Damaged Love - Jaxson Kidman Page 0,9
me to throw a rock through Xavier’s window at the shop. He wants to get them worried and rattled, and it’s working. I have no idea what the end looks like, Gia. I just want them to suffer a little. And I’m afraid if I say something they’ll try to do something again. I’m lost. I’m pissed. Yet when I talk to them, they act like nothing is wrong. They look at me…” I swallowed hard. “It’s almost like they want me. They touch me. They kiss me.”
“You’ve kissed them?” Gia asked.
“I know. It’s fucked up. Maybe I’m doing it on purpose. To get to their hearts. I don’t know.”
I abruptly stopped talking.
Gia slowly got to her feet.
I looked up at her.
“So this is a misunderstanding between us?” I asked.
“I have to go.”
“What?”
Gia darted toward the door.
I jumped to my feet and ran after her.
To my shock, I caught up to her.
I managed to grab her shoulder and stop her.
I tried to turn her and she threw an elbow, almost hitting me in the face.
As a last second move, I kicked at her left ankle.
Gia toppled to the floor with a hard thud.
I gasped and covered my mouth.
“That hurt,” she said.
“Gia, I’m so sorry.”
I fell to the floor next to her.
She was on her hands and knees and looked at me. “Are you sure about this?”
“About what?”
“What I’m going to tell you.”
“Gia, I’m not sure of anything in my life right now.”
Chapter 4
not the way you think
We sat outside my bedroom in the dark hallway.
Gia was nothing more than a silhouette as she sat across from me.
“Anything else you need to tell me?” Gia asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “After what you said to me on the beach… I just shut down. I didn’t hear a thing you said when I ran away. I freaked out. I panicked. All I could picture was you running home to tell Xavier what was going on. I’ve honestly been thinking about leaving here. I can go back to the castle. Or I can just leave. Find somewhere else to live. Change my name. Cut my hair.”
“Winter…”
“I know. It’s crazy. What am I supposed to do? You’re my best friend. And Xavier is your brother? I can’t even… I mean… how did I not know that?”
“It’s because nobody knows that, Winter,” Gia said.
Silence fell between us.
“Gia?” I asked.
“I’m here,” she said. “Is your mother home?”
“No.”
“Okay. I don’t know if she knows or not. Here’s the deal, Winter. Xavier’s parents are split up. Forest. Deb. Those are his parents. You know that though.”
“Right,” I said. “I vaguely remember hearing something like that at one point. There were always rumors about marriage and divorce. Money and power. People fucking each other. Typical stuff around here. Right?”
“Think about what you just said,” Gia said.
“What did I just say?”
“Everything,” she said.
“Gia… I’m tired. I’m confused.”
“Xavier’s father fucked my mother!” Gia yelled.
Her voice bounced off the walls.
I refrained from asking what even though I felt like screaming it.
“Think about that,” Gia said.
“I am. I just don’t know what to say next. Without sounding cliché.”
“You want to know how, why, what happened,” Gia said.
“Yes.”
Gia leaned forward and I could see her face in the light leaking from my bedroom.
Tears streamed down her cheeks. “This is my fucking life, Winter. Nothing but a giant secret.”
“Secret?”
“My mother is Xavier’s mother,” she said. “She gave birth to him.”
My jaw slowly started to drop.
Gia wasn’t done.
“Then Xavier’s mother paid my mother to take him away.”
I slid the glass across the counter and Gia grabbed and drank from it.
She chugged the entire drink and then slid the glass back and nodded.
I poured more.
For me, I just drank from the bottle.
We stared at each other.
I wasn’t going to ask questions.
I was just going to listen.
Because this was getting more twisted than I could have ever imagined.
“Here’s what I know,” Gia said. “My mother and father… they had me. Obviously. My father met someone overseas and decided to stay there. Japan. He sent my mother a bunch of money and told her to never bother him. He literally got on a plane for work and never came back. He left all of his belongings behind too.”
“Wow,” I said.
“I can’t tell you how the thing between my mother and Forest started. I was a baby. My mother never told me the truth either. I can only assume it was something quick… or maybe not… because Deb is a crazy bitch too.”
“So you and Xavier are really close in