Page 20 of Unmasking You (Hidden Hearts #1)

Chapter 19

Jamie

“I’m ready to talk,” I say with a lightness that I don’t feel.

Shane’s face nearly plastered to his plate rises to look at me, and his eyes reflect the fear and uneasiness I’m feeling.

There’s been a strange mood since we kind of became friendly… or since I lost my hard and cutting edges. I can’t say I’ve forgiven him, because that’s not it, but seeing him bullied by his own family hit me hard. I can’t even fathom the idea of my family not loving me, protecting me, and supporting me like they do.

How did he survive all these years fighting left and right? I’m surprised he’s not more like Dan—angry, violent, and out of control.

I spent the night remembering, and trying to come to terms with what they did to me. I thought I did a good job, when I went to the therapist to discuss everything that happened that year, but Shane coming back into my life and living with me has brought some of the anger and desperation back. It was never far, but now it’s at the forefront.

“Okay,” he says, but does nothing more than eat.

“Why?”

“Can I finish breakfast? Then maybe we can sit on the sofa?” I want to say no, because I need to know right now, but he waited weeks for me to come to terms with the fact that he’s back in my life and I have to face my past. I can wait a few more minutes.

I watch him while he eats, and his manners speak of money and a life of having everything at his feet. But not once since I’ve known him have I ever thought he was a snob. Before everything went south between us, he treated me like there was no class difference between us. He treated me like a friend, and sometimes something more.

How would things have evolved between us, if Dan hadn’t surprised us that day? He stole my chance to have my first kiss with the boy I loved. I’ll hate him forever for that.

I shake my head. There’s no point worrying about the past, the only thing we can do is move forward. I’m not sure I’ll be able to understand his reasons, but I want to try. Not for him, but for myself, so that I can finally put everything behind me and get on with following my dreams.

My thoughts are distracted as Shane stands up. I follow him with my eyes when he piles up the plates, picks them up, and then walks to the sink. He puts them to soak and then washes his hands.

“Shall we move to the sofa?”

I stand up as well and precede him to it. I fluff up the cushion and then wait until he sits down to turn his way. He’s so handsome, with his dark hair unstyled, making him look younger than his twenty-six years.

“Why, you ask?” he says, picking up the conversation as we left it at the table.

I watch him as he tries to collect his thoughts, and I don’t interrupt him because I know how difficult it is.

“I was protecting you.”

I open my mouth to call it as I see it, bullshit, but his hand goes up to stop me.

“You want to know and I’m going to tell you. My reasoning, it’s probably not going to make sense to you, and sometimes it doesn’t for me when I think about my actions and my decision. But at the time, that was all I could think of.”

I close my mouth and lean against the cushion. I delete everything I wanted to say from my mind, and then I turn back to him, ready to listen.

“And I was protecting myself. Since I was born, the only constant in my life has been what my father requested of me… not to shame the family name. Nothing has been more important for him. Maybe my mother, but me, I’ve always been a tool for him. Still am. Even now, I have something I’m protecting from him, and I’ll do everything in my power to achieve what I want.”

Did I ever see this struggle in him? Not that I can think of.

“This shouldn’t be an excuse for my behaviour. I only want you to understand why I made those choices.”

I nod, not sure what to say right now.

“I’m not even sure you remember this, but we were having lunch together, and I had hoped to kiss you, and that day it nearly became reality.”

“I remember,” I whisper, and I don’t fight him when he takes my hand in his, because all those feelings are still swimming inside my body.

“We were interrupted, and I was a prick. I’m sorry I pushed you. I’m sorry I hurt you,” he says, squeezing my hand, and I squeeze back. “I was afraid. I knew right then that Dan saw us and he was going to use it against me, so by pushing you away I thought I could save us.”

“I didn’t fall, so I wasn’t hurt.”

“I don’t mean physically. I saw on your face how much pain my behaviour caused you. And I’ll be sorry for the rest of my life.”

I don’t know what to say to that, so I push him further. “Tell me about Dan, and the others.”

“He threatened to tell my father. To expose the fact that I was kissing a boy to the school, and to everyone who had ears open to listen. I wasn’t ready to be gay, and I wasn’t ready to go against my father. The only way I thought I could protect you was to deny everything and avoid you. And be a wanker to you.”

“We didn’t even kiss. And you were saving yourself, because if you’d wanted to save me, you could have told me instead of rejecting me, mistreating me, and allowing them to do what they did.” I take a deep breath and try to calm down, because by the time I’m done talking I’m shouting. That’s not what I want to do. I want to be in control.

“I needed you to hate me.”

I scoff at that. If only I could have hated him from the start.

“I promise you. Once school was done I would have come to you to beg for forgiveness. I never expected things to turn out the way they did.”

“Oh, believe me, I’ve hated you. I did hate you. Unfortunately, not enough. The feelings I had for you kept getting in the way. I hated myself because I kept looking for you, waiting for you to save me. You, all of you, were monsters. I couldn’t cope with everything you did to me. I couldn’t cope with you and your offensive behaviour. You broke my heart every single fucking time you rejected me. After what happened at the gym, I had to see a therapist. For years. I tried to take my life so many fucking times. It’s taken me years to be able to live with what you did to me.”

I don’t look away, because I need to see what my words do to him. Does wanting him to suffer make me a horrible person?

His eyes get bigger and bigger the more I share what’s rotting my insides, and then they fill with tears.

The pleasure I hope to feel is not there. I’m actually feeling guilty for dropping everything I went through on him all at once.

“Fuck.” He uses his sleeve to dry his eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was that bad.”

I scoff once more, and he’s quick to speak again.

“I mean, I knew it was bad, but I really thought I was protecting you from the worst of it.” He places a hand on his face. “I was so fucking blind.”

“Yeah, that you were.”

We don’t speak for a while, and I’m close to believing the conversation is done. Maybe there is no way for us to settle the past and move forward.

“What happened after I left?” Shane asks me, and hope makes the desperation and anger retract a little.

“I fought, hoping that the person who’d saved me from Dan would come back and stop them for good.” I shake my head. That didn’t happen.

“I ran to call the teacher after they pushed me out of the room. All the way there I was praying for you to be safe. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more.”

I look at him, and everything in him speaks of how sorrowful he is.

“What happened after the teacher’s intervention?”

“I was still out of it, and at first I thought they would finally see Dan for the monster he was. Instead, he was sitting there with his face dirty with blood, acting as if it was nothing. He accused me of elbowing him. Of course, he omitted that he was the one who’d attacked me first.”

“Fucker,” Shane says, and I love how he pulls me closer to him, as if trying to protect me, even if there’s no need now.

“He accused me of being the bully, and they didn’t say anything.” I involuntarily clench my hands into fists, a sign of how much I’m still affected by what they did to me that day. The hand Shane is holding squeezes his, but he doesn’t complain even though it must have hurt. “It looked bad, I admit that, but I couldn’t believe they took his word as truth.”

“I broke Dan’s nose,” Shane says, and I raise my eyes that had fallen to our linked hands. “And nothing had ever felt that good in my life. Until I kissed you.”

“Did you? Did it?”

“Oh yeah. The next day, I was waiting for you to come to school and I would have told you everything, and told you how sorry I was, but you never came.”

“Yeah, I asked my parents to take me out of school. I didn’t want to see you or the others ever again.”

“When Mrs Watson told us you were never coming back, and Dan made one of his stupid comments, I just lost it and punched him a couple of times, until I heard the sounds of his nose breaking.”

“My hero,” I say to him. And it’s not until he stops and looks at me that what I just said hits me, and I’m not sure if I want to laugh or cry, because there is a bit of truth behind it. I did consider him my hero, my knight in shining armour, until his behaviour tarnished it.

“I was never a hero. I was always someone just trying to survive.” He stops, and I clearly see the wheels in his brain turning and turning.

“In that moment, when I thought everything we had was slipping away, I lost it. And if Mr Johnson hadn’t stopped me, I would have kept punching him and then turned on the others until they’d paid for what they’d done to you.”

Does it make me a bad person to wish I’d been there to see it? Watching as Shane defended me?

“You should have seen my father’s face. Me, the one who was never important enough, destroying his good name. He sent me away so he didn’t have to deal with me, and I believe he paid or made some kind of agreement with Dan’s parents so they didn’t press charges. I wouldn’t have cared.”

“He sent you away?”

“Yep, and it was the best thing ever, because I met my best friend Karl. I could talk to him about everything and I never felt judged. It was the second time that happened in my life.”

“Second time?”

“Yeah, the first time was with you.”

Why does my heart speed up at being his first in something? And why do I lean more towards him? I shouldn’t be doing it, but I still don’t move back.

“JJ, I’m sorry for what I did, for being a coward and for not being strong enough to protect you, and us.”

I don’t say anything, but I don’t let go of his hand. I lean against the cushion to let everything he said settle in.

“I hate that I waited for you to get hurt to finally see the errors of my ways. I hate that I waited for you to get hurt to go against my father.”

“I hate that too.” Even if he had his reasons, I’ve suffered a lot. Not only because they did what they did, but more because of Shane. Not understanding why he wouldn’t talk, look, or acknowledge me is still something that weighs heavily on my heart.

“You were the most important fucking thing to me, and I failed you. What I did, I did for love. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to be a better person for you, but I was afraid.”

“I’m sorry too.” Sorry because maybe what we shared is not enough, because maybe I’ll never be able to forget or forgive. We both suffered, I can’t deny it, because I’m witnessing it. But while I didn’t have any choice in what happened to me, Shane had a choice. He chose to betray me, and he chose to save himself.

Where do we go from here? I have no idea…

While I understand more of the reasons why he did what he did, I’m still concerned about what’s driving him now. He’s in the same situation he was before. His dad still rules his life.

Nothing can change the past, but I hope we’ve taken a step in the right direction to change our future. Otherwise they, Dan, Toby and Tom, and also Shane’s father will have won.

I let go of his hand, because between my whirlwind thoughts and the effect Shane’s touch was having on me, I couldn’t cope. My anxiety was playing up and taking my breath away.

I ran away, to hide from him and for myself, and I spent the rest of the day inside my room. My thoughts were in disarray, too fast and too focused for me to cope. Not even coding kept me focused enough to avoid a panic attack.

I lay in my bed, breathing four in, holding for four, and releasing for four, until I was able to breathe normally again.

What hit me the most was his behaviour, the real pain I couldn’t see when we were talking but was clear when I was replaying everything in my mind.

Right now, I’m pacing inside my room, unable to sleep, and my thoughts are focused on the discussion we had, and how I ran away. I listened to him, to his excuses, trying to keep hold of the blame, the anger, and the need to hit something.

I slowly open my door and look outside, just in case Shane is unable to sleep like me and he’s wandering around. The house is silent, so I walk to the kitchen without making any sounds.

Queen comes to greet me, but when I only scratch her head, she goes back to her bed. Soon, when Shane leaves it’ll be only the two of us. It’ll be strange not to have him here.

I fill a tall glass of water, and I slowly drink it, while my brain is busy trying to make sense of all the thoughts crowding my mind.

Dan played the both of us, and I believe the others merely followed him. Shane chose to side with Dan to protect himself, while also hoping to protect me. I thought about that day, the day I died inside… the knowledge of him saving me, of him calling someone because he knew right from wrong… because he cared for me.

I place the glass down and walk towards the bedroom, but I stop in front of his door. There’s no sound coming through so he must be sleeping. I should turn away, but I need an answer to the question whirling inside my mind.

Did he stop them because he cared for me?

I open the door and Shane is in bed. I can see him clearly under the sheet, his face towards the door, his eyes closed, and his hair caressing the pillow. I take a step forward, and then the next, until I’m standing close to the bed.

I watch him for a while, asking myself what I’m doing here but unable to leave. I sit on the chair close to the bed and lean forward, then move my hand until it’s caressing his hair. It’s as soft as I imagine.

Why does touching him affect me so much? Why is he like a drug? Why can’t I walk away like he once did?

“I still don’t understand. Why? Why did you break my heart? I was lost without you. Why should I give you the power to break me again? Why won’t these feelings I have for you disappear? Why can’t I leave you behind like you did me?” I whisper to the room, knowing in his sleep he won’t hear me.

I wait for an answer but there is none. When the silence seems to suffocate me, I stand.

My hand is engulfed by Shane’s, stopping me from leaving.

“Stay. Don’t leave me.”

I’m weak to his request, and I stand there.

Then he pulls me until I’m close to the bed. “Let me have you in my arms just once.”

I pull the sheet back and join him.

He wraps his arms around me as if he never wants to let me go.

Being in his arms calms something inside me, and I relax inside them. I let my thoughts go, and enjoy how my body sings from his touch. My eyes get heavy and I struggle to keep them open, so I don’t fight it. Tomorrow I can blame myself for being weak, but right now nothing can pull me away from him.

I let go.

After a while, and when I’ve almost slipped away into sleep, a light kiss lands on my head and I smile, but I don’t move, my body feeling sluggish and my limbs heavy.

“I know I don’t deserve a second chance, but I promise you, if you give it to me, I’ll love you forever.” Then he pulls me against his chest.

I fall asleep with hope rising inside my heart.