Mother paced in the kitchen as she continued her beratement of my father. I sauntered to the entertainment room, making sure to step lightly. Who was I to interrupt her barrage of venom? Especially when not directed at me.Yet.
Her pace slowed, and she reached the kitchen island and tapped her perfectly manicured fingers on the marble countertop. “What’s the alternative?” She paused, listening intently to Hank’s reply. “All right. Yes, I agree. I’ll tell him now. When are you coming?”
Fuck! He’s coming? Are they taking me to rehab or something?My mind spun with the possibilities. My parents hadn’t been in the same room for years. I’d fucked up before—this was by no means the first time Mom called Hank to bemoan my shenanigans—but he’d never actually gotten off his ass to visit. He’d been perfectly content pretending he never had a family before Jill and Cody.Cody. What a stupid fucking name.It’s the name you give a Golden Retriever rescued from a shelter.Fetch, Cody! Fetch, Cody! Gooood boy, Cody!!!
Mom slammed her cell phone on the counter—not even a goodbye.
She strode out of the kitchen on her way to march upstairs—no doubt to rouse me from my peaceful slumber—until I scared the ever-loving shit out of her as she passed the entertainment room.
“Good morning, Mother! Do I smell pancakes? You shouldn’t have!”
She screamed and clutched at her chest, gripping her turquoise cashmere sweater. “You!”She took a breath and steadied her features. Rage wafted off her body in heaps, filling the room with tension, but Mom knew how to school her features and lock her emotions away in that ironclad box she called a heart. “I just got off the phone with your father.”
I feigned surprise. “Daddy’s alive? The ship wasn’t lost at sea?”
She closed the distance between us, her eyes narrowing, conveying her desire to choke the life out of me. “You have two options: you either pack your things right now and spend your senior year with him—”
I bolted out of my seat, but my throbbing head knocked me back down. I pressed the heel of my hand to my right eye, which I was pretty sure just exploded. “Nuh-uh. No. Not happening. I’m not living with him and his poster family for the Aryan Nation. Not when—”
My mother held up her hand, stopping my rampage. “—or,you go to military school. Those are your options.”
Fucking military school?Sure, I turned the gazebo into a carport, but military school? I was expecting rehab—I could handle that.
Mom continued, “And there will be no hockey whatsoever if you go to military school.”
Bitch! She’s good.I narrowed my left eye at my mother, the right still throbbing under my hand. “You can’t be serious.”
She huffed a laugh and crossed her arms over her chest. “Oh, I’ve never been more serious in my life. Those are your options. Your father is on his way, but if you prefer military school, let me know. I’ll tell him to stay put.”
Wow.Should I suggest rehab? Did I need rehab? No. I didn’tneedalcohol, I just preferred to live life in a medicated state—better than actually feeling things. Perhaps she knew that.Damn her insightfulness!Rehab would have been so much easier. I’d go through the motions of a ninety-day program, come out, and return home in time to spend my senior year getting obliterated with Bucky.
I hated my dad. When Mattie died, Mom blamed him. He never said it, but I knew he blamed me. I know that’s why he left. The idea of spending the next year of my life in his new home with his new family made my gut coil.
Then again, a military school with no hockey sounded worse. All I cared about was hockey. The ice was the only thing other than drugs and alcohol that calmed the storm in my mind.
Plus, if I lived with Hank, I could make his life miserable for at least a year, not to mention an absolute nightmare for Jill and Cody. That sounded like a hell of a lot of fun.
Mom stood there, waiting for my response. I shrugged and replied, “Nothing like some father-son bonding.”
Chapter 2
Cody
I couldn’t breathe. Mom’s news hit me like a gut punch. “Where will he even stay?” I paced about the kitchen, scrubbing my hands over my face. I wasn’t dumb; I knew he’d stay in the guestroom, but I was grasping at straws—searching for any possible reason to stop the nightmare that was unfolding.
I caught sight of the sweat on my forehead in the kitchen window’s reflection. My sallow skin matched the shade of yellow covering the walls. Everything about Rafael made my insides twist into painful knots. Just uttering his name made my throat turn dry and clog with anxiety. I met him once, and that was enough. I’d spent approximately a day and a half with that rich little shit, and, in that time, I witnessed him cause more destruction than a fucking bomb. He couldn’t be a permanent fixture in my life. He just couldn’t. I’d waited so long for a typical, predictable life, and Rafael possessed the predictability of a rabid raccoon.
My mother sipped her coffee, and a slight tremor was visible in her hand as she lifted the cup. I knew she dreaded his arrival, too. That fucker ruined what was supposed to be the best day of her life. I wanted to kill him that day. The reddish hue of the church’s cherry wood morphed into an inferno of scarlet fury as Rafael berated his father and slandered my mother in front of the entire congregation. You didn’t fuck with my mother and live to tell the tale.
Mom sighed as she set her cup down on the kitchen island. “He’ll stay in the guestroom. Hank told me he’ll do his best to talk to him during the car ride home.”
If all the pricks in the world decided to pick up and live in one place and form their own little prick society, Rafael Sinclair would be crowned king. That dude was a fucking menace—a spoiled, little brat who thought the world owed him something.
My thoughts raced back to the day he arrived for the wedding. He hated us at first sight. The transformation of his expression from haughty appraisal to dark contempt haunted my dreams for weeks after that dreadful day. I witnessed the shift, and guilt clawed at my heart for not doing something to prevent what he did. I sensed he’d do something, but I bit my tongue because I didn’t want to worry Mom.
And to top it off, I’d been excited to meet him. Hank placed a picture of his boys flanking his sides on the mantle right after we moved in, and, for whatever reason, I couldn’t stop looking at it. Rafael’s olive skin glistened under a sunny sky, highlighting his jet-black hair and piercing blue eyes, which looked like they’d been chipped off a glacier.
I knew he played hockey, a sport I’d been obsessed with since I was five. We could never afford to sign up for an actual hockey league—I’d spent my youth playing street hockey—but that changed when Mom met Hank. I couldn’t wait to talk to Rafael about it. Hank described him as a force of nature on the ice.
