the best doctors and medical specialists to look out for her and give you time to be a normal teenager for a bit.”
“I won’t abandon my mother!” I grit out.
“No one’s asking you to do that, my love,” she sighs. “Like you just said, you’ve been caring for my sister for a long time now, and I see it in your eyes. You’re tired and you feel like you don’t have any help. But I’m here now.”
“Here to move us into your new five-minute lover’s house, apparently.”
“Here to help you and take the burden off your shoulders,” she counters.
“My mother isn’t a burden. She’s my best friend,” I whisper, even I can’t ignore the pain in those words. I’m losing my best friend as well as my life. While the King of my life, the man a daughter is supposed to love first, is out there moving on with his life like we don’t exist anymore.
“I know, baby girl.” She sniffs. “She’s mine too and we need to give her the best care possible.”
I know what she’s saying makes sense. I know taking care of my mother and giving her the best care is the most pragmatic thing, but this house, it holds so much of her that I don’t think I can let that go.
As if knowing were my thoughts are, Aunt Nicky reaches for my hand and holds it. “It’s just a house, my love. And if you ask me, there are so many troubling memories in here.”
The best memories of my life are in this very house.
I learned to crawl, walk, and dance in this house.
I found myself in this house.
“I can’t let you move with my mother,” I start, feeling another fight coming on. I rush to finish before she can say anything. “Not without me.”
I hate the Fitzgeralds, and tonight something happened between the two brothers and I.
So, no matter what happens from here on out, we’ll be enemies in the same house, only we’ll all know something.
It’s not my home and I dare not get myself comfortable. Which is why I need to come up with a game plan. I’m already at a disadvantage because when Julian pinned me to that tree, he knew.
He knew and he didn’t tell me.
“Thank you, Mia.” Aunt Nicky wraps her arms around me, her expensive perfume almost like my mother’s but it’s not. “I couldn’t do this without you.”
There’s something wrong with that statement, but I don’t say anything.
We move from my childhood home to the Fitzgerald mansion/insane mausoleum that weekend.
Packing boxes upon boxes of my life and my mother’s, I put on my best ‘unbothered bitch’ mask and stay focused on one task at a time.
I don’t think about where I’ll be living from now on.
I don’t think about what might be waiting for me when I get there.
I don’t think about the black remote in my pocket or the way Shane was acting last night when he gave it to me.
I don’t think about the fact that I might have blown up that car.
I refuse to think about all that. Actually, I don’t think about anything else other than getting Mom ready for whatever we might be walking into at the Fitzgerald’s, oddly comforted by the fact that no one really knows where their house is.
I make sure to switch off my phone, and leave it like that, not wanting to be connected to anyone or hear anything about last night.
With more than just precaution and jittery nerves, I force my aunt to have the moving trucks at the hidden back entrance of our house instead of the front where anyone can pass by and notice them. I didn’t want anyone, not Kristine or anyone from Clintwood or even St. Jude, to know that I was moving, let alone where to.
When we finally got to the Fitz mansion, I was stunned at how big it is. It took over twenty-eight minutes to drive here from our house, which makes this like a thirty-nine-minute drive away from my school and thirty to St. Jude.
Yeah, they knew what they were doing when they bought this house. Privacy is a major issue for the Fitzgeralds, and I messed that up for them once.
I search my mind to try and think if I’ve ever heard of the Fitz brothers throwing a party at their large mansion, but I don’t think they’ve ever done that.
A fact that’s proven by my aunt later that afternoon.
“Look at it, Mia, Nancy!” Aunt Nicky exhales,