My Fault

Also by Mercedes Ron My Fault Your Fault Our Fault Copyright © 2017, 2023 by Mercedes Ron Cover and internal design © 2023 by Sourcebooks Cover design by Emily Wittig Cover images by CDustin/Unsplash, Jordan McQueen/Unsplash, Aron Visuals/Unsplash, Alexander Grey/Unsplash Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks. Bloom Books is a trademark of Sourcebooks. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks. Originally published as Culpables: Culpa mía, © Mercedes Ron, 2017. Translated from Spanish by Adrian Nathan West. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author. All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book. Published by Bloom Books, an imprint of Sourcebooks P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410 (630) 961-3900 sourcebooks.com Originally published as Culpables: Culpa mía in 2017 in Spain by Montena Random House Mondadori, an imprint of Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial. Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the Library of Congress. CONTENTS Front Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Prologue 1. Noah 2. Nick 3. Noah 4. Nick 5. Noah 6. Nick 7. Noah 8. Nick 9. Noah 10. Nick 11. Noah 12. Nick 13. Noah 14. Nick 15. Noah 16. Nick 17. Noah 18. Nick 19. Noah 20. Nick 21. Noah 22. Nick 23. Noah 24. Nick 25. Noah 26. Nick 27. Noah 28. Nick 29. Noah 30. Nick 31. Noah 32. Nick 33. Noah 34. Nick 35. Noah 36. Nick 37. Noah 38. Nick 39. Noah 40. Nick 41. Noah 42. Nick 43. Noah 44. Nick 45. Noah 46. Nick 47. Noah 48. Nick 49. Noah Epilogue: Nick Acknowledgments About the Author Back Cover To my mother, thank you for being my friend, my confidante, everything I’ve ever needed and more. Thank you for making sure I always had a book in my hands. PROLOGUE “Leave me alone!” she said, trying to get around me and through the door. I grabbed her by the arms and forced her to look at me. “You want to tell me what the hell’s going on with you?” I asked, furious. She looked back, and I could see her eyes were hiding something dark, yet she smiled at me joylessly. “This is your world, Nicholas,” she replied calmly. “I’m living your life, hanging out with your friends, and feeling like I don’t have a care in the world. That’s how you are, and that’s how I’m supposed to be, too,” she said and stepped back, pulling away from me. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “You’re out of control,” I hissed at her. I didn’t like who the girl I was in love with was turning into. But when I thought about it, what she was doing and how she was doing it were the same things I had done before I met her. I was the one who got her into all this. It was my fault. It was my fault she was destroying herself. In a way, we’d switched roles. She had shown up and dragged me out of the black hole I’d fallen into, but in doing so, she’d wound up taking my place. 1 Noah While I rolled the window of my mother’s car up and down, I couldn’t stop thinking what the next hellish year had in store for me. I couldn’t stop asking myself how we’d ended up like this, leaving our home to cross the country on our way to California. Three months had passed since I’d gotten the terrible news that would change my life forever, the same news that would make me want to cry at night, that would make me rant and rave like I was eleven instead of seventeen. But what could I do? I wasn’t an adult. I had eleven months, three weeks, and two days to go before I turned eighteen and could go away to college, far away from a mother who only thought about herself, far from these strangers I’d end up living with, because from now on I would have to share my life with two people I knew nothing about—two men, to make matters worse. “Can you stop doing that? You’re getting on my nerves,” my mother said as she put the keys in the ignition and started the car. “Lots of things you do get on my nerves, and I have to put up and shut up,” I hissed back. The loud sigh I heard in reply was so routine, it didn’t even surprise me. How could she make me do this? Didn’t she even care about my feelings? Of course I do, she’d told me as we were leaving my beloved hometown. Six years had passed since my parents split—and nothing about their divorce had been conventional, let alone amicable. It had been incredibly traumatic, but in the end, I’d gotten over it…or, at least, I was trying to. It was hard for me to adapt to change; I was terrified of strangers. I’m not timid, but I’m reserved about my private life, and having to share twenty-four hours of every day with two people I barely knew made me so anxious, I wanted to get out of the car and throw up. “I still can’t understand why you won’t let me stay,” I said, trying to convince her one last time. “I’m not a little girl. I know how to take care of myself. Plus, I’ll be in college next year, and I’ll be living on my own in another country then. It’s basically the same thing,” I argued, trying