In Ruins (27 page)

Present Day

I pause outside the room the nurse told me Billy was moved to, still munching on the sugar cookie they gave me after I donated what looked like a hell of a lot more blood than I'd been expecting. A little sugar in exchange for the flow of life—
seems like a fair trade.

It's Nicole Stanger's haughty voice that's stopped me outside the door. It echoed down the hall as I approached and it almost made me turn back in the other direction.

“Whatever, Mom. I don't want to talk about Tucker.” I flinch at the sound of my name. I should probably just go. Carl doesn't need me anymore now that she has her mom, but I don't want to abandon her on the off chance she might need me again.

Nicole sighs, long-winded and dramatic. “Still blaming yourself for the entire breakup, then?”

“Just leave it alone, Mom.” Carl already sounds exasperated. It's probably because they're talking about me, and it stings that I'm a sore subject for her.

Another sigh from Nicole. “You know, I'm not heartless. I know it's hard to get over your first boyfriend. But
that's
what he is, Carleigh. Your
first
boyfriend, probably of many. I know when you're a teenager you feel everything times a hundred, but all this
love
and
soul mate
business…it's not real. If it was, he'd still be here.”

I
am
still here!
I want to shout.

“Figuratively, I mean,” she amends. But she's still not right, and I grit my teeth, restraining myself from barging in there and correcting her. But her words mirror Carl's sentiment from back at Cap's house. Her assertion that if I truly loved her I wouldn't have let her go for anything. Hell, it was my own words that put the idea in her head. And they're true.

Because I
haven't
let her go.

I've tried to, I really have, but despite how much she hurt me, I. Can't. Stop. Loving. Her.

That's what I came to tell her when I stomped into her room at Cap's. That she's fucking blind if she thinks I've let her go. That I may have broken up with her, but that I still belong to her in every way that counts.

“Yeah,” Carl murmurs so softly it almost doesn't reach my clandestine spot outside the door. “I'm starting to realize that.”

It's a knife to my heart. But it also sends my mind racing. She's starting to realize
what
, exactly? Is it the same bullshit she said back at Cap's about how I never loved her enough? Or is it something she's realizing about herself? About her own feelings?

Fuck
.

“The more time passes, the more you'll realize how ridiculous it was for him to blame you for what Dad did,” Nicole tells her.

“He didn't,” Carl corrects her mother, and I thank God she at least knows that. But her voice sounds so small, so defeated, and it makes my chest ache. “I mean, maybe he would have, you know, resented me for it no matter what. Subconsciously, or whatever. But he broke up with me because I'm a liar.” She lets out a self-deprecating laugh. “He used to tell me everything. Things he never tells anyone. And I sat there and never said a thing.”

My arms tense at my sides and my hands clench into fists. I don't want to fucking hear this shit. I don't want to be reminded of how she hurt me. I need it to not be true. Because I'm already realizing I have no choice but to forgive her.

“What could you have said?” Nicole scoffs. “You didn't know there was any connection to the Greens.”

Wait,
what
?

“I did know.” I have to strain to hear Carl's response, but at least it makes sense, unlike Nicole's comment. “And even before that…He told me all kinds of things, and I
wanted
to tell him the truth, but you'd drilled it so deep that we couldn't. That everyone would judge us. The same things you've told Billy. And I'd been selling the lies for so long—about Dad being away on business, or traveling…By the time I realized I wanted to confide in Tuck…” Another scornful laugh. “I didn't want him to think I was a
liar
.”

I dig my fingernails into my palms just to do something with my agitation. It's fucked having to just stand here, unable to correct either of them. Because, yeah, it stung to realize she'd spent years spinning lies right to my face, but it was hearing her admit she knew about her father's connection to mine, that while I'd spent the past year telling her about him—about his
suicide
—she knew the whole time her own father contributed to it, that I found unforgivable. Until recently, at least.

“So it's my fault, then?” Nicole says with a righteous indignation she never earned.

Carl's tone deflates again with her sigh. “No. It's nobody's fault but my own. I was scared that if I told Tuck the truth about Dad, and he knew I'd been lying to him since day one—that I wasn't the
Princess
he'd made me out to be all these years…I thought he'd just like, be over it.”

“You can't blame yourself for that. Men haven't exactly been a stable force in your life,” Nicole says matter-of-factly, but Carl continues like she didn't even hear her.

“It wasn't until spring break that he told me how he felt, and we were actually, you know, official. And I was thinking to myself that I was finally ready to tell him about, just, everything. But he told me before I had the chance. About his dad being Dad's client.”

My heart stops beating in my chest.
I
told her?
No
. She knew the whole time. That's what she said.
She knew
. That was the whole fucking point.

“I mean, he didn't know he was talking about Dad. He just called him
Stanley
, and all this stuff about how he deserved worse than prison. And then that his family deserved to suffer like Tuck and his mom did.” Carl chokes on a small sob, and I want so desperately to see her face and know for certain that what she's saying is real. But I can't. Because I can't be caught eavesdropping, and because my world is spinning so fast I'm not sure I could find my footing.

“And how is that your fault?”

Carl's deep breath is audible even in the hall. “I should have just told him,” she says resolutely. “The second I realized what he was saying. The second he said
Stanley
. I should have told him. I should have told him a hundred times since. And I tried. I really did. But every time I opened my mouth, I just saw that hate in his eyes all over again, heard those angry words. I didn't think I could bear him looking at me like that.”

Nicole mutters something I can't make out.

“Turns out I could bear it, though. Since he ended up hating me anyway.”

“I thought you were friends now.”

“I guess.”

Carl huffs before dissolving into some rant about how Billy should be able to talk about his life and his family to whoever he wants, and how Nicole should be around more, but I stop listening.

Or I can't listen anymore. Because it's all muffled by the sound of my blood rushing through my ears as I try to make sense of what I just heard.

Carl didn't know until Miami?

No. That's impossible. I fucking asked her. I asked her and I will never forget hearing the sound of the two words that clawed my fucking heart out of my chest, leaving behind a worthless, gaping, bloody hole.

I knew.

But…
when
did she know? And does it matter? She said it herself—she should have told me that morning in Miami. She should have told me a thousand times since. I shouldn't have had to find out the way I did.

But as I recall our exchange that morning on spring break, the hateful words I hadn't known were about her own father—about
her
—I'm not sure I can even blame her. I'm not sure I would have done things any differently if it had been me in her position.

Fuck.

I need to move. I need to make sense of what I just heard. Because my entire life was destroyed on those two words—words that told me she'd known all along—and if they aren't true…then I might have ended us for
nothing
.

I make my way through the automatic double doors, desperate for the frigid late-November air to breathe some life back into me.

I think about the morning I learned the truth. When Cap came over that morning, it took all of two seconds of seeing his face for me to know my world was about to be catapulted off its axis.

He didn't want to tell me what his father had discovered. But more than that, he didn't want to witness what he knew it would do to me, and I had to practically bulldoze it out of him.

I lived less than ten minutes from Carl, but that drive took an eternity. The whole time I kept telling myself she didn't know. She
couldn't
know. Her parents must have woven an elaborate lie about why her father was in prison. Or at the very least she couldn't have known about his business alias. That when I'd told her what happened to my dad, said the name
Stanley
, she hadn't made the connection. I told myself she was innocent in all this. She
had
to be.

I knew it was crazy, but no crazier than her being the one weaving the lies. Or so I told myself.

But one look at my face told her why I was there, and one look at hers shattered my pathetic, delusional fantasy.

And in that instant, we were destroyed. I'd never had a whole lot of faith in relationships in general, but I had all the faith in the world in my girl, and she obliterated it with those two words.

I knew
.

But she
didn't
fucking know. Not the whole time, at least. Not until I'd decided to unload my family's dirty laundry on her back in Miami, and inadvertently told her it was her own father who'd ruined mine, before I ever even knew it myself.

I lean back against the brick façade of the hospital, still trying to make sense of what I've done.

But my mind is still lost in that morning, battered by the memory of my own scathing rant, and the stunned look on Carl's face as I watched her cry freely, telltale tears of guilt just rolling down her beautiful face.

I was so sure she'd earned that guilt. That she'd known all along what her father did to mine. That she'd kept it a secret to manipulate me—to trick me into believing she was really the perfect princess I'd always seen her as—desperate to maintain the picture of wealth and success she and her mother had painstakingly painted all these years. The one where her father's only crime was neglecting his daughter in favor of creating
more
wealth and success.

I let myself believe she'd done it all on purpose. Taken advantage of my affection for her, skillfully played the role of the poor little rich girl to steal my sympathy. That she'd fucking conned me into loving her.

But even as I try to rationalize my thought process that day—and so many days since—I know I was disastrously wrong. What's worse is realizing I should have known it all along. Because everything I've ever known about the girl has been at odds with the narrative of manipulation and betrayal I've tried to piece together since that morning. The truth is it never fit Carl. And now I fucking know why.

Regret and frustration buzz through me, and I turn to face the wall, searching for the calm I need to go back upstairs. But it evades me, and instead of finding composure, I slam my palm into the unforgiving brick in front of me. Because how could Carl have just stood there and let me say that shit to her? Why didn't she fucking
defend
herself?

But I already know why.

Carl thought I was
right
. That she deserved my wrath and my contempt. So that morning, when I asked her if she knew, she had no idea I'd meant
all along
. She'd known since I told her in Miami and never spoke up, and in her mind that alone was an unforgivable betrayal.

And I didn't help things any when I called her a liar, and—
fuck
—accused her of spreading her legs to distract me like she was some kind of goddamn common whore. And yet she's spent months accepting my scorn as if she fucking deserved it.

I think of the horrible things I've said to her, the way I've treated her, and I can't fucking breathe. I told her she was a
stranger
. That we were fucking
nothing
—that we never were.

I don't know what the hell to do. Carl is up there thinking I never even really loved her; meanwhile it was just hours ago that I finally realized I never stopped—that I never could. And now—
now
I find out I never had a reason to
try
to stop? What the fuck do I do with that? Run up there and beg her forgiveness?

I know what I
should
do. What a better man would do. He would accept his failure, and let her go. But I already know I'm not capable of that. I'm far too selfish.

My phone buzzes with a text.

God
, I suck. I'm supposed to be here for her, and I fled like a damned coward.

And now I'm making her worry. Fuck me.

When I walk through the door to Billy's hospital room, Carl is curled up in an armchair, texting. She startles when she notices me staring at her from the doorway. She's so beautiful, even in her uncertainty, and it takes me a moment to pull myself together. She stands up, smoothing my shirt, and I can't help my small smile. The sight of her affects me in the usual, physical way, and I hope it isn't noticeable. Her gaze darts between mine and the phone in my hand as it buzzes with a text.