his arms, crying as I whispered, “You came for me… you aren’t mad anymore?”

It was like a bucket of cold water had been thrown onto my dreams when the voice that responded wasn’t his.

“Of course I came ladybug,” Dante said, “Why would you ever think that I was mad at you?”

My body started to shake while I held onto him, embarrassed that I’d been so out of it when I woke up that I thought it had been Dillon’s eyes I was staring into. Of course it wasn’t Dillon, and I felt like an idiot.

“Why would you think that I was mad at you honey?”

Pulling away I shook my head. “I guess I’m just super emotional.”

“You couldn’t do anything to make me truly mad at you ladybug, not ever. You’re my pride and joy, nothing you say or do is going to change that.”

Oh, I would bet there was something I could do that would disappoint him, namely letting him find out that I’d fallen in love with someone that was less than a month younger that Dante was. He’d also be beyond disappointed if he knew that I had lied my way into a relationship with Dillon.

No matter what, I needed to keep Dillon’s existence a secret.

Every day without him was hell, and even four weeks later, it wasn’t getting any better. If anything, it was getting worse.

At first I had texted him multiple times every day, but he never responded. Then I switched to calling him directly, but he always sent the calls to voicemail. My next attempt at explanation was sending letters pouring my heart out. I made sure not to put return addresses on them so he couldn’t send them back, and that had resulted in him texting me to let me know that he wasn’t reading them and each one was a waste of paper.

My family was on ridiculously high alert where I was concerned and that meant that I had to go out of my way to appear normal even though I felt like I was dying inside. Delilah wasn’t fooled even for a second, but I told her that if she made a big deal out of it to the rest of the family, I was going to live with someone else in the fall when we went to school and I would go out of my way to avoid her. She looked like I had slapped her in the face when I said it, but she kept her mouth shut.

I went from being out of the house as much as humanly possible to being home all the time. The only time I really left was to go to school or to go to work, my world shrinking in size as I closed myself off.

I had gone to lunch twice with Leah, and it meant the world to me that even though she knew the truth, she didn’t cut me out of her life. She was loyal to her brother though, and had made it very clear to me up front that he wasn’t up for discussion. That hurt me, but not having any contact with her would have hurt me more. I felt like she needed a friend to be there for her now more than ever, and the fact that she let me be there was a blessing. The two of us were quite a duo, both in a funk for different reasons, both struggling to put one foot in front of the other.

Leah had confided in me that she had finally read the letter that Marissa had left her, and although she was too emotional to give too much detail, she did tell me that she thought I needed to read mine.

That letter hung over my head, and I’d tried hundreds of times to open it, only to find that I physically couldn’t do it. I needed strength now more than I ever had, and reading something that reminded me that Marissa had chosen death over life wasn’t a good idea for my emotional state. I had never been suicidal before and I didn’t think that I was now, but I can’t deny that the idea of going to sleep forever held a macabre appeal. I hurt so much, and I just wanted it to go away.

I was completely out of it physically and mentally, and even I have to admit that the pounds I’d lost made me look like a skeleton. Instead of eating, I dressed in baggier clothes so that it was less obvious.

It had been two miserable, lonely months since Dillon had surgically cut me out of his life as if I was a cancerous lesion. I continued to cry myself to sleep every night and I was so depressed that it was hard to remember to do simple things like shower. School was a nightmare, I quit my job and my family was quickly losing patience with me but I didn’t care. I had thought I was doing a good job of pretending that I was okay, but judging by the fact that my brothers were all but living at home again, I knew I was failing.