Page 75 of Just Between Us

“Kai, are you okay?” Mum asks, frowning.

My chest is moving up and down rapidly and I can’t really put my thoughts together. Everything is a mess in my head.

“Mum, I need to tell you something.”

I never told her that I planted a bag of drugs in his car. I never told her I asked my friends to call the police. I never told her anything. Even when she didn’t speak for a few days after he was gone, I kept my mouth shut. Because even if Kenny lost his job and grew mean, I knew she still loved him.

“What is it?” she asks.

I take a quiet breath. Looking at her now though, I can’t tell her the full truth. Telling her would break her. So, I go for a half-truth. I tell her that he hit me once or twice and that he said a few nasty words when he was drunk. I don’t tell her about his friends and the way they looked at the twins. I don’t tell her about the harsh beatings or the hospital. I don’t tell her what I planned with Si.

She watches me, listening, her lips trembling. When I’m done, we sit in silence for a long time. Tears spill from her eyes, but she only reaches out to hold my hand.

Five minutes or half an hour might pass before she stands and walks over to me, bending her small frame to hold me tightly. She kisses the top of my head, and I feel her tears fall on me. “I’m so sorry, Kai. I’m sorry I never realised. I’m sorry.”

I have never blamed her. I hid everything so well. I’ve never wanted her to know.

“It’s okay. You couldn’t have known. I’m fine, I promise.”

She pulls away and holds my face, “Once is more than enough, Kai. As your mother, I should have protected you.”

I shake my head. “It’s okay, Mum. Really, I’m okay. It all worked out in the end.”

She shakes her head quickly, sniffing and I almost hate myself for making her sad. “No, sweetheart. It’s not okay. You don’t have to keep pretending for me anymore. You can cry and scream if you want to. You can be angry at me. I don’t care. But you have to know none of the things he said to you are true. I would have never sent you away.”

I nod, giving her a watery smile, both guilt and relief flooding through me. “I know that now.”

As much as I hate the look in her eyes right now, I know this is something she can eventually move on from. If she knew the sick things he did, she’d never smile again. I can’t have that, so this has to be enough.

I spend the night at my mother’s and when Monday comes again, despite missing both Levi and Cole, I feel a lot lighter than before, like the weight that has been on my chest for the last nine years is gone. It doesn’t undo what Kenny did but it’s something at least.

Throughout the week, I try not to think about Kenny and the fact that he’s been released from prison. I focus on work, and the gym with Jenna. I tell myself that if he wanted something, he would have reached out again by now.

When Friday comes, Jenna, Marie and I go to a game night hosted by one of the trainers at Jenna and I’s gym. We sit around the living room drinking and laughing over Jenga and silly card games.

I miss Levi and Cole desperately, but they don’t belong to me, and they never will. It was a little bit of fun, a plot point in my story but it’s over. More than a week has passed and for the first time, I find myself laughing along.

But when I get back home and lie in bed looking up at my ceiling, that heaviness in my chest returns. I swallow it down because letting them go was the right decision. Even if they did like me to some extent, Adam was right, I don’t fit in their world, and they don’t fit in mine. If they knew about Kenny, about what I did, they probably wouldn’t understand it. Their world is ski trips and summer charity galas. Mine isn’t.

It’s time to move on.

Chapter Twenty: Levi

It has been two weeks since I last saw Cole. Fourteen days since I’ve touched him. It’s the longest we’ve gone without each other since we first met. I don’t think we’ve spent more than six days apart and in those six days, we spent the entire time texting.

I know he has someone watching me. I think I recognise most of his security detail by now and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s personally watching me too. It doesn’t bother me because, at his core, I know Cole is good. I know he loves me despite everything in that email from Nick.

I didn’t leave because of it. Nick and Cole have always had a complicated relationship, but Cole never got into the details. And as much as I understand why now, it still stings a little that he didn’t tell me the truth. There is a whole world of him that existed before we met. A world that I now realise is more complicated than I thought.

I always knew there was something about him that I couldn’t reach, something he wasn’t telling me. It’s probably what pulled me in initially. It’s what I felt Kez understood that I didn’t. And as curious as I was about it, I never wanted to upset our balance. Keeping him with me has always been what I want most.

But Kai's leaving made it clear that both Cole and I have been hiding parts of us from each other. Even if I no longer feel the overwhelming anxiety and unease I felt before Cole, I know it’s still there swirling inside me, always waiting for something to go wrong.

My father recommended I see someone, and it’s been a week of intense therapy so far, but Doctor Sloane has made it abundantly clear that having Cole is not a permanent remedy. He can’t fix me, neither can Kai and I don’t want them to. I know it’ll be a long time before I can sort through everything that goes on inside me but at least I’m not ignoring how I feel anymore.

I love Cole but I also have feelings for Kai. I don’t know what that means for us going forward but Doctor Sloane says it doesn’t make me selfish, it just makes me lucky. I choose to think about it like that from now on.

It’s Saturday and it’s an uncharacteristically warm April day. The sun beats down on us despite it only being ten in the morning as I negotiate the farmer’s market with my father. It buzzes with people dressed in their summer clothes and carrying tote bags with blooming seasonal flowers sticking out.

---