Page 234 of Heresy

With all the words I screwed up floating around me in the same jumble they were in my head.

They weren’t enough.

I’m not enough.

But that can’t be true, can it?

Over the next few weeks, I found out it is true. Emily pushed both Ezra and me away. She left to travel and we left for college.

All I had left was the sound of her phone ringing, but she never answered.

“Hey,” Ezra pats me on the shoulder to get my attention. I look up from where I’m sitting on the side of my bed, my phone in hand, my thumb hovering over the call button to try to reach Red once again.

“We need to go, Damon. William’s here to take us for the weekend.”

My teeth slam together, jaw as tight a line as Ezra’s. These weekends have become unbearable. Especially since Red’s no longer here to kiss away the bruises.

“Give me a minute,” I answer, still staring at the screen willing her to answer when I call this time.

Ezra notices, a heavy sigh blowing over his lips. “Let her go, man. She’s not worth it.”

Except she is. But he doesn’t know it’s my fault she ran and won’t speak to us.

Red left because of me.

Because I didn’t know the right words to say.

I’m the only one to blame when we come back from these nightmare weekends to realize there’s no one waiting to heal us anymore.

There’s nobody else to blame in this.

I turn off my phone without dialing her number because, in the end, It’s my fault I’m homeless.

Amélie

Present

I don’t know about this.

Walking beside Brinley into a massive mansion that’s larger than some of the extended stay hotel buildings I’ve lived in, I paste on as bright a smile as I can, hoping like hell nobody can see how fake it is.

There are a lot of places in this world a girl like me belongs, but I can promise you, this isn’t one of them.

We near the door and Brinley walks in with confidence despite her casual clothes. It’s not the environment that scares her, or the people. I, honestly, have no idea why she’s always so nervous around large crowds, but that’s just who she is.

But this scene?

These people?

She grew up with them.

Not me.

The only time my family would be invited in is if we were hired as the help. And even that’s questionable. The second they ran a background report, they’d be booting me out the front door.

I haven’t done anything wrong, though, and I have a mostly clean record. It’s just that I never stay in one place long enough to establish roots or have a verifiable identity. There are some points in my life that are blank slots, time periods where I technically never existed.

Why we lived that way, I have no idea.

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