Hopeless (Hopeless #1)(69)

“Outside,” I say, breathless and weak. “I just need outside. Please, Holder.”

I can feel him struggling from within, not wanting to release me. He reluctantly pulls me away from his chest and looks down at me, searching my eyes. “Don’t run, Sky. Go outside, but please don’t leave. We need to talk.”

I nod and he releases me, then helps me stand up. When I walk out the front door and onto the lawn, I clasp my hands together behind my head and inhale a huge, cold breath of air. I tilt my head back and look up at the stars, wishing more than anything that I was up there and not down here. I don’t want the memories to keep coming, because with each confusing memory comes an even more confusing question. I don’t understand how I know him. I don’t understand why he kept it from me. I don’t understand how my name could have been Hope, when all I’ve ever remembered being called was Sky. I don’t understand why Karen would tell me that Sky was my birth name if it isn’t. Everything I thought I understood after all these years is unraveling, revealing things that I don’t want to know. I’m being lied to, and I’m terrified to know what it is that everyone’s trying to keep from me.

I stand outside for what feels like forever, attempting to sort through this alone when I have no idea what it is I’m even trying to sort through. I need to talk to Holder and I need to know what he knows, but I’m hurt. I don’t want to face him, knowing he’s been hiding this secret all along. It makes everything that I thought was happening between us nothing but a façade.

I’m emotionally spent and have had all the revelations I can take for one night. I just want to go home and go to bed. I need to sleep on this before we go into the fact of why he didn’t just tell me he knew me as a child. I don’t understand why it was something he even thought he should keep from me.

I turn around and walk back toward the house. He’s standing in the doorway, watching me. He steps aside to let me back in and I walk straight to the kitchen and open the refrigerator. I grab a bottle of water and open it, then take several gulps. My mouth is dry and I never did get the water he said he was getting for me earlier.

I set the bottle down on the bar and look at him. “Take me home.”

He doesn’t object. He turns around and grabs his keys off the entryway table, then motions for me to follow him. I leave the water on the bar and silently follow him to the car. When I climb inside, he backs out of the driveway and pulls onto the road without speaking a word.

We pass my turn-off and it’s apparent that he has no intention to take me home. I glance over at him and his eyes are focused hard on the road in front of him. “Take me home,” I say again.

He looks at me with a determined expression. “We need to talk, Sky. You have questions, I know you do.”

I do. I have a million questions I need to ask, but I was hoping he would let me sleep on it so I could sort them out and try to answer as many of them as I could myself. But it’s obvious he doesn’t care what I prefer at this point. I reluctantly take off my seatbelt and turn in my seat, leaning with my back against the door to face him. If he doesn’t want to give me time to let this soak in, I’ll just lay all of my questions on him at once. But I’m making it fast because I want him to take me home.

“Fine,” I say stubbornly. “Let’s get this over with. Why have you been lying to me for two months? Why did my bracelet piss you off so much that you couldn’t speak to me for weeks? Or why you didn’t just say who you really thought I was the day we met at the grocery store? Because you knew, Holder. You knew who I was and for some reason you thought it would be funny to string me along until I figured it all out. Do you even like me? Was this game you’ve been playing worth hurting me more than I’ve ever been hurt in my life? Because that’s what happened,” I say, furious to the point that I’m shaking.

I finally give in to the tears because it’s just one more thing that’s trying to get out and I’m tired of fighting them. I wipe them away from my cheeks with the back of my hand and lower my voice. “You hurt me, Holder. So bad. You promised you would only ever be honest with me.” I’m not raising my voice anymore. In fact, I’m talking so quietly that I’m not even sure he can hear me. He keeps staring at the road like the ass**le that he is. I squeeze my eyes shut and fold my arms across my chest, then fall back into my seat. I stare out the passenger window and curse Karma. I curse Karma for bringing this hopeless boy into my life just so he could ruin it.

When he continues to drive without responding to a single word I’ve said, I can do nothing but let out a small, pathetic laugh. “You really are hopeless,” I mutter.

Saturday, April 17th, 1999 2:30 p.m.

“I need to pee,” she giggles. We’re crouched down under their porch, waiting for Dean to come find us. I like playing hide and seek, but I like to be the one hiding. I don’t want them to know that I can’t do the counting thing yet like they always ask me to do. Dean always tells me to count to twenty when they go hide, but I don’t know how. So I just stand with my eyes closed and pretend I’m counting. Both of them are already in school and I can’t go until next year, so I don’t know how to count as good as they do.

“He’s coming,” she says, crawling backward a few feet. The dirt under the porch is cold, so I’m trying not to touch it with my hands like she is, but my legs are hurting.