Page 104 of Adrift

“Rani!” a familiar voice calls out behind me–either Dean or Garrett–but I keep moving. It’s against my principles to cry in public. Even as a kid, I’d cry silently in the comfort of a bathroom stall or under the covers in my room.

I’m not entirely sure where I’m going or how I’m going to get there–given that I came here in Darian’s car–but I also have nothing to say to anyone. I have nothing left to give.

Is this what a heart shattering feels like? Like shards of glass pressing themselves from the inside, trying to get out? Like the type of pain that even though it’s targeted in the middle of your chest, you feel it on every inch of your body?

I hear one of the brothers say something that sounds suspiciously like, “Fuck, whatever he did, he messed up, didn’t he?” before their voices fade like they’re no longer nearby. Either that or my ears are still ringing with Darian’s words and I can no longer hear anything else.

I turn a corner on my way to the exit, spotting Olivia. Unlike the usual glower she always has ready for me, she offers me a sincere smile. I must look like a hot mess if even she can’t help but give me an empathetic smile.

Exiting the building, I gulp in a big breath of air when I hear someone else call out my name. I don’t have the energy to even turn around. I keep walking aimlessly until I’m somewhere in between the cars in the parking lot. And when I finally have a second alone, I plant my face inside my open palms and allow the sob I’d swallowed to release into them.

I sob for my first love and for the last time I’ll know something like it. I sob for the man who reigns unconditionally in my heart and for the tremendous weight he now has to carry on his own. And I sob for the fear that’s been burning a hole in my stomach ever since Ryan declared that Arman was his son.

What will happen if he’s right? He said he didn’t want Arman, but after the way things went down between him and Darian, will he exact more revenge than just pressing charges?

Darian couldn’t go on without his baby boy.

And I can’t go on without the both of them.

My shoulders shake from my intense cries as two pairs of warm arms wrap around me. My best friend and my cousin hold me in their embrace, letting me cry. “It’s going to be okay, hon. I promise.”

I pull away from them. “I need to get out of here. Can you please just take me to Darian’s. I need to leave.”

They exchange a look but Melody nods, taking her keys out. A minute later, I’m slumped in her backseat, gazing out the window but not seeing a damn thing.

I spy Melody eyeing me from the rearview mirror. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I go back to inattentively watching the cars next to us through the window. “It turns out Sonia was cheating on Darian.”

Bella turns around to look at me from the front passenger seat, the purple tips of her hair brushing against the center console. “So, what that Ryan guy said is true? We weren’t there to hear it, but Garrett had mentioned it.”

I nod, my thoughts faintly recalling the way Bella and Garrett kept glancing at each other when the other wasn’t. It was fucking cute, but love sucks and I should warn her, even though no one warned me.

“So what does that have to do with you, though?” Melody asks. “I can’t believe your sister would ever think to have an affair with anyone when she had that fine ass piece of man meat at home, but she always struck me as someone who was a bit off, based on everything I’ve heard about her.” She examines me in the rearview again. “No offense, and may she rest in peace.”

“She sent me a text months before she died, but it wasn’t meant for me.” I pull out my phone and read them the message Sonia had sent me. “I told Darian about it today because it all made more sense after Ryan said what he did.”

“Oh, gosh. And I’m guessing Darian felt betrayed that you didn’t tell him right in the beginning?” Melody infers.

“He said he didn’t think he knew me at all–” My throat feels like it’s closing up again. “I told him in not so many words that if he couldn’t trust me, then that meant we were done. And when I went to leave . . . he didn’t stop me.”

“Wow.” Bella sighs. “I mean, I don’t blame you for not showing him the text earlier. What would it have done, anyway? Sonia’s gone and seeing something like that–finding out the wife you spent so many years with was sleeping with someone else behind your back–would bring nothing but needless pain. Pain he couldn’t really have done anything about. Not to mention, at the time you read it, it probably just felt like a suspicious text, not something that confirmed she was cheating. So, to jump to telling Darian based on a suspicion–even if your gut said Sonia was doing something nefarious–seems irrational.”

Melody seems to be quiet, focused on the road, which means she’s trying to weigh her response against her loyalty to me and our friendship. I know my best friend well enough to know she wouldn’t be quiet otherwise.

“Mel, I know you disagree, so spit it out.” I wrap my arms around myself protectively. I still don’t think I would have chosen to tell Darian about the text, even knowing what I know now. In my heart, the text is a confirmation of Sonia’s infidelity, but not worth the pain in Darian’s eyes today. Like Bella said, to have shown him the text would have been to inflict needless pain on him, and if there’s one thing I’ve never been able to see, it's him suffering in any way.

Melody wiggles in her seat, both her hands on the steering wheel. “Queenie, I’m not here to tell you if your decision to keep the text from him was right or wrong. I can personally see it both ways. Had Ryan not been in the picture, and had the question of Arman’s paternity never come up, I would have agreed that the text would have been like putting a new cut on an already wounded man. But I guess I am trying to see it from Darian’s perspective, too.”

She flips the blinker on to turn left. “With everything he found out today, I think the text was just the last straw to push him over the edge. He’d just found out he was betrayed by someone he loved and that his son might not even be his. Then, you told him you’d been keeping a text from your sister. Had he known about the text from the beginning, perhaps he could have made peace with it or been more prepared for what that jerk Ryan said to him. I think it just had Darian second-guessing everything in his life, and I don’t blame him for feeling so confused.”

My chin trembles, and I hate that in the process of saving Darian from more grief, I’ve become a part of hurling him further into it.

Maybe I am too young and too immature to be in a real relationship. Maybe it’s better that I leave now and let him find the peace he wholeheartedly deserves. If all he sees is my sister’s betrayal when he looks at me, then I can’t imagine being a source of comfort for him at all.

But nothing quells the feeling that I’m breaking inside at the thought of leaving.

We all sit quietly, consumed in our own thoughts for a few minutes, and I think about my next steps. I can’t stay here, not when Darian made it clear he doesn’t want me to. I blink back the fresh set of tears. I was so excited to move here permanently to start my life with Darian. I’d get to see my boys everyday and be with the two people I’d come to consider as my own little family. But now, I’ll be returning empty-handed–worse off than when I arrived because at least then, I had no notion of what I’d lose. No understanding that I’d be changed forever.

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