The Heart Principle (The Kiss Quotient #3)(84)

I pick it up and put it on the table for her. “Can you look at me? So we can talk? Please?”

She lifts her chin and gives me her attention, but she doesn’t speak. She waits.

“I’m sorry.” It’s hard for me to logically conceptualize what I did that’s so wrong. I spoke the truth. I stood up for myself. Why is that bad? But if I hurt her, I regret that and I genuinely want to do better in the future. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just—”

“You accused me of torturing him because I couldn’t let go,” she says, pointing an angry finger at me as her eyes tear up. “You’re supposed to back me up. That’s what sisters do. Instead, you betrayed me and disrespected me. In front of everyone.”

She doesn’t touch me, but my whole body flinches with every jab of her finger. “I didn’t mean to betray you. I said all of us were torturing him.”

“It wasn’t my choice. I was just trying to do the right thing.” Priscilla covers her face with her hands as her thin body quakes, and it breaks me. “You were supposed to understand. We were supposed to be in this together.”

My heart wrenches, and I hug her, saying everything I can think of to make it better. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Eventually, she thaws and hugs me back, and I feel like I have a sister again. I feel like maybe everything’s going to be okay.

But when we finally pull apart, she wipes her tears away and acts like we’re finished. In her eyes, I did wrong, so I apologized. I love her. I don’t want to cause her pain. But something important is missing.

I wait, and still, it doesn’t happen. Turbulent feelings swell in my chest, raging to get out, and I can’t swallow them down.

I promised to draw a line. Around Quan. And around me. Because I matter, too.

If I don’t stand up for me, no one else will.

I have to do this.

“Aren’t you going to apologize to me?” I ask.

She narrows her eyes at me. “For what?”

“For hurting me. For treating me the way you did. I told you I was struggling. That being here was making me sick. But I stayed anyway. Who do you think I stayed for? And yet you looked down on me because I didn’t meet your standards. You didn’t care that I was doing the best that I could. You—”

“If your best job is a shitty job, it’s still shitty,” she yells.

“Why couldn’t we get help, then?” I ask, openly crying now. “He needed too much care, care that he didn’t even want. This was too much for us.”

“You mean it was too much for you,” Priscilla says through her teeth, pointing at me again. “It wasn’t too much for me.”

That hurts, but the truth of it sends an odd calm over me. I sense Quan coming toward me. No doubt he’s agitated by the things Priscilla’s saying and wants to defend me, but I motion for him to stay away. I need to handle this on my own.

“I’m different from you,” I tell Priscilla.

“Are you talking about your ‘diagnosis’?” she asks sarcastically, putting finger quotes around the word diagnosis.

“I don’t know if that has anything to do with this. Maybe it does. But you have to stop expecting me to be the same as you.”

Priscilla rolls her eyes. “Trust me. I don’t expect that.”

“Then why are you always judging me and pressuring me to change? Why can’t you accept me the way I am?”

“That’s not how family works,” she says through her teeth. “I get to judge you and pressure you because I want what’s best for you.”

“What’s best for me right now would be an apology from you.” I need her to love me enough to acknowledge when she’s hurt me and try not to do it again. I need her to attempt to understand me. I need her to accept my differences. Hiding and masking, trying to please other people, trying to please her, has been destroying me, and I can’t live that way anymore.

Her lips thin and curl. “I can’t apologize when I didn’t. Do. Anything. Wrong. You were the one who did.”

“You don’t care why?” I ask, feeling like I’m crumbling and sinking into the ground.

“I don’t want your excuses, Anna,” she says in exasperation.

I want to correct her and tell her they’re reasons, not excuses, but I don’t. There’s no point in continuing with this. I see that now.

I have to choose. I can spend my time trying to make her accept me, either through bending to her will or bending her to mine, or I can accept myself and focus on other things. How do I want to spend my life?

I turn away from her and catch Quan watching my sister with his jaw clenched and his hands fisted at his sides. He’s outraged, but when he switches his attention to me, sadness lines his face. She doesn’t understand. But he does.

Taking his hand, I head away from the room. Out in the hallway, he looks at me and whispers, “Proud of you.”

Before I can reply, my mom appears with Priscilla’s violin case in her arms. “Give Je je time,” she says.

I don’t want to argue with her, but I don’t want to make promises that I won’t keep either, so I say nothing.

Her gaze lands on Quan, on our joined hands, and I think she’s going to comment on us being together. I think she’s going to voice her displeasure and ask where Julian is. But she doesn’t. Instead, she hands Quan the violin case.