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“You aren’t trying.”

“I am.”

“You don’t even know me.”

“How can you say that? You’re my daughter.”

“So why did you get us tickets for the Paramount? When have I ever shown an interest in that stuff?”

“I thought it would be something nice we could do together.”

“Well, it’s a crappy idea.”

“Your mother’s heart is in the right place.”

“Just like it’s in the right place when she’s with her boyfriend?”

My dad turns red, and even though my entire body flames in fear for how I just spoke, I force myself to keep my composure. My façade is covered in splinters, and I feel myself splitting more and more as the silence stretches. It’s a spiraling of emotions that has me on the verge of tears, but my mother’s are already falling.

“Do you need a break?” Shanice asks when she comes over.

Before I crumble completely, I give her a cowardly nod. If I try to speak, I’ll only cry.

“Harlow, wait,” my mom pleads, but my dad remains silent and pissed as Shanice takes me inside.

SEBASTIAN

Ipush my hands against the door, causing it to open with so much force it slams into the wall. Blood boils, rising through my core and burning up my neck. Marcus keeps a hand on my shoulder as he leads me past the rec room and down the stretch of hallway toward the private counseling rooms.

My nails bite into the flesh of my palms because I have my fists clenched so tightly, and the moment I walk into the small room, I throw one into the doorjamb.

“Whoa.” Marcus grabs my arm. “Take a deep breath for me.”

Searing pain slices through my hand, and I shake it out as I pace around the room, breathing heavily in and out of my nose. I’m the only piece of shit here who doesn’t have a single visitor. No one came to see me, not that anyone would because only my mother knows I’m here. I’m her only son who she hasn’t seen in a couple of weeks, and she can’t even bother to come. It’s fucking humiliating and a reminder of where I stand in her life.

She’s thrown me away as if I mean nothing.

“Do you need to let it out and scream?”

Lacing my fingers tightly behind my head, I keep pacing. The pressure inside me is unreal.

“I fucking hate this shit,” I grit.

My heart pounds so hard that it awakens the emotions I used to silence with alcohol.

I feel it, the life flooding back into them.

It stirs until it explodes and crashes down on me—the jagged edges of my once perfect life carving their wicked truths all over me. I can no longer hold it in because I’ve been stripped of my weapon against it.

When my lungs deflate, I drop to my knees right into the dusty shambles of the walls I’ve been living behind for the past two years. The walls alcohol allowed me to build, but it’s been taken away, leaving me entirely unprotected.

Crumpled on the floor, I heave in ragged breaths, and for everything I’ve been robbed of, I cry. Like a pansy loser, I hang my head and just cry because at the end of the day, I’m just a kid who wants his mom, who wants to feel safe and loved and protected. I never knew how badly I needed that until it was gone. Now I’m terrified I’ll never get that back. I’m too young to go at this life alone; I don’t want to.

“You’re okay,” Marcus assures when he kneels by my side and rubs my back, but it’s all bullshit.

I’m not okay.

Nothing is okay.