It sounded horrible. “Sure, yeah. Sounds like a plan to me.”
Mom patted my knee and sat next to me. “I found it, and it’s your favorite episode. Wanna watch it?”
I picked up my head and stared blankly at Betty White on the screen. “Yeah, yeah. Sure.”
“Princess?”
I resisted the urge to sigh. “Yeah, Dad?”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Would anyone be okay after what I went through?”
I couldn’t help it. I knew it made them feel bad. I mean, the entire aura of the room changed the second the words fell from my lips. But what the hell did they expect from me? My twin sister tried to kill me, and that didn’t count the fact that at one point in time, she had been a killer for money. More than that, though, those men had changed me. I’d never see them again, and they made me feel things I’d never felt with any other human being on the planet. No one I had ever dated made me feel as alive and beautiful as they did. Three different times, I got to feel that way. Three different, wondrous, breathtaking moments with men I knew I’d never forget.
I had become a different person.
How the hell was I supposed to go back to my life after all that?
Mom cackled. “Oh, my God. That Blanche is something else, huh?”
Dad bent forward and kissed the top of Mom’s head. “Reminds me of someone that I know.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Ew.”
Mom giggled as she reached over and took my hand. “One day, sweetheart, you’ll understand.”
I pulled my hand away. “Yeah, one of these days. Excuse me for a second, I gotta go to the bathroom.”
Sitting there and watching some television show felt almost like being strangled. In fact, I would have given anything to go back and be slapped around by Axe than to sit there with my mother like the past couple of weeks hadn’t fucking happened. Dad called after me, but I had no clue what he said. I heard my mother’s muffled voice, but I didn’t care to piece her words together. I needed space. I needed a moment to breathe.
I needed to go home.
“Shower,” I said breathlessly as I stripped my clothes off in the hallway, “I need a fucking shower.”
“Sweetheart?” Mom called out.
“Just need to get cleaned up!” I exclaimed, slipping into the bathroom.
Finally, some peace.
Knock, knock, knock.
The soft rapping of my father’s knuckles made me want to claw my own eardrums out.
“Princess?” he asked.
“What?”
I hated how harsh my voice sounded, but what the hell else was I supposed to do? My life had been turned upside down, and now I missed the three men that I needed the most. They had abandoned me. Left me there, with my psycho twin sister my parents never once told me about, and expected me to… what? Pick up the pieces and move on?
I’d never been so angry in all my life.
“I’m sorry, princess,” Dad said softly.
A tear slid down my cheek as my bare back slid down the door. My ass plopped to the cold linoleum floor, and I found myself tucking my knees close to my body.
“We should have told you,” he muttered.
