Dare You to Hate Me by B. Celeste (classic fiction .txt) 📕

choices, Mom. I have to live with the awful things I did to get by.” Tears leak down my face before I can stop them, my hand going to one of the scars covered by the sweatshirt sleeve, wanting to show her, to show all of them, but knowing they’re not ready for what I’d done. “I know we’ll never be okay, and I’m not asking to be. None of us were ever best friends growing up. I just need you to know that I’m sorry and that I want to try.”

A shaky, broken breath escapes me as I say the words I know they need to hear. “I was wrong about what I told you in that letter. I couldn’t do it on my own.” My voice is nothing but a croaked whimper by the last word, and suddenly two strong arms are pulling me backwards into a hard body that smells like home to me.

I ease into Aiden as Porter stands from the couch and faces our parents. “I’m sorry that I lied but I wanted to see Ivy and I wasn’t sure if you’d let me. You barely let me go anywhere besides Jimmy’s and Chad’s house or school and practice. It’s like you don’t trust me even though I’ve never done anything to make you not.”

To my surprise, Dad speaks first. “We trust you, Porter. It’s just…” His eyes go to me, eyebrows flattened with an unspoken point.

“It’s hard for us,” Mom finishes for him, clearing her throat. “We’re being cautious. We’re…trying too.”

Trying. Trying for Porter. Isn’t that what I wanted at the very least? “Please don’t be upset with him,” I tell them again, frowning when my parents both loosen similar sighs of exhaustion.

“We’re disappointed, Ivy.” My mother’s admission doesn’t direct it at either Porter or I, but I feel the three words in my soul knowing they’re more than likely not at my brother.

“You should tell her,” Porter says, voice harder than I’ve heard it before. “Tell her what you’ve been talking about.”

Dad eyes him. “Now is not the—”

Porter turns to me. “I wasn’t going to say anything because I’m not sure if they’ll go through with it since they’ve talked about it before, but they’ve been talking about separating. If you ask me, it’s about time.”

Mom sucks in a breath. “Porter Lee Underwood! That is hardly appropriate to say, and it’s none of your business.”

He raises his hands. “Seriously, Mom? You’re miserable. Dad is miserable. You gave Ivy the brunt of your frustrations and the only reason you took it easy on me was because you wouldn’t be able to explain why another kid left if I decided I’d had it.”

Dad’s eyes grow wary. “That is enough.”

Mom’s hands go to her face for a moment before scraping back her frizzy hair. “He’s right, Fred, and you know it. We have been over this time and time again and nothing changes.” Her hands drop to her sides as she addresses me and Porter. “Your father and I are serious this time. It should have happened a long time ago, and for what it’s worth, I’ve known that for a while. But I’m supposed to hold everything together and I thought I could do it when I couldn’t.”

When our eyes meet, the burnt gold color staring back at me captures all my attention when she says, “Letting you go after your insistence that you’d be better off made me believe it, because I was barely hanging on by a thread myself, Ivy. You have to understand, I thought sending you to Gertie’s would have been better. I thought I’d figure out how to… That doesn’t matter. Because I did none of the things I sought out to do. The point is, who was I to think you that you couldn’t achieve greatness just because I couldn’t?”

Aiden’s arms tighten around me as I stare at the woman in disbelief. My remaining tears start to dry, my face still damp and eyes still stinging, but for the first time maybe ever I see her clearly.

A woman in pain.

A woman who gave up long before I did.

But she’s still fighting.

She’s trying, whatever that means.

I swallow, saying what I should have to them before that night I caved at the truck stop after the man who picked me up tried forcing himself on me. “I don’t expect you to forgive me for what I put you through, but I wouldn’t mind a second chance. I think we both sort of need one. If not right now, then down the line. I’ll take anything I can get.”

Porter steps closer to me, taking my hand in his, showing his support without saying the words. He knows it’s what I need. If nothing else, I can mend the relationship I broke with him. It’s a start. It’s something.

Mom steps closer, a hand extending then lowering in doubt. “I think there are a lot of things we all need to work out in order to become a family, because we haven’t been one in a very, very long time.” Her eyes go over her shoulder to Dad, who eventually nods along without saying a word about anything. “I’ll give you my cell phone number and we can start there because I was wrong too, and I’ve wanted to tell you that for a while now.”

She looks down, her hands fidgeting at her sides before she reaches out and touches one of my stiff hands. “This isn’t going to be easy. We all need to acknowledge that now. But I’m sorry, Ivy, for not trying sooner. You need to know that.”

I feel Aiden’s lips on the back of my head and feel a sense of relief—from his minor touch and at the peace offering my mother gives me. It’s small, chipping away at the many layers of ice coating the organ in my chest, but it’s something.

I don’t know where any of us will go from here, but I’d like to think this moment