Page 22 of In My Heart
“He needs to get back to his classes,” I sighed.
While I worried about being left in the house alone, I didn’t want to continue disrupting Cal’s education. He had a dream and he’d been well on his way towards it before I came along and started ruining things.
“He’s no’ supposed to be on his ankle all day yet anyway. He’s arrangin’ to work remotely, at least until his cast gets removed.”
“He’s missed so many lectures and classes since I arrived here, Arran. I don’t want to mess anything up for him,” I worried.
“Ye dinna need to be worryin’ about Cal. He’s a good head on his shoulders. He can handle uni, while also being here with you, just as he wants to be. Plus, I always keep an eye on him, alright? I’ll no’ let anythin’ happen to him, nor to you.”
“Don’t waste your time trying to look out for me, Arran. Clearly, I’m destined to die a brutal death at some point. No use in keeping delaying it,” I scoffed, aiming for it to come off as a joke, but I failed to hide the tremble to my words as my fear slipped free a little.
“Hey now. Nothin’s happenin’ to ye. I willna let it. Don’t talk like that. None of us can stand to even think of losin’ ye. Can’t ye see that? We need ye,” he told me resolutely.
“Yeah right,” I scoffed, some of my temper slipping from my control. “You all need me like you need a hole in the head, Arran! All I’ve brought since I came here is trouble. Gia is dead because I chose to come here! Cal’s hurt and Dante has run from the only family he has. Rafe is in pieces over Gia. I should have stayed in that crappy apartment in Chicago, where I belonged!”
I sat up pulling myself from his arms and shucking off the duvet. I couldn’t lay there anymore. I couldn’t keep taking comfort when I didn’t even feel that I deserved it.
“Cara, that’s all shite, lass, and ye know it. Come back here,” Arran called after me as I scrambled from the bed and headed for the door of the room.
“I can’t,” I gasped as I turned to glance at him. “Sorry. I just…just give me a breather, okay? Please?”
“Alright. I’ll be close if ye need me though, okay?” he pushed, and I nodded, then fled the room.
As soon as I closed my bedroom door behind me, I sank to the floor leaning back against it and took a few deep breaths. I needed to try and get myself together, and that was all I allowed my mind to focus on.
I was falling apart, and maybe I had a right to do so after everything, but it wasn’t going to help me through if I continued to just crumble, and lose my mind.
I knew only one way to get through the horrible things that had a tendency to happen to me in my life, and that was to keep going. Keep moving. Stay busy. Never give myself enough time to think too much. I needed to try and do that, to distract my mind from the dark and terrifying mess that it was, and stay present. That was what Cal had done for me the night before when he took me out to the garden, and it was what I needed to continue to do if I was going to find a way to keep myself together.
It wasn’t going to fix anything. It wasn’t going to magically make me feel like I wasn’t broken into billions of fragments. But it would get me through the next few hours. Hell, if it would get me through the next ten minutes it would be something.
So I forced myself to stand and I moved through to the adjoining en-suite. Taking a shower and getting dressed in actual clothes seemed like a good place to start.
CHAPTER 7
CARA
I stared down into the grave where Gia’s casket had just been lowered. There had been a priest, or whatever he called himself. I didn’t even know what religion the ceremony had been in. I just knew some stranger had stood there, and gone on and on about peace, eternity, and God, as my kid sister was lowered into the ground.
All I had wanted to do was scream at the man to shut the hell up! It had been just as bad in the church before we moved to the graveyard, more religious bullshit. Why would Gia even believe in a God who had lumbered her with such crappy parents, and then ended her life so young? Why would anyone when life was so fucking hard all of the time?
“Sweetheart?”
I looked up and found Rafe at my side, where he had been since the moment we left home late that morning. He was holding an umbrella over us as the rain poured. Everyone else had left already, and I could see Cal sat in the open door of one of our cars, his ankle, which was causing him so much pain, propped up inside as Dario and Arran waited outside the car for us, both of them getting soaked and not seeming to care.
“I d-don’t want to leave her” I whimpered.
“Me neither,” Rafe agreed shakily. “But she’s gone, Cara. She’s not in that box in the ground. She’s gone, with any luck to somewhere a damn sight better than this.”
“She deserved a better life than the one she was given.”
“She did. We all did, but we can’t change the hand we’re dealt. I tried. I tried so fucking hard to make her life better, To make yours better, but I failed.”
“No,” I shook my head as I looked up at him. “You did everything you could, Rafe, and you did make things better for a while. This was Mum. She’s the reason Gia died. Her selfishness has cost all of her children in one way or another, but it cost Gia the most,” I told him, needing him to believe it.
In the week since Gia had been killed, Rafe had spent every spare moment that he wasn’t at my side, chasing Mikhail Kozlov down. He wanted to make the man pay for taking Gia from us. But deep down, I knew the only person Rafe was blaming for Gia’s death was himself, and he was beating himself up over it in any way he could.
“No more. This is the end, Cara. Our parents don’t get to take anything else from us ever again, do you hear me? I’ll kill Adamian before I let him anywhere near you!” Rafe declared angrily.
