“Too bad.”
Please don’t… please don’t break my heart like you’re about to do right now.
“Why did you kiss me?” I demand, standing up now, wanting the floor to open up and swallow me whole
“I just wanted you to shut up. It’s nothing special and it means just that, nothing.”
Hurt blooms in my chest with those words, morphing into pain the more I stare into his dark eyes. The brilliant emerald is almost gone.
“You’re a horrible kisser,” he says it so casually, like it doesn’t matter that he’s breaking me apart.
“I—,” I start to defend myself, wanting to tell him that I can do better, but he cuts me off.
“I didn’t feel anything, so I don’t think all that should fall on a guy’s shoulders,” he states, his jaw clenched. “Your mother was wrong. Or maybe she meant that those kind of kisses are for girls that know what they’re doing.”
It almost feels like my heart is being torn into two uneven, bloody halves with cracks all through it. The silly thing was fragile before, but I never took precautions to actually care for it. I never thought I’d meet anyone who would want to rip it out of my chest in one encounter. Hell, I didn’t even know that he had my heart in his calloused, rough, bloody palms until now.
The ground starts shaking beneath my feet. The room seems to be spinning but his gorgeous face is clear right in front of me.
“Don’t look at me like you just fell in love with me,” he grits out, his words clipped, as his fists clench. “It was nothing and no one can love a nosy, mouthy girl like you.”
In the distance, I can hear the sound of shattering glass like it’s happening to my heart. My insides tighten. I feel faint, the ringing in my ears growing louder.
Spinning on my heels, I don’t stay to look at him, I run down the hall, a scream lodged in my chest and throat.
I can feel his eyes following me, watching me, but I don’t turn around. I can see my mom’s hospital room at the end of the hall, and I debate whether or not I should go and hide in there with her, but I decide not to.
Tears burn my eyes for the second time in two days. The first time was when I had to call an ambulance for Mom when her entire body couldn’t stop shaking and now, after I’ve just had the most amazing kiss with a cold jerk.
My vision gets blurry with unshed tears and as I round the corner, I run smack dab into a group of people.
“Excuse me,” I murmur, the urge to run and hide overwhelming me.
“Oh hello,” a strange guy says, watching me with excitement in his eyes. He’s got a notebook in his hand and a camera around his neck. “Say sweetheart, have you seen a powerful family here.”
“Who?” My voice is choked up, but the other people start gathering around me, firing questions.
“You look like you’re in high school. Have you seen the Fitz brothers? Our source says they’re here.”
I don’t know any Fitz brothers or whoever these journalists are looking for. A lot of celebrities live in Palos Verdes, so this is stupid.
“I don’t know who you’re talking about, excuse me.”
“Come on, you can tell us,” another lady with desperate hunger for something I can’t place, flashing in her eyes says, stepping closer to me. “I can give you a hundred if you just tell us if you saw some boys, tall, dark-haired around the hospital.”
Tall and dark-haired…
“You know who we’re talking about,” the woman presses, and then she quickly takes out a crisp Benjamin Franklin and waves it in my face. “Just tell us what you know.”
“I don’t know…”
“Surely you know a little bit of something juicy, like what he’s sick with or maybe if they’re being discharged.”
The guy I just kissed wasn’t sick with anything other than assholeness, but other than that…
“Come on, sweetheart.”
Their voices start buzzing around me as we stand there. I can’t breathe, their questions getting louder and louder.
I suddenly feel claustrophobic. The lights get brighter around me, the faces of the mob getting longer and stranger. I feel faint.
I need out right now.
“Listen!” I shout, my voice uneven and scratchy. “I don’t know what you’re talking about or who you’re looking for.”
They pause for a moment, but the lady gets in my face again, her breath smelling so foul I almost gag.
“But you know something, don’t you?” she presses.
“I don’t know anything other than a boy who has Down syndrome is in there and he’s…”
Gasp and shock moves over the crowd as they all start scrambling to jot down everything I’ve just said while I stand there, dread and something that I can’t place my finger on growing in the pit of my stomach, like acid is burning holes into my guts.
I just messed up.
“One of the Fitz brothers has Down syndrome?” the shouts grow louder, a sickening buzz growing stronger among them. “It has to be a newborn baby. Is it a newborn baby?
“Are Courtney and John still together?”
“Did John father a child with another woman?”
“Did the brothers see the twenty-one-year-old model their father, John Fitzgerald was caught with leaving the Four Seasons last night?”
Each question is like an arrow to my chest, the grim, sick glint in their eyes flashing down at me, making me step back.
“I…”
But before I can finish that, the journalists and reporter’s attention turn to someone who’s standing a few feet behind me.
“Julian!” They shout now, rushing to him, dismissing me. “Julian, is it true that you have another brother and that he has Down syndrome?”
“Julian, why has your family kept your brother a secret all these years?”
“Is your brother a bastard child?”
“Did your mother, Courtney lie about her miscarriage when she first got married to your father, John?”
“Julian, so you’re three in the Fitz household. What does that mean for the heir?”
“What do you think of your family history, Julian what with all the infidelity, the lies, the horrors?”
Slowly, I turn around like I have a ball and chain strapped around both my ankles, my heart pounding so hard in my chest, I think I’m going to pass out as each repulsive question targeted at destroying a family fills the air around us.
I did this.
As soon as our gaze meets, I know without a doubt that whatever we had between us just died a very short death and for as long as I live, I’ll never forget the look in his eyes right now.
I did this.
I’ll never forget the way he made me feel small and passionless.
I did this.
I’ll never forget the words he said.
I did this.
I’ll never forget that I opened my mouth and spilled information that wasn’t mine to spill and that I might have opened a can of worms too big to manage.
I fucking did this.
The noise around us blurs and disappears as we stare at each other. His nostrils flare with pent-up anger, eyes flashing with barely concealed hurt and betrayal. Betrayal that I caused.
And as I stare at him, I notice the way he seems to alter right in front of my eyes.