I snorted at that. “Yeah, that’s not going to work. I need to talk to my father, and with those two in the same room together, all that’s going to happen is a hell of a lot of yelling.”
Raven grabbed a set of keys off the counter near the fridge. “Take my car,” she offered as she pulled a key fob off the ring and handed it over. “I have the SUV here too, so I won’t be without. Not that I’ll be going anywhere. Bash wasn’t playing around about being on complete lockdown. I can’t even leave the yard without two of the boys shadowing me.”
“Thanks. I’m hoping I can get this sorted and be back before Matt gets up. But if I’m not, try to cover for me.”
Raven nodded and gave me a ghost of a smile. “Just be careful. Matt is like Bash in more than just looks. It just takes more for him to hulk out.”
“Hulk smash!” Max said with a laugh as he pounded his fists into the tray of his high chair, causing noodles and spaghetti sauce to splash across the kitchen floor. “Hulk smash!”
Flick and Aggie laughed, while Raven groaned and reached for the roll of paper towels. While they were busy cleaning up the mess, I went out through the kitchen exit and found Raven’s black Dodge Challenger. This was the car I would have wanted if I’d been given the option. Well, at least something like it. Something with American-made power under the hood, built like a tank, unlike the little sports car my father had given me that would have turned into a tuna can if it so much as got tapped by the wrong vehicle.
The engine purred to life as I turned it on and drove around the side of the clubhouse to the gate. I had to open the door and show the guys up on the wall that it was me and not Raven behind the wheel before they would open it for me. She hadn’t been kidding about Bash putting her on complete lockdown.
It took twenty minutes to get to the mayor’s office, and during that time, I thought of what I was going to say to my father. I knew he wasn’t going to make it easy on me; he had never shown me special treatment for anything unless it was to get his own way. There were times when I was growing up that I had questioned if he actually loved me.
Now, I knew the truth. He didn’t love me. He only loved what I could do for him. The smiling, pretty face that voters saw when he was running for mayor. The money my mother had left me…
Which reminded me that I had to stop by Mr. Jenkins’s office to sign papers for my mother’s will. I made a mental note to stop there afterward so I wouldn’t have to make a second trip into town in the next few days. I didn’t want to have to put that off on Matt too. Not when he had so much else to deal with.
I parked outside my father’s building and calmly walked into the mayor’s office. His secretary was behind her desk when I entered, and she barely lifted one of her fake lashes when she realized it was me. The woman was professionally dressed, her hair always expertly styled, but her makeup looked like a YouTube tutorial fail. Someone needed to tell her that less was more at times.
“He’s been expecting you,” she said with a snide smile, surprising me when her face didn’t crack under the weight of her makeup. “Go on in.”
Nervousness tightened in my stomach, and for a split second, I wished I had waited for Matt to come with me. But that would have been pure chaos. Gathering my courage, I opened the door to his office and stepped inside. My eyes went straight to the desk where Derrick Michaels always sat. His office chair was like his throne, where he felt like he was at his most powerful. He wanted to rule all of Creswell Springs, and then once he had it exactly the way he wanted it, he planned on running for governor.
Which was exactly what California needed.
Not.
“Hey, Aurora,” a voice I hadn’t been expecting greeted, pulling my gaze from my father to the small leather sofa across the room. “How have you been? I haven’t seen you in weeks.”
I was taken aback when I saw Steph Campbell sitting there, her father right beside her looking smug and like even more of a creeper than ever. I swung the door shut and turned my eyes back to my father, ignoring the presence of the Campbells for the moment. “I heard you wanted to see me.”
“I told you not to go near that boy again,” Dad said in a calm voice.
Calm, always so calm and collected whenever he had an audience. More often than not at home as well, but there were rare occasions when he had terrified me with his rage. Finding out my mother had left him without so much as a dime of her money had been one such occasion. But I wasn’t scared of him now, and I had promised myself a long time ago that I would never be scared of him again.
At least, not for myself.
Matt was a different matter. Matt was everything, and I wasn’t going to let my father touch him.
I lifted a shoulder in a careless half shrug. “I’m almost twenty-one, Dad. I really don’t give a fuck what you tell me. I make my own choices.”
“He’s a dangerous gang member.” His eyes were shooting fire at me, but his tone was still calm, if a little colder now. “Your mother and I raised you to respect yourself more than to want to be with some gutter trash like that Reid boy.”
Anger boiled in my veins, and I held up a finger. “Number one, don’t call him that. Your hands are dirtier than his, so just shut your damn mouth about him. Number two, my mother raised me. Not your lazy ass. Never you.” I lifted a third finger. “And number three, don’t bring Mom into this. She’s gone, but before she died, she approved of Matt. He treats me the way she always wished a guy would treat me.”
“By fucking your friend the minute your back was turned?” Dad shot back, and I had to lock my knees, because that question threw me completely off-balance. “I doubt your mother would have approved of that, little girl.”
“What are you talking about? What friend? I have no friends, thanks to you.” But something was already churning in my gut. That jealousy I’d fought down the first night I’d gotten Matt back tried to poke its ugly head into my mind as doubts and insecurities flooded back like a tsunami.
“That hurts, Aurora,” Steph murmured, sounding like I had actually hurt her feelings. But when I glanced at her again, I could see the malice in her eyes. “I thought we were besties.”
A picture of Matt with Steph flicked through my mind, and I had to swallow the bile that filled my throat. No. It wasn’t true. I didn’t believe it. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t. He wouldn’t have done that to me. He wouldn’t have…
Right?
But with the malice, I saw the truth shining back at me from her face. That pleased look as she remembered her time with him. As she thought of how he had touched her.