Page 83 of Our Secrets and Scars

I call to her through the nothingness. I don’t know if I even make a sound or if her name just echoes through the chasm with no one to hear it. But I feel something in my heart. A rotten, decaying sort of sensation, as if one side of my soul is dying.

Bexley.Her name is screaming through me over and over again.

I’ve never had a psychic connection to my twin, never felt her pain when she did. I could never read her mind or finish her sentences. Never been able to tell that something’s wrong from gut feeling alone.

Not until this moment.

For the first time since we were born, within three minutes of each other, I have an overwhelming, cataclysmic sense of foreboding. A siren in my head alerting me that something is very, very wrong. And most poignantly, an unmistakable loneliness in the deepest parts of me.

Because where there used to be two parts to my soul…

…now there is only one.

Twenty-Three

Kinsley

Sincethedriverofthe car that crashed into us that night pled guilty to vehicular homicide, there wasn’t a criminal trial, only a court hearing. I didn’t go to it though. I couldn’t stomach the thought of looking into the face of the person who had caused so much trauma for my family. Couldn’t bear the idea of letting him see my pain and the grief of having lost so much.

Because of him, Bexley and I would never get that sisterhood I’d always wished for, and I’d never know what it was that she was going to tell me before he smashed into the side of our car, killing her instantly.

My parents didn’t go to the hearing either.

So, I knew nothing about the guy responsible for killing my sister other than he was a minor. A boy of only sixteen. And since he was so young, his name was protected from being released to the media. I didn’t even care to find out anyway. He was going to prison, and that was all I needed to know.

I know it now though.

Holden Fletcher.

The man who, for four years, I wrote to, mourning the relationship Bex and I would never have and telling him every single one of my secrets. In the four years plus of us being pen pals, followed by the months we spent dating, in the end, there was nothing about me that he didn’t know. No scar I hadn’t shown him. No secret I hadn’t shared.

What a fool I was to think it was the same for him too.

It makes me sick that during the nights we spent tangled up in one another, he knew what he’d done. He knew who he was and what he’d taken from me. And still, he touched me like he had a right to, made love to me like he deserved it, and got me to show him my scars by telling me I could trust him.

I don’t know much anymore, but I know this for certain; because of him, I will never trust again.

“Babe, I haven’t seen you smile in like a week.” Isla sighs in concern from the other side of our dorm room.

I bury deeper into my bed sheets, pulling the blankets over my head until all I can see is a tiny diamond of light just big enough to let the air in. But the sound of her footsteps pad across the floor, and then the end of my bed deflates beneath her weight. Gently, she tugs the sheets down to expose my face.

Instantly, I hide my eyes with my forearm.

“Fuck, can you turn out the lights?”

She chuckles sadly. “That’s just the sun, babe.”

“We need blackout blinds,” I grumble, slowly removing my arm from my face and squinting as everything comes into focus.

My side of the room looks as if it’s been bombed. My clothes, which are usually meticulously folded away or hung in the closet, are strewn across the floor. My bedsheets are stained with Cheeto dust and peanut butter from eating my feelings and the smell of musk from going days without showering lingers with embarrassing pungency.

Everything reeks of sadness.

“I’m going to Harriet’s tonight for a few days and I’m worried about you,” Isla says softly, leaning a hand on the bed and wincing when it lands in a sticky patch of melted chocolate.

She inspects the substance, then wipes it off on her jeans.

“Why?” I ask, unashamed.

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