Page 116 of Poetry of Flowers

After gently biting my lip, she pulled back, leaned her forehead against mine while she held my face in her hands.

“I love you,” Tillie whispered.

This was all I needed to hear to know I hadn’t lost her.

“None of what happened was your fault, Kayden. I love you no matter what. Nothing will ever change that because you are not your father. You are Kayden, my best friend, my first and only true love.”

I kissed the crown of her head and pulled her closer.

“I was so scared you would hate me.”

“I could never hate you.”

Tillie pulled back and cupped my cheeks. Her cold fingers made my skin feel alive.

“It’s over. I’m so sorry nothing happened as you had hoped, but we’re going to build our own dreams. Do you trust me?”

I grabbed her hands and pulled them off my cheeks to hold them in mine and warm her freezing fingers.

“I trust you with my life.”

“Good because we will get you out of that abusive household, and you’re going to move in with us. When we finish high school, we’re going to travel, and you can show the world how your songs and your voice can change lives. We’re going to build a life without pain and sadness in it because we have us now. I’ll love you so much that you won’t need anyone else’s love- why are you smiling like that?”

“Because I don’t deserve you,” I answered and leaned down to kiss her again. “I know recovering from everything that happened is going to be hard, but having you by my side is going to be my salvation.”

Tillie placed her thumb over my mine when she looked down at my arm. “I completely forgot about your elbow.” She grabbed my arm and inspected the scrubbed skin. It happened when I slipped in the shower and had tried to brace my fall on the wall, instead I ripped my skin open on the rough tiles.

“It’s alright.”

She shook her head, “It’s time to start taking care of yourself. And if you can’t, then I will.”

I watched her wet a cloth and clean my wound. Tillie got a little bag out of her backpack and sanitized the wound before putting a large band-aid on it.

“I met your sister.”

Hope.

For a split second, I questioned why she would suddenly talk about Faith, but then I remembered that I had another sister.

That’s a thought I would have to get used to.

“How is she?” I shouldn’t have told her I was her brother like that. She didn’t deserve that.

“She cried a lot, but she’s incredibly strong. And you were right, there was no regret in his eyes, and she saw it too.”

“Some people can’t see how their actions hurt others. Everything is always right in their eyes, but that doesn’t mean that it is the truth.” I brushed one of her damp locks behind her ear.

“Hope gave me her number, she said if you ever felt ready to talk to her, she’d be waiting.”

Her words surprised me, I thought she wouldn’t ever want to see me again after I had basically destroyed her family in one evening.

I nodded and pulled my girlfriend onto my lap; she laid her head on my chest and I lay mine on her shoulder.

“Let’s go home today, we’ll drop off the car and take a train straight to Seattle. We could be home in forty-eight hours,” she suggested.

I wanted to talk to my mom. I wanted to apologize for thinking she was a monster for not telling me.

She had known both of them were terrible, even when one was her high school sweetheart. People changed over time, and Clark had changed for the worse. She had known that if I figured out what happened, it would hurt more than anything Patrick had ever done.

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