Page 10 of Finding Forgiveness

“I know, Jaz,” I reply, swallowing thickly. I’ve never been able to handle seeing my sister upset.

“I wasn’t expecting her to look like that … I should be there. Should I try and get on a flight tonight?”

“Jaz, there’s nothing you can do. She still hasn’t woken up yet.”

“It’s been hours, why isn’t she waking up, Con?”

“I don’t know … the nurse says she needs her rest to heal. Hopefully, by the time you arrive tomorrow, she’ll be awake. It will mean the world to her to have you here.”

“What if she doesn’t want to see me?”

“We both know that’s not going to happen.” I wander further down the corridor and take a seat on one of the chairs my father occupied earlier. “I hope she’s not disappointed if I’m the first face she sees … neither of her parents have come to see her yet.”

“Ugh. I hate them. They are arseholes. Well, her mum is, the jury is still out on her father. I’ve seen her with her dad over the years and he seems to care, he just puts his career first. Her mum’s mean though. She’s always giving Cassie a hard time.”

“I want to bring her back to Sydney when she’s well enough … are you okay with that? I don’t want to leave Cassie here with them,” I tell her.

“One hundred percent, but I don’t know if Cassie will want that.”

“Why not?”

“She’s worried her parents will cut her off. Her mum is always hanging that over her head.”

“She doesn’t need money … I’ll look after her.”

“She won’t want that either.”

“I’m not comfortable leaving her here with them, Jaz. It’s obvious they don’t care about her.”

“Yeah, I get that feeling too. I was going to move in with Mason, but I’m sure he’ll understand if I stay at your apartment a little longer.”

“You don’t have to do that. I’ll look after her, and you can come visit whenever you like.”

The line goes quiet before Jacinta eventually speaks again. “I guess now would be a good time to ask what’s going on between you two?”

“Nothing is going on between us. What you saw the other day—”

“Connor, you two were having sex, that isn’t nothing,” she spits, cutting me off. “And if you try to tell me you tripped and fell in her vagina then I’m going to end this call and get on the next flight, so I can come down there and kick your arse.”

I lean back into the chair and exhale a long breath. “Do you remember when I first got my driver’s licence?”

“Of course, we used to go cruising around for hours. Why are you bringing that up now?”

“Remember how Dad used to drop Cassie home?”

“Yes.”

“And how when I got my licence, I started doing it.”

“Again, yes.”

“That was when things started between us. Not straight away, but I’d always had a secret crush on her when we were kids. I knew she was your friend, so I never contemplated going there—”

“Until you did,” Jacinta says, cutting me off again.

“It was a slow process, trust me. I fought my feelings every step of the way, but the more I got to know her on a personal level, the greater those feelings became. I’d been giving her a lift home for months before we even kissed.”

“Hmm.”