“Shit.” My eyes went wide. “About Finn and the neighbor’s car?”
“Among other things,” Micah replied.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” I asked.
“I didn’t want you to come downstairs looking like someone had kicked your puppy,” he said. “I don’t know exactly what the label wants, but I can’t have you moping and bitching in front of them.”
“Gee, thanks,” I said. “I thought you said my feelings were valid.”
“And I thought you didn’t want psychotherapist platitudes?” Micah quipped.
I ran my fingers through my hair to tame the strands as I followed him downstairs to the kitchen. All the others were already there, huddled in a group.
“Hey,” Finn said to me. “I really am sorry.”
“I know,” I told him.
“Maybe it’s for the best though, right?” Finn nudged me with his elbow. “She was cute, but if she can’t handle a little fun at a party, then how would she be able to cope if you wanted to bring her along on all the craziness of a world tour or something, you know what I mean? She would have peaced out sooner or later.”
I pressed my lips together as Grace’s words rang in my ears.
I can’t be with you…
I won’t stand around and wait…
I guess there’s nothing more to talk about…
I didn’t want to get involved with you in the first place…
I clenched my fist.
Finn was right. It was always going to end like this. Grace was never going to stay. I shouldn’t have gotten so wrapped up in her.
I should have known better.
Thirty-One
Grace
I was glad I lived alone. If I’d had roommates I would have had to explain to them why I’d been screaming into my pillow every half hour.
I would have had to explain why I’d been stomping around and slamming drawers shut.
I would have had to explain why I couldn’t stop crying, even as the ache in my chest made me physically ill from anger.
I had been cursing myself for days over what had happened with Zain. I kept telling myself I should have known better. I should have paid attention to the signs. I shouldn’t have ignored those little warning bells in my head.
Ever since the incident, memories I’d tried so hard to forget had been washing over me in waves. I remembered all those times Meg had come home stumbling and smelling of alcohol. I remembered how she’d leave home without a word, go missing for days, and then eventually turn up hungover and distraught over something awful Peter had done.
I remembered the police officers talking to my parents, telling them about the car crash and saying that alcohol had been involved. I’d only been thirteen, and I’d been listening in from the top of the stairs. My parents hadn’t wanted me to hear the details, but I had to know. Maybe it was morbid of me, but I’d had to know how and why my sister had been taken from me. Knowing didn’t ease any of the pain, but it did transform some of it into anger, which was an easier emotion to deal with, in some weird way.
Which was why I was currently screaming into a pillow over my fight with Zain while I boiled water for a calming green tea.
But as angry as I was, there was a part of me that wished I’d been able to laugh off Finn’s stupid stunt, to see it as just some harmless fun. Or, at the very least, I wished I’d been able to talk to Zain about it without tears streaming down my face.
I regretted what had happened. I regretted getting overwrought and caught up in the moment. But most of all I regretted that Zain just refused to see what I saw. Despite knowing what had happened with my sister, he still couldn’t understand why I had such an issue with his friend acting out.
Finn was just like Peter. Just like the guy who’d recklessly gotten into a car with my sister while he was drunk and killed her. Maybe Finn hadn’t hurt anyone aside from himself yet, but it would only be a matter of time, I just knew it.
