Page 52 of The Edge of Never

“Then Sienna is a cunt.”

I raised my brows.

“I thought ye said she was there for ye.”

“She was… until she wasn’t. I’ll get to that bit later.” They put their hand on my chest. “And thank you in advance for listening to this because it’s about to get worse.”

I almost held my breath as Kit rubbed their fingers against me. It was as if they were soothing themselves while they spoke.

“When we were twenty, Sienna met Lawrence. They got married two years later. I won’t say I wasn’t happy for her because I was. And I became friends with Law, so I didn’t begrudge their happiness.”

Despite what Kit said, I couldn’t imagine how much it must’ve hurt to watch the person you loved make a life with someone else. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, but I hated it for them all the same.

“It’s not like I didn’t have any of my own relationships. I did, but my feelings for Sienna always lingered in the background. I couldn’t rid myself of them no matter how hard I tried, but anyway, that’s not really relevant…”

Their expression darkened, and the tears kept flowing. My chest hurt to see them cry, but I didn’t tell them to stop. If they needed to let it out, then they could.

“Sienna and Law were happy together, but as the years ticked by, there was one thing missing. They wanted a child, but Sienna can’t have a baby herself because she was born with an underdeveloped womb. It’s called MRKH syndrome. And it sucks because all Sienna has ever wanted is to have a baby.”

Something about Kit’s words made me dread what was about to come out of their mouth next.

“So, despite the fact I’ve never wanted kids, I agreed to be their surrogate. I wanted to make Sienna happy, which I know is fucked up, okay, but you do crazy things for the people you love.”

Kit bowed their head, hiding their face from me, but I didn’t drop my hand from their cheek.

“It took two tries, but I finally got pregnant. It was progressing just fine, but I hated every moment. It gave me a lot of gender dysphoria, but I told no one about that part because I wasn’t doing it for me.”

Their body shook at the words. I wanted to hold them and tell them it was okay. That while I would never experience such a thing, I understood it was fucking hard for them to deal with.

“At twenty weeks, I found out it was a boy. Sienna was so excited. I had to pretend I was too, even though my dysphoria was getting worse as the weeks went by. And then…” Kit choked on the words before they took a breath in an attempt to compose themselves. “Two days later I miscarried, and life was never the same again.”

With that, Kit broke down into sobs and buried themselves against me. My heart broke into tiny pieces for them. So I held them close and let them cry because I had a feeling no one else had let Kit purge their emotions this way. Let them talk about their real feelings without judgment. I wasn’t fucking judging Kit at all. They’d made an impossible choice, and it went to absolute shite.

This was fucking awful, but I had a feeling it wasn’t the end of the story. And I was pretty sure it would make me hate Sienna more than I already did.

Seventeen

Kit

Crying my heart out on Thane’s chest wasn’t how I expected to spend my thirtieth birthday. I wanted to pretend we were friends, but at that moment, he felt more like a real friend than anyone else had done in my life.

The fact he’d listened meant so much to me. It meant the whole fucking world. It wasn’t just that, though. The way he had reacted to my explanation about my gender… no one had ever made it seem so normal. That it was okay to be me. He didn’t ask me how I came to that conclusion. Didn’t make me feel like a child who didn’t know their own mind. I was so used to being judged and questioned that his reaction completely blindsided me.

I hadn’t known how to respond, so I avoided it, but I really fucking hoped he understood how much I appreciated it. Appreciated… him. Crazy to think a relative stranger had more respect for my own individual determinations about my life than people who had known me for decades.

While Dad and Olly had reacted well, they still asked me a thousand and one things about it. Not out of judgement, but the need to understand. I was okay with that since the three of us thrived off logic and a need to get down to the nitty-gritty details of everything. But Thane? Thane didn’t have to give me anything. And yet, he gave me everything simply by seeing me not as a woman, but as Kit.

“It’s okay,” he murmured as he pressed his mouth to the top of my head. “Am here. Ye’re okay, Kit. Let it oot. I’ve got ye.”

His voice was so fucking soothing. It quelled the ache inside me just a little bit. Helped me regain my composure enough that my sobs abated. The tears kept flowing, but I was able to speak again without wanting to wail about the horror of losing something I didn’t want in the first place.

“Do… do you know what the worst p-part about losing him was?”

His head twisted from side to side against mine as he shook it.

“The guilt I felt over being relieved to have my body back. That I wasn’t sharing it any longer and I could be me again. I woke up nauseated every day and all my sensory issues were exacerbated because of it. I hated being pregnant. I never want to experience that again. It was hell.”

I sighed as fresh tears slid down my face. Self-loathing reared its ugly head. I’d gone so many years being happy with who I was, only to be pulled back into the confusing mess of gender dysphoria I fought so hard to escape. That was hard to cope with. So fucking hard to get through, but I tried… I tried for Sienna. I was beginning to see it might not have been worth it, given the pain it caused me.

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