Page 88 of Outcast’s Return

I told Fabien the one thing I’ve kept hidden all this time. I told him Father made me do it. I betrayed my father and I hurt this man standing opposite me. All my years of silence were for nothing.

Even as my body shivers from the water, I can’t stop talking. Like the rain above, the words pour out of me as I continue to tell Fabien everything.

It’s a confession. There’s no point holding secrets back anymore.

“Father discovered us through the emails I left open on my laptop. I was stupid, and he saw them. He read them, then he sat me down at home and told me I had to end it.”

We’re standing so close under the porch. I can no longer feel my lips. The air smells of wet asphalt. Fabien looks down at me, his hair darkened by rain. Droplets run down his high cheekbones, but he evidently doesn’t care about the cold or the water. There’s a dawning realization in his eyes.

“End it?” Fabien asks quietly. “Why? What was his reason to shut it down?”

I’m trying to hold back my tears. I bite my lip and shake my head.

I can’t tell him. It would ruin him, and I’ve done enough of that already.

“Tell me, Jolie...”

I gulp. I don’t want to say it, but Fabien’s glare digs deep into my soul and unstitches me.

I owe him the truth. Even if it hurts. Already there’s been too much suffering by me keeping secrets.

“He didn’t think you were worthy enough.”

Fabien blinks.

“Worthy enough?”

“He said you had turned out to be a disappointment. That you failed to get into a reputable university. That you’d failed yourself, and your father. He called you a dropout. A nobody. Just an orphan.”

That last word hits hardest of all. The man flinches in that dark, stoic, rage-fueled way of his.

“Is that what he really thought? That’s what he told you?”

“Yes.”

“And he told you to write the email?”

Father leaning over me as I sat at his computer in that office Fabien and I used to sneak around in. His hand pointing decisively at the screen, commanding me to type the unforgivable.

“He gave me the words. All I had to do was press send.”

Fabien’s silent.

I reach for his hand.

“Fabien?”

But he doesn’t take it.

“Fabien?”

He inhales.

“But now he’s changed his mind on it all. He wants me to join the Castaways and help his ambitions. He just wants to use me, as he used you, for his own ends.”

I’m crying now. Tears run down my face, mixing in with the raindrops.

“I’m sorry, Fabien. I sent that email. I made that choice. I could’ve walked away, but instead I used Father’s words and called you the worst thing of all. I knew what it would do to you, and it worked. There are no excuses. I was torn between the two of you. And I made the worst choice. And then I swore myself to silence for years.”