I don’t have to give a damn about them, either. So what if they’re acting out of character? Maybe it’s because they regretted taking me in. Maybe they have financial troubles. Who knows?
Shit happens. And it’s not my shit. I don’t have to know why. They don’t owe me anything.
Nobody owes me anything, and I’m fucking done.
Without Gigi, I’m done, and the thought is scaring the shit out of me, because since when do I depend for my sanity on a girl? On anyone, for that matter? Let alone a girl who has decided I’m not worth her time anymore.
Fuck.
***
“What do you want?” Sebastian snaps at me the moment I set foot inside the garage. We haven’t worked on a car in weeks, and I’d been hoping for some peace and quiet.
I may not want to admit it, but Mr. Lowe had a calming effect on me, before he flipped his shit and started yelling at everyone at the drop of a pin.
Last thing I expected was to find Sebastian here, lounging against the car Mr. Lowe has been working on. He has a cigarette in his hands, and he looks annoyed.
No, he looks fucking pissed.
So I stop myself from turning around and leaving. Instead I step deliberately further inside and lean my hip against the car, just to piss him off more. “Same as you.”
The fucker hates that his parents took me in, probably thinks I’ve stolen his only-child privileges and spoiled his trust-fund.
Fuck him.
“You wanna smash the car and set the garage on fire?” He sucks on his cigarette, eyeing me through the smoke. “No? Yeah, I didn’t fucking think so.”
“You’re so full of shit.”
“Am I?” He cocks his head to the side. “You’re trying so fucking hard to be good. To be a good boy, a good son, and for what? You think they take notice? That it makes a difference? Newsflash, fuckface: You’re not their kid and never will be.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” But my throat is strangely dry, and the itch to push him, prick him until he’s furious and then brawl with him and hopefully punch him? Yeah. It’s fading fast in a dark wave of depression. “I’m not trying anything.”
“Sure you are. You want to fit in. In this neighborhood, in this house. But can’t, Fen. You’re rotten inside.”
“Shut up.” I swallow so hard my throat clicks.
“You think I don’t know? You used to steal, and destroy property, and we’re supposed to just, what, overlook it? Forget it? You don’t belong here, got it?”
How does he know to hit where it hurts the most when I don’t even know it myself half the time? Don’t know it, or don’t wanna know it. It hurts so fucking bad because he’s right.
Turning around, I head right back out, not angry or sad, but cold, an icy realization seeping into my chest, into my bones.
I’m a bad person. Bad sort. Bad luck.
And a bad son to whoever decides to give me a chance. I already proved it to my real parents, and then to Connor.
If the Lowes haven’t yet realized what a mistake they’ve made, it’s only a matter of time.
***
The days drag. The nights are rocks around my neck, pulling me down, keeping me underwater. I’m drowning, watching from a distance as the Lowes quarrel and drift apart, as the faint hope I’d been harboring—the hope I didn’t know I had, one more thing that’d escaped me—starts to fade.
How didn’t I realize until Sebastian threw it in my face that I’d been hoping for just that—to fit in, to become the Lowes’ son? All the times Mrs. Lowe asked me to call her mom, and I refused. All the fight I put in it, all the times I refused to look at the possibility of staying here, with them, and now it’s eating at me, not letting me rest.
The possibility of staying here, where Gigi is.
Goddammit.