Page 140 of Shattered

How can you think you know someone so completely and then realize they are everything you despise?

When she was six and had fallen off her bike (the one that had been far too big for her, but was the only functioning one left in the house, and damn if she was going to be the last kid left who didn’t know how to ride a bike) he’d helped her hobble home and then rubbed her cuts down with water when they couldn’t find any antiseptic. When she was eight, he’d saved up enough money to buy her a new backpack so the other girls would stop making fun of her on the bus. When she was eleven, he’d punched Aaron Hedges in the face for calling her a fugly freckle face.

He was supposed to have been her person. He had helped her. He had fought off that boy when she was a kid, and he’d done

everything he could to protect her from her foster father a few years later. He’d seen what those actions did to someone. He’d known Sara. He’d seen her pain and watched her cry. He knew she had died due to the fact that she couldn’t live with herself anymore after what she’d endured. Sara couldn’t take the blame nor the guilt she’d placed on herself, and she’d done the only thing she could think to do to stop it.

He had seen it all. He had known it all.

And yet he’d gone off and done the same exact thing to someone else. He’d shattered someone's world.

Sam didn’t really think through what she did next. She just knew she needed answers.

Sam: Where are you?

Christian: My house.

Sam: We need to talk.

Christian: Can we talk tomorrow? I’m working on a project

Sam: Callum told me the truth about Millie.

Christian: My front door is unlocked. I promise he didn’t tell you the entire truth. At least hear my part before you decide to hate me.

She quickly threw on some clothes and grabbed her purse and her water bottle. It was then that she realized she would have to take the bus. She hadn’t taken it in almost two weeks now, and hell if she had time to wait through four stops before it arrived at his house.

Sam: Can I borrow your car? I have an errand to run before dinner tonight at the guys’ place.

Kristin: Sure! Keys are in the bowl. See you at dinner!

She didn’t even remember driving over. Her mind was racing with what to say. Or really, was there anything to say at all? Maybe she should just walk right in and punch him in his stupid fucking face.

She had thought about cutting him out of her life right then and there after Callum told her everything. She could delete and block him from her phone and never think about him again. But they had a history. A fifteen year long history. And he had never once laid a hand on her. And as much as she hated to admit it, she needed closure.

When she looked up from her death grip on the steering wheel, she found him leaning against his porch railing.

She saw him walking up the stairs to his room just as she made it into the house.

He pointed to a chair at his desk.

“Sit,” he said as she walked into his room. A room she had been in countless times over the last two years.

“I’m not here to sit,” she looked at him with utter disdain. “I just have one question. And I need to see your face when I ask you. Did you do it?”

He turned back to face her then and sat onto the edge of his bed.

“You aren’t going to believe me no matter what I say. Your mind is already made up.”

“I need to hear it from you.”

He stared at her for a long moment then, leaned his head back to look at the ceiling. “Yes. I did it.”

She physically recoiled. That was not what she’d expected. She’d expected him to come up with an elaborate lie. She had an entire speech planned out to prove him wrong. A surge of hot anger rushed across her skin. She turned and walked straight into his bathroom. She slammed the door shut and leaned over the sink to splash water onto her face, trying to ignore the sound of his pleading from the other side of the door.

The water did nothing to cool her down. She stared at her reflection in the mirror and knew there was no going back to what they had been before. He was now dead to her.

When she stormed back into his room, she grabbed her bag and water bottle, then turned to walk away and out of his life forever.

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