Page 189 of Poison Aches

Everything feels elusive, as if I just had an important dream that’s clinging at the edge of my memory, forcing me to recall it over and over again.

And to make matters worse, Grammy kept calling. For hours after I got back.

Maybe she sensed something seriously messed up was going on with me.

She’s always been so perceptive… I wonder if she knew all along that Beverly was married to Governor Hughes and that they have another daughter who happens to be my twin sister.

If they knew, why did they never tell me about my mother?

On one hand, my grandparents were so heartbroken and soul-crushed when Beverly disappeared.

For years, they were searching for her while they both raised the children she abandoned.

Meanwhile, here she was all this time, living it up as the wife of a governor in the Big Apple with a daughter she chose after discarding the other!

A sharp, unbearable pain zaps through me.

I’m crouched into a ball on the floor.

I was in a daze after Emmett’s cousin dropped me off that I don’t even remember getting in here.

Hell, it’s only now I realize that I literally don’t have any of my stuff.

I recall the enthusiasm and stupid excitement that I had hours ago when I packed my bags, thinking my biological father’s daughter wanted me to stay at their home so I could get to know my father.

But it turns out, I was part of her evasive plan! And I walked right into it!

I start chuckling again, but when the pounding in my head starts all over again, I fall silent.

“What an idiot,” I mutter to myself.

I don’t even have my migraine pills or any of my medication. No clothes. No toiletries. Just my phone and a shattered soul.

Honestly, this was nothing at all like I had imagined.

All the things that came to light mere hours after landing in the city are all too incredulous to be real.

What happened to the heart-wrenching father-daughter reunions on TikTok that make everyone cry?

Why couldn’t I get one of those reunions?

Instead, after killing Gramps, after working to atone, after all the laws I’ve broken, the time that I spent… this is what I get?

“God, why me?” I whisper in the silence.

When I was younger, I didn’t really have friends, and felt huge waves of emotions that I couldn’t express. All Grammy could advise me was to talk to God.

She said He listens. And most often than not, He responds in ways we never expect.

“Is this part of your response too?”

Hot, salty tears start streaming down my face.

The humiliation I felt tonight…all in front of strangers that had my life in their hands.

And Emmett was there too.

I don’t even want to think about him right now, but just like falling for him all those years ago, I don’t always have a choice.

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