“Honey, I love you so, so much, but you yelled at the cart boy in the grocery store two days ago,” Mom said.
“The fucker was about to run into my wife and infant son with a shitload of carts,” he scowled at her. “He’s lucky that’s all that happened.”
Mom rolled her eyes. “He was nowhere near me,” she stage whispered.
I grinned and rested my head against her shoulder.
She kissed my head.
I wished that it felt the same way it did when I was younger. Safe. Natural. Now there were things between us, secrets, my own, hers uncovered.
“I’m sorry about Bennett, sweetie,” she whispered.
My eyes didn’t go to him, but my mind did. Not to Bennett... To Elden. “Yeah, me too,” I lied. What was one more on top of the pile?
ChapterThirteen
Everything changed after Christmas.
Elden and I were no longer holding back. He’d claimed me. There was no going back, and neither of us wanted to.
We fucked every second we could during my winter break.
I didn’t tell anyone. Obviously. Colby hadn’t said anything further, thankfully, most likely because he didn’t want to be implicated if/when this all came out, not willing to risk being caught in the crossfire between my stepfather and Elden.
Elden seemed to have come to the decision that he didn’t give a fuck about the fire, direct or otherwise, because he, like me, was insatiable.
We did it whenever and wherever we could. The more we did it, the more desperate for each other we became. Nothing dissipated or wore off. Our need for each other grew. We became increasingly brazen. He fucked me on the club’s kitchen counter in the middle of the day when anyone could’ve walked in. I didn’t know if both of us secretly wanted to get caught or if the danger of it all turned us on more.
I was working at Oliver’s almost every day. For the distraction, not so much for the money. I had plenty from my father since the divorce divested him of almost all of his assets. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. My college was paid for, I never had to worry about money. I was incredibly, incredibly lucky. But the money made me feel dirty somehow. Still depending on Daddy for my future, for what I ate, what I wore.
So it felt good to be making my own money. I worked at Mom’s restaurant, Violet’s, whenever I could too. She was back to working often since there was a whole village of women around her to help out with Declan and with Swiss taking him everywhere he could.
Truthfully, I was avoiding my mother. Not just because I wanted every spare moment of mine with Elden but because whenever I was with her, the guilt of our secret became harder to bear.
I only had one more day left before I went back to college. I should’ve been excited. To get back to the life I’d been so looking forward to. The freedom. Independence. The friends I’d made. What I was learning.
But it felt stifling. Foreign. My dreams had shifted. Not just because of Elden but because they’d been based on the desperate desire to never live that cookie cutter, misogynist American Fucking Dream I’d grown up in.
I was seeing things through a new lens now. With the life that my mother had created in the middle of the desert.
College was sacred to people for many reasons, namely because it provided a kind of segue between childhood and adulthood where you could act like an adult without any of those big responsibilities or decisions.
Except I wasn’t on that precipice. I would say I’d well and truly crossed the threshold into adulthood when I moved across the world at eighteen. Or when my French boyfriend punched me. Or when I learned about who my father was. Or when I got an abortion. Or when I looked into the ice blue eyes of the man who rocked me to the core.
Yeah, those events meant I was not satisfied in the limbo lifestyle college afforded. I was an adult. One who knew what she wanted. Okay, maybe I didn’t know exactlywhatI wanted, but I knewwhoI wanted.
The bell above the door rang, the one that Julian cursed about one hundred times a day but never took down.
“We’re closed,” I called out, not looking up from where I was counting cash. “And I don’t care how much you bribe me, how far you’ve traveled, the machine is off, cleaned and it’s much too late for caffeine anyway. Do you even care about your circadian rhythm?”
The customer was silent, and all I heard was the heavy fall of feet against the floor.
I froze, looking up, recognizing the sound of his fucking boots.
Elden was striding toward me, eyes glittering with anger.
I lost count of the cash as he rounded the counter.