Storm Warning (2 page)

“W
HAT
do you mean I’m not going?” Cami asked as she watched her mother walk toward the front door. Right outside that door was the town car that was waiting to drive them to the airport. The one Cami was supposed to be loading her Louis Vuitton suitcase in at that very moment. Instead, her father wheeled it back toward the staircase that led up to her second-floor bedroom.

“Exactly what I said,” her mother answered shortly.

“But you said this was a trip for us. You said if I placed in the Miss Teen Oklahoma pageant that we’d go celebrate. I don’t understand why you suddenly decided that I don’t get to go. This isn’t fair,” she pleaded.

Theresa Nickelson
—
or as she preferred to be known, Former Miss Oklahoma
—
placed her hand on her daughter’s shoulder and painted on the fake smile she’d perfected over years of being on the pageant circuit.

“Cameron,” she said in a sugary sweet tone. “I said that you could go to St. Tropez with me if you
won
Miss Teen Oklahoma. Not placed. Perhaps you should use the summer to figure out why exactly you didn’t take home that crown. Tighten up a little for the swimsuit competition.” She paused to give her daughter’s hip a harsh pat. “Maybe next year we’ll actually have a reason to celebrate.” With that, her mother was out the door and on her way to the island vacation Cameron had been dreaming about for months.

Two tears escaped the overflowing pools in her eyes. She let them fall onto her cheeks before turning to run up the steps to her room.

She knew she shouldn’t have been surprised by her mother’s decision to leave her behind. It was kind of their thing. The only time her mother actually acknowledged her existence was when she had a crown on her head and sash across her chest. That was when her mom brought out the big guns, making immense promises she never followed through on.

Cami threw herself on the queen-sized bed in the center of her bedroom and cursed herself for actually thinking her mother wanted to spend time with her. Then she cursed herself again for falling for her mother’s promise of “a mother-daughter getaway.”

Her mother was nothing if not consistent. Every summer she would get Cami’s hopes up by planning something fun for the two of them only to pull the rug out from under her unsuspecting daughter. As much as she hated to admit it, this year she’d been stupid enough to fall for it. Again.

Cami’s dream of finding summer love on the beach seeped into her pillow along with her tears. She had a pretty good idea that her mother had the exact same idea and didn’t want her daughter tagging along to complicate things with the cabana boy or whatever unsuspecting guy she preyed upon. Cami swore to herself that this was the last time she would believe a word that came out of her mother’s mouth. She let her sobs drown out the little voice inside her that said this would not be the case.

“You okay, sweetheart?”

She unburied her face from her damp pillow and watched her father wheel her suitcase back into her room.

“You know how your mother is,” he tried to reason with his daughter, his brown eyes crinkling as he forced a smile. “You shouldn’t have gotten your hopes up.”

“Yeah. I know.” The emptiness she felt at his words hollowed out her stomach. No matter how hard she tried to make it seem normal, the relationship she had with her parents was anything but.

Mothers were supposed to want to spend time with their children and fathers were supposed to offer love and support, not rationalize their wive’s immature behavior.

Just as she began to write both of her parents off, her father stepped over to the edge of the bed and offered Cami a comforting pat on her back.

“You’ll still have a good summer,” he began, and for a brief moment, Cami actually thought he was going to suggest that the two of them spend some time together. A tiny hopeful smile crept across her face.

She didn’t see her dad on a regular basis. Between his busy work schedule and her social one, they spoke only in passing. She saw her mom at dress fittings, hair appointments, and pageant practice. Her dad, not so much.

“Why don’t you call the girls and have a pool party tonight?” he suggested. “I’m going into the city to get a head start on all the work I’ve got this week.”

She let out a breath as her heart grew heavier in her chest. The weight of it felt like too much in times like these. Cami’s father was much more transparent than her mother. His affair, which he usually referred to as ‘work,’ was something her mother knew all about and turned a blind eye to. Cami knew this from the many phone conversations she’d overhead her mother having with women in her inner circle.

According to her mom, Derek Nickelson justified deserving a girlfriend because he provided a lavish lifestyle for his wife and daughter, maintained a high profile in the community they lived in, and pretended to be interested in his child’s well-being. He even served as the School Board President. And because his own infidelity kept him too busy to notice hers, Theresa Nickelson didn’t really mind.

From the outside, the Nickelsons looked like they had it all together. Which couldn’t be any further from the truth.

“Okay, Daddy,” Cami agreed. “That sounds like fun.”

He placed a kiss on the top of her head. “Let Sophie know if you need anything,” he added as he backed toward the door. Sophie was their maid and the only person in the house that Cami saw daily. “I’ll leave some cash on the counter, and you have your Visa.”

Once he was gone, Cami returned her face to the quiet comfort of her pillow and silently thanked her mother for forcing her into the pageants she hated so much. If nothing else, she’d learned how to lie and paint the picture of perfection everyone expected her to be.

She heard her father’s car pull out of the garage and closed her eyes. There was no way she was having a party tonight. She couldn’t deal with letting her girlfriends know that her mother had ditched her once again. She’d used every excuse in the book for that woman and she had run out of ideas. Just the thought of having everyone talking about “poor Cami” behind her back made her want to puke.

She had a reputation to uphold. This summer, Cami was going to hide out, protect the lie her sorry excuse for a family had forced her into. When the school bell rang, she was going to fill her friends’ ears with the details of the wild summer romance she had promised them she was going to have. Even if she had to make the whole thing up.

“T
HIS
is a joke, right? You’re pissed I wrecked the Bentley so you’re screwing with me.”

He watched as his mother rubbed the bridge of her nose and then widened her hand to grip her temples. His dad just stood there, checking his phone for the fiftieth time. One of them needed to cut the bullshit and soon or he was going to lose it.

“Hayden, honestly. It’s a car. We were just glad you weren’t hurt. This wasn’t even our idea.” His mother sighed as she looked to his father for some assistance. She didn’t get any. The man couldn’t even glance up from the device he held. Hayden knew why. It was baseball season. People were still placing bets. If his mother knew about his dad’s shady side business, she ignored it.

“Okay, so if it’s just a car, why send me to the middle of nowhere? I’m seventeen years old. I don’t need summer camp, dammit.”

“Watch your mouth,” his dad scolded, finally looking up. “It’s not summer camp. It’s your grandparents’ farm in Hope’s Grove, and they have some friends who could use a hand. The Masons’ son left for college early or something and is only helping out part time. I’m pretty sure Brad Mason is living here in Summit Bluffs with Valerie Darden. So it’s just a single mother and her daughter running a somewhat successful landscaping business. You could use a summer of hard work.”

Hayden gritted his teeth together and glared at his father. “Oh yeah, Dad? I thought I had been working hard? Or doesn’t what I’ve been doing count?”

His mother scrunched her brow and her imploring gaze swung from him to his father and back again.

Before she could ask any questions, his father stepped toward him. “Enough. Pack your bags. Your grandfather will pick you up first thing in the morning.”

A
FTER
he’d received the shitty news of being sent to Camp Townie Inbred for the summer, his girlfriend had come over. To add insult to injury, she’d announced she wanted to take a “break.” Normally he wouldn’t have cared. He had a few things going on the side. Cami was just the main course because his parents said so. But knowing he’d be stuck out in the middle of nowhere without even the hope of a conjugal visit since she’d be in St. Tropez with her mother, probably tag-teaming cabana boys, sucked hairy balls.

At least he’d gotten lucky one last time.

But he doubted that would hold him over all summer long. He was pretty sure none of the toothless townies were going to be his type.

The drive to Hope’s Grove wasn’t even an hour. But it might as well have been in another time zone. Summit Bluffs had a high-end mall, a movie theatre, and a high school home to the three-time state football and lacrosse champs. Hope’s Grove had…dirt. And corn. So far, that was all he’d seen.

“Well, here it is. Downtown,” his grandfather announced like they’d entered Times Square.

“Jesus.” Hayden barely kept himself from letting out a few words he knew might get him backhanded by the old man. Hope’s Grove was the town that time forgot. Time must have downright hated it. Everything was faded. Stop signs—the two they had—storefront displays, all of it. He counted a hardware store, a grocery store, a gas station, a church, a bar, and a video store.
For God’s sakes, have these people never heard of Netflix?

“Used to be the Logans’ Dairy Farm,” Pops told him, pointing a bony finger at a huge empty field as they turned down a back road. “We went there a few times when you were younger. They went under last year.”

Great. Even the cows were smart enough to get the hell out of this godforsaken place.

How in the world was he supposed to entertain himself all summer? He glanced down at his phone only to see that he had zero service. No signal whatsoever. Big shocker. He’d bet the odds of his grandparents having Wi-Fi weren’t too great. And he knew plenty about betting.

One thing was for sure. This summer was going to be pure hell.

“I
T’S
not like I’m moving to the moon, EJ. Relax.” Lynlee Reed soothed her friend as she folded her last skimpy tank top and stuffed it into her suitcase. “There’s Facebook and Skype and Snapchat and a ton of other ways to keep in touch.”

Ella Jane Mason sat at the end of the bed with tears stinging the backs of her eyes. “You might as well be. California is a million miles from here. It’s practically on another planet.” She stared down at her hands. Everything was changing. She hated change.

First, her dad had moved out and her parents were in the middle of destroying each other in every way possible in the divorce. Her brother had received a full scholarship to OSU and had left for football camp last week. He’d be home on weekends but it wasn’t the same. Nothing would ever be the same. And now her best friend was moving to California because her dad’s job had closed the Oklahoma City office location and transferred him to Los Angeles.

Lynlee huffed out a sigh. “Don’t be so dramatic. I’ll come back as much as I can. Mom said we’d visit Gram and Gramps before the end of summer, so I’ll be back before you know it.”