to my heart shatter in a million pieces. I curl my forehead into my knees and try to imagine another time, another place, another world. But there aren’t any where he doesn’t exist. I don’t know how this pain will ever end.
Landon was right about one thing.
We’re over, and we never even had a chance to begin.
21
Landon
“Landon?” Alana calls out for me just as I’m slipping into my Porsche, hoping for a quick getaway.
“Hey.” I barely glance at her.
“You haven’t been over in days,” she says. “I was getting worried.”
It’s strange how long I’ve waited to hear those words from somebody. Nobody has ever really said them and meant them. In the past, I learned the hard way people didn’t want to be a friend because they actually cared or genuinely liked me. They’d come into my life for a while, help me through some rough times, and then one day, I’d wake up to find a story in a magazine about it. Funny, those stories always painted them as the do-gooder saint and me as the misguided recipient of their charitable love. The public ate that shit up. Little did they know once the Samaritans got their media payout, I’d never hear from those assholes again.
Admittedly, I expected the same when Alana first started inviting me over for dinner. I figured she was one of those rich housewives with nothing better to do than take on a charity project like me. I went because I was curious, but I knew it was just a matter of time until the headline would break. When it didn’t, I thought maybe she was biding her time. She’d ask me for something eventually. But she never did. She genuinely gives a fuck about me, and I can’t figure out why. She makes me cookies and fusses over what I eat. She checks in to make sure I’m doing my homework and asks if I ever need help around the house. She wants what’s best for me and talks to me the way I imagine a mother is supposed to. And now I’ll have to forget her too.
“Sorry.” I adjust my sunglasses and slide the key fob between my fingers. “I’ve been busy.”
“Well, where are you off to now?” she asks hopefully. “I have a taco bar that’s just about ready and a ton of food. Why don’t you join us.”
“I can’t,” I lie. “I have to go visit a friend. He’s waiting on my notes from school.”
She frowns, and I can tell she wants to ask more, but she never pushes me too far. The truth is, if she knew all the things that had gone down between her daughter and me, she wouldn’t want me anywhere near her house. It was only a matter of time. Once Kail tells her my mother hit her, Alana won’t care what happens to me anymore. If it isn’t that, it will be whatever story Kail decides to sell to the media. It was always bound to get fucked up. People like me don’t get to have a family, and that’s just the way it is.
“Well, alright, then.” Alana looks crestfallen, and I hate myself just a little bit more than I already did. “Maybe another time. Don’t be a stranger, okay?”
“Okay.”
The Porsche slips into gear, and I hit the throttle, putting as much distance between us as I can. Trying not to think about Kail and what she did is a full-time job.
A fucking virgin.
Part of me wanted to be relieved when I found out. Hell, maybe I was. She was only ever meant to be mine. But that relief washed away in a flood of anger a second later. She’s been punishing me for that night, treating me like a monster. Threatening to mace me and plotting out her revenge.
It’s funny how easily I wanted to forget her motivations. But now all I can think about is how she took the money and ran. Her actions then should have told me everything I needed to know. But once just wasn’t enough for me. I had to go and give her the opportunity to do it again. And she will. I don’t doubt there will be another demand for cash any day now.
It doesn’t matter if I felt something. It doesn’t matter how much I might have wanted it. Kail is and always will be the girl who betrayed me. And now, there’s only one place I can go to for answers.