Page 53 of Dirty Hearts

It was hard to rip into her when she was admitting her faults.

“So, what should I do, Marissa? Lie to Ava? Not tell her, ever? I was…” There was no way in hell that Ava and I could get back together now. How?

She wiped at her eyes, smearing her cheeks with her tears. “I’m leaving. I’m just going to leave. Leave when it’s closer to the time. I can’t be here when Ava gets back. She’ll probably come back in six months after the first placement is over. I don’t want to be around when that happens.”

“Why?” I really wanted to hear what she was thinking.

“Because I never meant for this, but I wasn’t careful. We weren’t careful. It was just…”

“What? What was it just?” I was seriously trying to tamp down my rage, but it was hard. In this one month, it felt like I had everything taken away from me, and my life just changed.

“In my head we made sense. You and me. What I did is unforgiveable, and I can’t lie to my sister. I can’t be here and have her hate me either.”

It was when she started to cry that I realized how scared she was. She was crying, and her hands were shaking, and I didn’t know what to do.

What do I do?

I couldn’t be with a woman I didn’t love. But fuck… I couldn’t abandon a child that was mine either. Not like Mom.

She had done it effortlessly.

Pa had taken Luc and me to LA to try our hand at the normal life for her. She got what she wanted and left us. Shacked up with some rich guy and left us in the shit to crawl our way out. Pa was in so much debt. I was fifteen when she walked out. Of course, I didn’t need her in the sense of how a young child would need their mother, but she was my mother.

Parents shouldn’t just leave their kids. Practically act like they never existed.

Marissa was Marissa, and I would resent her to the ends of the earth for what she had done to me, but she was Ava’s sister.

I couldn’t abandon my child, and as ruthless as I was… I couldn’t abandon Ava’s sister either.

So… what was I really going to do?

I knew the decision my brain formulated.

But my heart rejected it.

Chapter 12

Ava

* * *

Present day…

The type of numbness that filled me couldn’t be explained with words.

It entered my heart from the minute Claudius told me that Marissa wanted him. That they made sense. The thing was, they did.

I’d always thought that, but that wasn’t the point.

I sat here listening to his story, to the truth of what had happened, and I figured the rest of it out. It wasn’t that hard. So, he didn’t have to continue.

He’d married her.

It was funny. I could have been furious at the part where he’d slept with her. No matter the circumstances, I could have been furious about that part alone.

Maybe it was the shock. It was hard for me to imagine him with someone else. It was hard for me to imagine him with her.

What hurt me deep, deep,deepwas the lengths Marissa had taken to make it all happen. The lengths she had taken to be with him. Even when he’d told her no. She’d come at him the best way she knew how. Pretending to be me.