Page 41 of Could Have Been Us
“I see.”
I hope he does because I’m not the one who is afraid.
He nods once and then leaves. When the door shuts, I sink to the ground and cry because there’s nothing else I can do.
Chapter 11
Jack
“What can I do?” I ask Grayson as he exits his room after settling Jessica in.
“Nothing, just . . . I appreciate everything you’ve done already.”
As if there’s nothing in this world I wouldn’t do for him. I literally would walk through fire for this guy, which I’ve done a few times. The last week has been hell for him and Jessica, so we’ve rallied together, doing whatever they need us to. And while what happened to Jessica is a tragedy and has us all waiting to find out if she’ll really be okay, the distraction of focusing on them has allowed me a break from the pain of hurting Stella.
“You’d do the same for me.”
Grayson flops onto the couch. “Absolutely.”
“Is she okay?”
“She seems it, but I can’t imagine she actually is. You’ve lived through it, were you okay after?”
I think about the fire at my house, the flames and how I screamed relentlessly for my mother. All she did was yell back, telling me to get out the window. My father was frantic, trying to reach us both. He couldn’t. She demanded he come to me and help me out. My mother died so I could live. I was fifteen when it happened, and I can still smell the smoke all these years later.
While it wasn’t the same scenario for Jessica, it will never leave her.
“No, but she has you. Just like I had people. People will help.”
Grayson was there for me every day. He was the best friend any kid could ask for. He didn’t force me to talk. He was there. Anytime I felt alone, Grayson was there, reminding me I wasn’t.
When my father started to disappear, I wasn’t alone.
I had him.
I had them all.
Josh, Alex, Oliver, and Stella. God, Stella. She was always smiling, bringing me things to cheer me up. She made me cards and drew pictures for me. She was eleven at the time, and I will never forget how she went from being a sweet little kid into this gorgeous girl. Then when I was a senior and she was a freshman, that girl walked down the hallway of the high school as though she were the new queen—and she was. I wanted to fall to my knees.
It was the most confusing emotion ever.
She was Stella. Stella. Grayson’s little sister.
Instead of being shy and a little sheltered, she walked right up to me, smiled, and kept going past me.
I don’t know that I was the same again.
Grayson’s head falls back. “My parents. They . . . my father.”
“They’ve always been this way. They’ve done nothing but manipulate you and your siblings.”
He laughs. “You don’t know the half of it.”
Neither does he. Grayson’s father makes my father, who eventually ended up taking off after my mother died, look like father of the year. The shit he did to Stella and me, the things he threatened to do if we chose to keep our child, was cruel. She was eighteen, afraid, and I was broke with no family to fall back on for help.
He made sure we knew we were at his mercy and there wasn’t a chance we were going to fuck up his precious family name.
I get up, grabbing us both a beer from the fridge.
