“Pencil cock, for sure. Your other brother’s is much bi?—”
“Austin.”
Maddox growling at me like that isn’t a great way to discourage me. It honestly has the opposite effect, but tonight is Girls’ Night, and as soon as Maddox’s card goes through, I plan to push him entirely out of my mind for the next twelve hours or so.
Card already on file as default payment method.
Of course it is.
I shove it back into his wallet with the condom, both in the wrong spots just to piss off his anal tendencies. Kenny snatches it from me and walks back over to him, pushing it against his chest. “Out.”
“Thank you for paying for our supper, Bubba. You’re the best,” Maddox mimics.
Kenny rolls her eyes and continues to push him out.
“I’m not going to thank you for paying for your girlfriend’s food,Maddie.”
“Not just hers,” Maddox argues.
“Not his girlfriend,” I correct at the same time, hyper-focusing on the screen of the phone even though it’s just the confirmation page for the order. It’s getting harder and harder to draw that line and I hate seeing Maddox’s face when I do, but I’m scared that if I stop, I’ll forget he isn’t mine to keep. Leaving Kenny behind is going to be hard enough. I don’t need to add leaving Maddox to that, too.
But Maddox doesn’t know I’m leaving. He probably thinks I’m just constantly rejecting him for the hell of it. Best case scenario, he attributes it to my bratty side. Worst case, he thinks it’s a flaw on his part. I pray he never thinks it’s that, but I’m too chicken-shit to bring it up.
Kenny rolls her eyes at me. “You’re both far too old for thisshit,” she grumbles, closing the door before I can make another joke about Maddox’s age.
I toss her phone on the bed when she plops down on it beside me. We stare at the ceiling, at the little glow-in-the-dark stars we’d put up there with pieces of blue putty that were visible through them. We’d run out of putty at one point and raided the boys’ room for alternatives. Big Red was the only thing we’d found and my lips twisted at the knowledge some of the stars were still being held to the ceiling by old chewing gum.
Kenny catches my eye and we both burst into laughter, knocking our heads against each other’s, which only makes us laugh harder. “Remember how spicy we thought it was back then?”
I snort. Itwaspretty spicy for two little girls who didn’t have very refined palates. “We thought the boys weresogrown up for being able to handle it. You cried the entire time, chewing so damn fast.”
She nods as she continues to fall apart, making it ten times funnier than it is. I swear, even if I didn’t know what exactly we were laughing about, as long as Kenny was laughing, I’d be laughing too.
Melancholy settles in my stomach and I feel like I’m watching the scene from above. My eyes rake over her face, trying to implant every second of this memory into my skull, so when I’m gone from here, I can look back on it and remember how this felt.
Whittaker Ranch has always been the only place I’ve felt safe.
Kendall Whittaker has always been my best and only friend.
I hate the thought of leaving, but I can’t see a way to stay. In a fantasy world, I’d move here. Not into Maddox’s cabin. I don’t let myself consider that an option, even in the fantasy world. Maybe into a guest house.
But even then, even if the Whittakers could protect me from my dad, they wouldn’t always be there. I’d still have to go towork and I’d run into him at some point. He wouldn’t be violent toward me in public, but he’d find a way to lure me home.
Even though I know better, even though I hate myself for it, there will always be a little girl inside me that wants her dad’s love and who will demean herself for it.
I’d never want the Whittakers to know about my dad. I’m sure they suspected my home life wasn’t great when I was growing up, but I’m twenty-two now. It’s ridiculous that I’m still letting my dad shove me around, that I’m letting him sit on his ass and drink and snort his way through the money I work two jobs to make. If they found out, they’d see me differently. They’d pity me at first, but then they’d realize how weak I was. How much I let that child inside me rule.
That’s not an option.
“You alright, Aus?”
I blink, realizing I’d been staring at Kenny so long her features had all blurred together. “Yeah,” I say, smiling. “Fine. Just thinking about your brother.”
She doesn’t react quickly enough for it to be her genuine reaction, but after a second, she scrunches her nose in mock-disgust again. She knows better than to push, unlike Maddox.
“I still can’t believe you’re sleeping with him.”
“Not much sleeping going on, really.”
