Ruining Hattie, page 27
So she does remember at least one thing about me. I’d laugh in her face if my heart didn’t wrench because I might lose Hattie.
45
HATTIE
“Mom, what’s wrong?” I rush out of the pool, water sluicing down my body, but she pays me no mind, her entire focus on Bast.
I glance in his direction and see that he’s staring at her too, rage etched into every line of his face.
“Tyler?” my mom asks again, her tone more urgent, more demanding.
My vision shifts to my dad, wanting him to explain why she’s calling Bastion Tyler and what happened at the doctor’s appointment, but all the color has drained from his face as he looks between my mom and Bast.
“What’s going on? Who’s Tyler?” Panic flares like a living, breathing being inside me, suffocating me. When no one answers me, I tug on Bast’s arm. “What’s going on?”
He doesn’t turn to me, not removing his eyes from my mom. “Why don’t you ask Mother Dearest?”
I turn imploring eyes in my mom’s direction. “Will someone please tell me what’s going on?” It’s obvious I’m the only one who doesn’t have a clue what’s happening here and who Tyler is.
Bast’s back straightens, and he slides his arm out of my grip, crossing his arms and widening his stance as if he’s preparing for a fight. “Carla is my mother.”
His voice doesn’t waver or shake. It’s cool and smooth and devoid of emotion. This isn’t the Bast I know.
I understand each of the four words that came out of Bast’s mouth, but they make no sense the way they were strung together. My mom is Bast’s mom? How is that even possible?
My head whips in my mom’s direction. “I don’t understand.”
Tears slip down her face, and she does nothing to wipe them away, her eyes still on Bast.
“Carla,” my dad says, wrapping his arm around her shoulders, “maybe we go inside to talk. Or I’ll take Hattie…”
She shakes her head. “Before I met your father, I had a child. Tyler.” She sobs at his name before taking a few breaths to compose herself. “He ran away, and I never saw him again. Until right now.”
I turn to look at Bast, and his eyes are locked with my mom’s. “Is that true?”
He finally turns his gaze from my mom to me, giving me a single nod.
Oh my god. My mom is his mom. The drug-addicted horrible mom who neglected him as a child? My hands fly up, covering my mouth as tears prick the corners of my eyes.
Wait. Then the thought occurs to me. How he wasn’t surprised when Mom said his name.
Has Bast known this whole time?
I tug at his arm. “Did you… did you know already?” My voice is a whisper.
Regret fills his eyes, and he doesn’t have to answer. He did. My heart cracks.
“I hired a private investigator to track down what happened to Carla,” he says. “I figured she’d be long dead of her addiction, but it turns out she wasn’t. In fact, she had a pretty cushy life after I was gone. She even replaced me with another child.”
My stomach bottoms out, and the tightness in my chest causes me to struggle for a breath.
“No, Tyler, I—”
Bast’s hands fist at his sides, and he gives my mom a murderous look. “Do not call me that. My name isn’t Tyler.” His voice is cold. I’ve never seen or heard him like this.
Was this all a game? Is he even the Bast I’ve fallen in love with?
“So this… us…” I motion between us. “It was all just…” I can’t even say the words as my heart splinters further.
His eyes soften the smallest amount when he looks at me. “At first you were a means to an end. I came to Wisconsin to see her, and when I saw the relationship she had with you, I wanted her to feel the pain she caused me. I ruin you, which ruins dear old Mom. I purposely met you at the coffee shop, I bought the company you work for, and I’m the one who laid you off. All to get you to Seattle so I could… but then…” He swallows hard, and his deep blue eyes gloss over. “My feelings for you are real, Hattie. I fell in love with you.”
I shake my head.
No. No. This is Rich all over again.
He lied.
Pretended.
None of this was real.
He wanted to ruin me.
Nausea overtakes me, and I race over to the grass, collapsing on all fours, and throw up. My tears mix with the vomit in the green grass as they drip from my cheeks.
A large hand rubs my back, and I flinch away from the touch until I glance to my right to see my dad. He helps me up. I fall into the safety of his arms, sobbing against his shirt.
“None of this changes how I feel about you,” Bastion says from behind me.
I let go of my dad and whip around to face the man who has succeeded in ruining me, just as he planned. “It changes everything! You lied to me. Over and over again. Did you ever plan to tell me?”
He doesn’t answer. It’s not as if I would have believed him had he said yes anyway.
I glance at my mom. She’s still staring at Bastion in disbelief.
“You need to go.” My voice is hollow, as though all the emotion has been scooped out of me.
“No, Hattie.” Bastion takes a few steps toward me with his hands up, but my dad puts himself between the two of us.
“I believe my daughter asked you to leave, young man.”
I shouldn’t let my dad fight my battles for me, but he feels like the only safe place at the moment. The man I loved has deceived me in the worst way, and the woman who raised me is not the woman I thought she was. My head spins. I can’t make sense of anything that’s happening right now.
“Just leave, Bastion.” The words are full of desperation and pleading.
“Bastion?” he clarifies, hurt lining his eyes from me using his full name. His shoulders sag, and he walks toward the pool, gathering his things. Once he’s done, he comes to stand before my dad and me. “This might have started as one thing, but it ended as another.”
He makes his way through the shattered glass sprawled across the deck-slash-patio, crunching it under the soles of his shoes, until he stops right in front of my mother. “You deserve to suffer for what I had to endure. My only regret is that Hattie now will as well.”
Bastion disappears into the house and out of my life, forever.
46
HATTIE
Once Bastion is gone, I race into the house, tiptoeing over the broken glass, and upstairs into the guest room. I dive into the bed, pulling up the covers over my head as if I’m a child and still believe it will shut out the world.
But nothing keeps the utter devastation from taking hold of my thoughts and emotions. There’s so much to take in that I can’t settle on one thought or feeling for long—heartbreak at Bastion’s betrayal, shock at a version of my mother I had no idea existed, or trying to reconcile that the pain in Bastion’s eyes when he told me about his childhood was caused by the woman who has loved and provided for me.
I sob into the pillow until my eyes sting. I haven’t felt this much pain since my mom’s death. Everything that went down with Rich was a fraction of the despair seeping into my body right now.
Sometime later, my bedroom door opens, but I don’t come out from under the covers. It’s a childish response, I know, but I can’t bear to set eyes on either of my parents when I know that one or both of them have been keeping this from me.
“Hattie, honey, come out from under the covers.” My mom’s hand lands on the comforter over my shoulder.
I wonder if my father is in the room too. When I pull the covers from over my head, it’s only her.
Tears swim in my mom’s eyes as she looks at me. “I’m sorry.”
That’s it? That’s all she has to say? I’m not even sure what she’s apologizing for exactly. Does she know what she’s apologizing for?
I clear the hoarseness from my throat from crying so long. “I don’t understand how this can be true.”
My mom sits on the edge of the bed and runs her palm down my cheek like she’s done so many times in my life. She sighs and swallows. “I’m not sure what Tyler… er… Bastion told you, but whatever awful things he told you are probably true. The truth is that there’s a lot I don’t remember from those days. I suppose I’m lucky that way, unlike him.”
Her face is filled with such unbearable pain that I sit up and draw her into a hug. She’s tense at first but relaxes into my hold, shuddering out a breath, gripping me harder, and squeezing me as if she didn’t know if I would forgive her.
When I pull away, I meet her gaze. “How did you know he was your son?” The word son tastes bitter on my tongue.
My mom’s bottom lip shakes. “The heart-shaped birthmark on his back. I’ve never forgotten it. Because you didn’t know about my past, you probably assume I didn’t give any thought to Tyl… Bastion, but I’ve thought about him every day. Every prayer I say at night, he’s included. I failed him once, but I’ve never stopped thinking about him, wondering about where he was, if he was happy, praying that he found happiness somewhere, even if it wasn’t with me in his life.”
Tears topple one another on her cheeks, and she buries her head in her hands. It’s so hard to reconcile what she’s admitting to me and what Bastion told me about his mother with the version of the woman sitting in front of me. I question whether I’ll ever be able to because she was the perfect mother to me, even though she didn’t give birth to me.
I don’t say anything as I try to work it out in my head.
“I realize this must have come as a big shock to you. Is there anything you want to know?”
I guffaw. “Why were you like that? I mean, I can’t even picture it. All the things Bastion told me about his mom and growing up…”
She cringes, shame coating her features. Then she tells me about her childhood and how she grew up. The first time she tried drugs and found her escape. The things she used to do to support her drug habit. From the reality she describes, I don’t think she holds back, and as I picture a young Bastion living through the unstable upbringing of his mother being an addict, my heart breaks a little more. By the time she’s done, my heart is left in shards, draining me from the inside out.
I’m quiet again, taking in everything she said. The thing I hate the most is that I can almost understand why Bastion would be out for revenge. To be exposed to and suffer through what he did… it’s unthinkable.
God, he must have hated me when he found out about his mother adopting me as her own. The perfect daughter who seemingly grew up with the perfect life when all he’d ever known was misery…
I squeeze my eyes shut, and a lone tear escapes. I’m surprised. I didn’t think I had any more left.
“When did you get clean? What happened?” I open my eyes, and a part of me wants to tell my mom not to bother telling me. I can see how painful it is for her to talk about her past, but I need to know everything. So much was kept from me. Now I want the truth.
“After Bastion left, I hit rock bottom. He was the only thing keeping me afloat, and I know how that sounds, I do, given what he was exposed to. But I knew that if I continued down the path I was on, I would die. And the thought of not getting a chance to make it up to him… I couldn’t live with it. So I found a program through a local church to help me.”
Realization hits me, and I blink. “That’s where you met Dad.”
I remember him talking about an outreach program in Chicago that he was a part of before we moved to Tennessee, where I was raised.
She nods solemnly. “It is. At first there was nothing between us. Your mother was still alive then. But he was a steady presence in my life as I fought my demons and tried desperately not to go back to that dark place. After your mother passed, we grew closer. We bonded over the pain of losing someone. I believe that God brought us together for a purpose. There’s no way I would have ever been able to stay healthy if it weren’t for your father. He means everything to me.”
I know she means it. And I know she loves me. But they both lied for so long.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
She winces at the hurt and accusation in my voice. Her lips tremble as she reaches for my hand. “Because I didn’t ever want you to look at me the way you are right now.”
I feel guilty that I can’t just tell her it’s okay, no big deal, and move on, but I know it’s going to take some time to come to terms with everything.
“I’m sorry that you got mixed up in this, that Tyl… Bastion… hurt you because I hurt him.”
I give her a small nod. I’m not ready to talk about him yet.
“When your dad and I returned from my appointment and I saw the birthmark, I thought it was some unlikely coincidence. But when you first introduced me to him, I had this uneasiness in my gut. His eyes…”
I nod. “Yours.”
She nods. “But what were the chances? I kept telling myself I wasn’t feeling well, my mind was all over the place with being sick. But the birthmark was so unique.” She shakes her head and grows quiet as if she’s lost in her head.
It’s not until she says that that I remember the reason Bastion and I were here in the first place. I take in the dark grooves under her eyes and the sick color to her skin.
“What happened at your appointment?”
She shakes her head. “That’s not important now.”
Fear grips me in icy hands. “What did the doctor say? Please, I don’t want to be kept in the dark anymore.”
She looks at me with sorrow, as if she’s sad she has to deliver worse news after everything that’s already happened today. I brace myself for what comes next.
“I have to start dialysis immediately while they look for a kidney donor.”
“I’ll give you one of mine!” I grip her hands.
She offers me a small smile. “Oh, sweetie, we’ll talk about this later. It’s been a long day.”
“And if you can’t find a donor?” I ask.
Her small smile fades, and she inhales. The truth is outlined in her deep wrinkles, and her eyes don’t have a lot of hope. Without words, I know exactly what the doctor told her.
I gasp as my world crumbles for the second time today.
47
BASTION
My phone rings on my nightstand. I’ve been holed up in my condo in Seattle since I returned from Wisconsin.
After I heard Carla refer to me by my birth name, it took me a moment to figure out how she could have possibly known it was me. Then it dawned on me—my birthmark. It’s not something I give much thought since it’s on my back, but of course it would draw her attention.
There was no way I could deny it, and I prepared myself then to lose Hattie. I knew my entire plan was about to blow up in my face. While I’d once envisioned the look on Hattie’s face when she found out, thinking I’d revel in it, the truth is that it nearly destroyed me.
The devastation on her face as if I was a stranger was almost my undoing. The only reason I left is because I thought it would do her more harm than good if I stuck around. But she’s certifiable if she thinks this is the end of us. I still have a fight inside me, and I will get her to forgive me.
How I’m going to fight remains to be seen, though. Right now, Hattie needs space, but she better not get used to living without me.
I roll over to pick up my phone, and my head pounds, as if my brain is crashing against my skull with every movement.
I haven’t gotten blackout drunk in a long time. After dealing with insurance all day, having to talk to the fire investigator, answering questions to prove that I didn’t start the fire, and figuring out what to do for my staff that are now out of a job until the place can be rebuilt or I find another location, all I craved was the dark oblivion where the sharp edges of my problems dulled to a tolerable level.
With the phone in hand, I hold it up. Through bleary eyes, I see my brother-in-law’s name and bolt up into a sitting position.
Fuck, I grab my head. That was a mistake.
Cringing against the pain, I press on the screen to accept the call. “Obsidian.”
His deep chuckle echoes through the phone, sounding like a pair of cymbals smashing together right next to my ear. I pull the phone away from my ear and put him on speaker, tossing the phone on the bed beside me.
“You certainly sound like shit.”
“Thanks. Kick a guy while he’s down, why don’t you?”
He sighs. “Ariana told me everything that’s been going on with you. I can empathize with having a shit parent. It’s a mind fuck, I know.”
I don’t know the details, but from all that my sister has said, his father was a nightmare to him and his three brothers growing up.
“She may feel differently, but I don’t blame you for wanting revenge on the bitch who bore you,” he says.
“Yeah, well, revenge is starting to feel like it’s not as important as it once was.” I glance at Hattie’s empty side of the bed. “Though I’ll admit it was satisfying to see the look of shock on Carla’s face when she realized I was her son. Even better when I saw the shame. But the look on Hattie’s face…”
“So, what are you going to do to fix it?”
“I don’t know yet.” The pain in my chest intensifies, and I rub at it with the heel of my hand.
“Well, figure it out and then do it.”
I roll my eyes. I wish it were that easy. Maybe when you’re a billionaire it is, and that’s why he sounds so sure.
“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I know you’re not calling to console my heartbreak.” I yank the covers off me and slide out of bed to trudge to the kitchen to get some water, cringing every time my head jostles.
“No, it’s not. Ari mentioned that you want me to put you in contact with a certain family. I wanted to make sure you knew what you were getting into before I did that. My influence only goes so far, and if you fuck them over, I won’t be able to help you.”
