I'm too small to understand, too young to comprehend it's over, it's done. She's dead, and I don't know it, so I keep sitting there, absentmindedly picking daisies that grow in the grass around her unmoving body. I tuck them in her hair, filling her dark mane with flowers.

I snap out of it with a sharp intake of breath, and Jas is there, but Mama is nowhere to be seen.

With a start, I realize it was nothing but a memory. A memory I've been keeping under lock and key, because it's just too much to deal with daily.

Mama.

My mother.

Dead, next to me.

Only now I'm understanding the significance of what I've remembered. Someone killed her, shot her, and left me with her dead body in our garden, where the daisies grew.

My hands form fists at my sides as I look at Jasper. "She's gone."

"Who's gone, Petal?" For once in his life, he actually looks concerned. I'm afraid too, because it seems as if he's finally pushed me enough to break me. I'm remembering things I haven't thought of in years, and as Jasper's words blur into nothing, I go back in time, to a simpler, kinder place.

I'm sitting in a garden again. I'm wearing dark clothes, and there's a boy next to me, an older boy, who's picking daisies with me.

My mouth forms a scowl, because I don't like daisies. They remind me of Mama and what happened to her. How peaceful she looked lying there with flowers in her hair and blood leaking from the wounds on her chest.

Thoughtfully, I pick the petals off the flowers, softly chanting the words as I go.

"He loves me. He loves me not. He loves me. He loves me not."

The memory is intense and painful, and I blink my eyes open and closed again and again, lost somewhere between the past and the present.

My eyes lock with Jasper's, and I furrow my brows. "What are you doing to me, Jas?"

“What have you seen?”

It hits me then. Those eyes, these eyes.

Once upon a time, there was an older boy who took care of me. Who never picked on me. Who teases me in sweet, kind ways, and protects me from the mean kids in the playground. I remember the boy who protected me when no one else would.

My savior.

My stalker.

My tormentor.

"It’s you,” he whispers.

 

 

27

 

 

Jasper

 

 

It’s you.

I stare down at my little Petal —at her disheveled hair, her rosy cheeks, but no matter how much I study her, I find it hard to process her words.

“It’s me?” I repeat.

She pushes away from my embrace and sits opposite me, her slender legs tucked beneath her.

Her gray eyes shine with child-like excitement and realization. “When I was young, my mother and I were always hidden, somehow. Dad visited us and it seemed like he didn’t want to show us to the outside world. One day, he told Mom I should remain hidden, and I was like four. I didn’t even understand what it meant, but I felt it. That day, Mom threw away all my dresses, cut off my hair and told me, you’ll be a boy now, Georgie. If anyone asks about your name, it’ll be Joseph. Although I didn’t understand it, I loved the idea of not having to brush my hair anymore. At the tender age of four, I became a boy, and since I was a child, it was believable to everyone else. All that time, I thought Mom wanted a boy and I was just playing the role of one for her.

“After she disappeared two years later, I was taken into a boys’ boarding school and the woman who took care of me told me to never, ever shower with the other boys, get close to them or even talk to them. She always tightened my pants and cut my hair, and watched me all the time, making sure I stayed as the boy Mom wanted me to be. I was too scrawny at the time, though, so scrawny and innocent for what was going on in that school. I wanted to have friends and play with them, but the boys didn’t feel the same. They hit me and tried to drown me, they pulled my hair and tore my books. I always cried in the corner on my own because Mom told me boys don’t cry. I was so alone and scared and looked over my shoulder with every step I took until…”

Her bottom lip trembles. “A boy rescued me. He was taller, older and had a better build, too. He scared the other boys by just showing up there. He gave them a fright and beat them to a pulp in the middle of the playground. He sat with me when I was reading, a bit behind so he didn’t disturb me. He was silent mostly, but he protected me, he let me smile again, be myself, and forget for a moment that I lost my mom. But he didn’t know I was a girl because I couldn’t betray the promise I gave my mom. No matter how much I wished to open up to him, I couldn’t.” She swallows. “Until now.”

The entire time she speaks, I’m unmovable, I’m surprised I can breathe evenly in the first place.

Joseph is my little Petal.

My little Petal is Joseph.

That small weak boy with no fight in him, the one I wanted to protect because he was about to be eaten by wolves is the same woman sitting in front of me.

Gray eyes.

He had the hugest, most mesmerizing gray eyes I’ve ever seen. Why did I thought they were blue or green? When he first looked up at me with tears in them, thinking I’d hit him like the other bullies, I felt a connection, an inkling, it’s the same one I felt toward my little Petal that day at the hospital’s parking lot. That her smile felt wrong. That’s not how Joseph used to smile before; his smiles used to be carefree, liberating, and contagious.

I might have kept him close for that smile alone.

Then the system robbed him of that smile, that soft innocence.

And now, he’s here. Or she is… or what-the-fuck-ever.

Sarah was the one who kept her hidden in school, making sure to protect her identity as a boy. She must’ve known she’s now a girl, but she never uttered a word about it to Costa or to me to mislead us.

We were looking for a man, but she’s been a woman all along.

Joseph Costa is Georgina Costa.

She interlinks her hands at her lap and watches me through her eyelashes. “Say something.”

What am I supposed to say? I have to kill you? It’s either your life or mine?

Or maybe I should tell her that her mom didn’t disappear, and that her father isn’t just someone who kept her hidden. Maybe I should tell her she’s the Costa heir and her uncle is after her life.

“How did you know it’s me?” I ask instead.

A small smile lifts her lips and I’m trapped it in it for a second, I’m caught hook, line, and sinker. All I think about is to pull her into me and devour that smile, feast on it, cage it and keep it for safekeeping.

“Your eyes,” she says simply.

“My eyes?”

“I might have forgotten a lot of things due to how strange my childhood was, but I never forgot your eyes and that icy color and mean edge. I never forgot the boy who sat beside me as I read and let me pick daisies before telling me not to be a girl.” She laughs, the sound soft and easy. “I wanted to tell you that I was, but I was scared you’d hate me like the others, and I couldn’t afford that.”

“I wouldn’t have hated you.” I don’t know why I say the words, but I just do. It’s the truth and it slips from between my lips so easily, it’s alarming.