My smile widens. Pulling my cell out, I send a quick text to Celeste. I wanna know everything there is about Austin Lowes.
Up for swimming?
She sends a text back immediately. Absolutely. Bring that little princess on over.
_________________________________
“Cole. Watch me,” Lilly calls out from the side of the pool.
I stand in the shallow end, looking up at her. “Watching.”
She puts her feet together, bends her knees, and leans over at the waist, her hands out in front of her before she falls into the pool face first, doing her version of a dive.
She comes up sucking in a long breath. I reach out and grab her even though she can swim. “That was awesome, Lil,” I say with a big smile. Celeste claps from her raft in the deep end.
“I’ve been practicing,” she says, smiling up at me. Her blond hair sticks to her face and neck because I forgot to braid it. Now it’ll take me forever to get her tangles out.
“So how was lunch with Austin today?” Celeste asks from behind me.
I refrain from smiling. “It went well. She didn’t say much.”
She sighs. “Yeah, I asked her how it went, and she didn’t respond. Just went up to her room and said she was tired.”
That’s because she spent last night watching us kill a guy and then she burned the body. I lick my lips and say, “I hate to be forward, but I didn’t even know Bruce had a daughter.”
She frowns. “You’ve met her before. I remembered that earlier this afternoon after I introduced you two.”
“What? When?” She must be mistaken.
She sits up on her raft and uses her hands to paddle over to me. “You guys must have been around nine. Maybe ten. I don’t know. Bruce and I have been married for ten years now, and she’s seventeen. So seven.” She laughs. “I was off on the math.”
My frown deepens. “I don’t remember.”
“I don’t think she does either.” She sighs. “She came to stay with us for a few weeks during the summer. We had just gotten married. Her mother had been admitted to the hospital for an overdose.”
“Then why did she go back?” Lilly throws some diving rings into the water and watches them sink as she puts her goggles on.
“Her mom went to rehab. Got better. Bruce bought them a house, sent her money …”
He sounds like my father. Just wants to throw money at it. Bruce doesn’t care about Austin any more than my father cares about Lilly. At least he knows I have a scholarship. He knows I have plans. He just doesn’t know that I plan on taking Lilly with me when I go to college. It’ll be hard, but I’ll make it work. And he won’t fight me. He’s never wanted her.
“So why now?” I watch Lilly dive in and kick her little feet to make it to the bottom to grab a ring. Then she pushes off the bottom and shoots up. I help her to the side of the pool where she will get out to repeat the process again.
Celeste sighs. “She got expelled from school. Caught with drugs.” She shakes her head. “Her mother called me, demanding I take her. That she was just too much to handle anymore.”
Lilly jumps in, getting two rings that were close to one another this time.
“Bruce said no, that we didn’t have time for her, but I have nothing but time.” Her eyes fall to the water, and she runs her hand through it slowly. “He’s always away. And I don’t think Austin was safe. I think she just needs a different environment. Different friends.” She looks up at me and smiles. “You could help her.”
I chuckle. I’m not a good influence, by any means, and Celeste knows that. This entire town knows that I do what I want, when I want. No one tells me I can’t do something. And when I find myself in trouble, my father bails me out because he hates it when I make him look bad. “You know that’s not true, Celeste,” I finally say as Lilly jumps in again, splashing me.
She drops her head. “We both know that you’re the lesser of two evils,” she whispers, and my chest tightens at her words.
Yeah, I try to beat the kind of men who she married. Like my father. Right now, I can only do so much. But one day, they will all pay. I will release all that anger bottled up inside me, and it will fucking rain blood on this town.
AUSTIN
I wake up with a headache and a throbbing forearm. Shelby couldn’t give me any pain meds, but she said that it shouldn’t hurt once the numbing shot wore off. It’s not painful, just a dull ache.
Getting out of bed, I walk over to my closet and put on a white long-sleeve shirt to cover my stitches. It hangs off my right shoulder, letting whoever sees me know that I didn’t take the time to put a bra on. Then I yank on a pair of yoga pants before walking out of my room in search of Celeste.