Kyland

Still, I planned on getting my mama and sister out of here as soon as I could—somewhere bigger, more comfortable, somewhere where we could all have our own rooms.

My mama was in a psychiatric hospital in Lexington. Three years after I'd left, she'd had a particularly bad episode and thankfully, Sam had stepped in and offered to pay for her care in a really great facility. That was a relief because when I heard the news, I had planned to come home. There was no way Marlo could handle that by herself. I was actually surprised Marlo had agreed to let Sam pay, which spoke volumes about how bad it had been. Oh, Mama . . .

The aged handle squeaked as I turned it and pushed the door open, the old familiar noise making me feel like a little girl again. "Hello," I called out. I heard a loud, excited scream from the bedroom and suddenly the door was flying open as Marlo danced out and launched herself at me. I screamed as she picked me up and jumped around with me, laughing out loud. "Stop! Stop!" I demanded. "I haven't peed in hours. I'm going to wet my pants."

Marlo set me down, laughing. She grinned at me and wrapped her arms around me, saying, "Welcome home, baby sister. College graduate."

I grinned back, squeezing her tightly, holding back tears. Marlo hated it when I cried. I went and used the restroom quickly and when I came back out, she smiled and took my hands again. "Let me look at you." Her eyes ran over me for a minute and she shook her head. "You always were pretty, Ten, but, wow, you're a class act."

I shook my head, embarrassed. "I'm the same," I disagreed. "Just some new clothes and a haircut."

She shook her head, too. "No, no, it's not just the clothes and the hair. It's you. You look all grown up. You're too skinny, though. Is everyone on a diet in California?"

I snorted. "Yeah. A little different than the starvation diet we were always on. There, they do it on purpose."

She let out a half laugh/half groan and brought her hand to her forehead. "How are you? Really?" she asked, sitting down on the couch. "Is it weird to be back?"

I sat down next to her. "Yeah. Kind of. I mean, I'm not sure yet."

A worried look came into her expression. "Have you seen him?"

"Who?" I asked back, as if I didn't know exactly whom she was referring to.

She just raised her eyebrows. I sighed. "No. I literally drove straight here."

She nodded, chewing on her full bottom lip. "Well, you know it's going to be fine. It's been long enough. And you know, he gained about two hundred pounds, lost all his hair, and came down with a really bad skin disease, so . . . he's hideous, unsightly. Sad." She shivered.

I gaped at her and the corner of her lip quivered into a smile. "What?" Then I laughed. "You're lying. He did not. I mean, God, that'd be a stroke of luck on my part, but . . ." I shook my head. "You're right. It's going to be fine. I have a job to do here. I have a purpose. It's been almost four full years, and I'm just going to have to look past the fact that someone I loathe lives right up the road. We'll just steer clear of each other, I'm sure."

"Do you really still loathe him, Ten?"

I thought about that for a second. Loathing Kyland was just a step below hating him, and I found it hard to completely hate him, as I still knew who he was capable of being. Still, I needed something to hold onto. "Yeah. Yeah, I do. And no one's going to take that from me. At least, not yet. When it comes to men, never forgive, never forget—that's my life motto."

She looked at me dubiously. "That's my life motto."

I sighed. "Well, I've adopted it."

She bit her lip and nodded in understanding.

I'd only ever asked Marlo about Kyland once, or rather, about Shelly. A couple months after I'd left, I'd woken up in the middle of the night, something from a dream, or a half-formed thought convincing me everything he'd said to me that horrible day had been a lie. In the dark of the night, it'd seemed so possible, likely even, that he hadn't been telling the truth. I'd known who he was. And that wasn't him. It wasn't. The pieces of some puzzle I couldn't fathom once I was awake had come together in my head in the bleariness of sleep. But in the morning when I'd called Marlo asking her if she'd seen Shelly around town recently, she'd haltingly confirmed that she had and that she looked like she was just a few months pregnant. A few months. Meaning Kyland had been with her right about the time he'd slept with me. I'd spent that day in bed, curled up, staring at the wall, contemplating how slowly an hour could tick by, my heart breaking all over again. I'd vowed not to ask about him again and I hadn't. Not once. Even the month I'd calculated in my head that his baby would probably have been born, I didn't ask Marlo a thing. It'd taken an act of willpower unlike any I'd shown before, but I'd done it.

The day four years earlier that he'd told me what he'd done, the day I ran from his house back to my own, was the last time I'd seen him. That night my sister had rocked me in her arms like I was a baby and she was a mama. I'd been so shocked and heartbroken I couldn't even cry. The very next day I'd gone to the principal, Mrs. Branson, and asked her if there was any way I could move to San Diego immediately. She'd told me I couldn't move into the dorm, but it turned out she had a niece who lived there and she'd called and asked if I could stay with her for a couple months until school started. She'd very nicely taken me in. Mrs. Branson knew my home situation and I'd made it seem like I couldn't stand it one more minute. The truth was, I couldn't live in the same town as Kyland Barrett after that day—not for any longer than I had to. And so a week after I'd learned I'd won the Tyton Coal Scholarship, I'd left Kentucky for the first time in my life. And I'd flown across the country, leaving everything I'd ever known behind. I'd stared bleakly out the window of the airplane just focusing on taking one breath after the next.