Where Souls Spoil (81 page)

A wash of irritation wafts over me. What a freaking asshole.

“I’m mine,” I gripe as I stare Dad down like he created the Black Plague from scratch. My eyes widen, and I nod my chin to Daniel and Jeremy because things are about to get out of hand. Part of me wants Jeremy to tell Daniel I am his, but that would be a lie. Plus, I’m really not a fan of the whole idea of ownership.

Dad nods his head at me and then strides toward Daniel, blocking Jeremy’s line of sight. I take a few steps back and find myself sandwiched between Duke and Uncle Wyatt. “Actually,” Dad says with his attention on Daniel, “she’s mine. Back off, boy.”

Daniel raises his hands in the air as he takes a few steps backward. Jeremy’s shoulders heave in agitation as he glares in Daniel’s direction. Dad just shakes his head. His eyes are locked on mine. The closer he gets to me, the more irritated he seems.

“What the hell are you doing out here?” he asks.

“Um,” I say, unable to finish.

“Explanation. Now.”

“I was trying to sneak a beer in the garage when Holly stormed in all pissed off at you, so I came out here to sneak in the front door, when this guy found me,” I say as quickly as I can and hike a finger in Daniel’s direction.

Duke chuckles on one side of me while Wyatt shakes his head and mumbles, “Shit.”

“The good shit or the cheap shit?” Dad asks, surprising me.

“You don’t have good shit,” I say, slightly perplexed.

Dad’s eyes narrow. “Buy your own fuckin’ beer, kid.” A sick smile slides over his features. “Oh, that’s right. You can’t.”

“I’m thinking really rude things about you right now,” I say quietly without breaking eye contact.

“I want your ass at the kitchen table. Now,” he barks loudly.

My lungs expand and collapse in quick succession. My face heats up, and my hands clench into fists at my side. I’m in fucking trouble for something I didn’t even do. Then again, I’d be in way more trouble if I told him the truth. So I’ll take my punishment, but I don’t have to like it.

“Can you please send me to a surface you haven’t had sex on?” I snap, careful to keep my voice low. Dad doesn’t care if family hears me being sassy, but if an outsider overhears, it’ll be my ass.

“Then you might want to wait in your car,” he says slowly as he licks his lips and leans in so that his nasty-ass breath covers my face. I love my dad, I really do. Grandma says we’re just too much alike to get along sometimes. “Shit, sorry, baby girl. Guess you can’t sit there either.”

My face pales as my stomach churns. I hope that, at the very least, it was Holly he’s been with in my car.

“Kitchen table, right now, or I’m going to find a much less comfortable place for you to wait for me.”

“Fine,” I say in a huff and stomp off toward the front door, already formulating a plan to move out and never come back.

CHAPTER 7

December

16 months to Mancuso’s downfall

I drag the
thin brush full of polish up my fingernail and consider whether I really want my nails to be Paris Pink or not. It’s softer than the shades I usually go for, and in fact, it’s not even mine. I swiped it from Holly’s small collection in her and Dad’s room. She always wears these really classy shades that are soft or muted in tone. In comparison, my colors are all loud and sometimes even neon. They seem childish next to Holly’s more adult choices.

The interaction with Daniel last week made me think twice about the way I’ve been going about things. Daniel is a man. He doesn’t have any trace of boy left in him like Jeremy still does, and that kind of scares me. My eyes survey the hot pink and black decor of my room. I loved the way it looked once, but now I feel stifled by it. It’s so childish.

My cellphone chimes, alerting me to an incoming text message. When I carefully maneuver the phone into my hands with my still-drying nails, I find the message is from Jeremy.

U WITH ASSHOLE?

My brows pull together in confusion. What the hell does he mean by asking me that? I swear, he’s so hot and cold I never know what to expect with him. This inconsistent behavior is one reason I’ve been inclined to keep texting Daniel despite my feelings for Jeremy. When he sent me a random text message after our first meeting, I was put off by it. He didn’t do much to apologize but rather explained himself. For some reason, I’m still having doubts that the things he said are true.

I LIKE YOU, Daniel sent a few days ago.

Then yesterday, I WAS JUST MESSING W/THE PROSPECT.

WE GOT A CONNECTION, he followed it up with.

To be fair, I haven’t exactly been radio silent on my end of things. I think I’m half in like with Daniel, but mostly just in like with the idea of him. He hasn’t said much about Jeremy, but the few times he has, it hasn’t been very kind. Jeremy on the other hand has been totally MIA. While Daniel isn’t the perfect biker by any means, he’s at least present.

DAD NOT HOME, I respond back to Jeremy and banish my thoughts of Daniel.

WRONG ASSHOLE, he says. I knew that, but I’m not about to get involved in this ridiculous pissing match they have going on. It’s not about me—it can’t be—because neither of them have actually asked me out.

U IGNORING ME?

Apparently I’m taking too long to respond. I huff before my cheeks turn a reddish pink. Even when he’s being a jerk, I like him. I really need to talk to Holly about all this. The only problem with that is she’s attached to Dad’s hip, and he’s the absolute last person I want advice from. His answer is pretty much always, “He touches you, you kill him,” regardless of who the “him” is.

NO, I type back. I give it a few minutes to see if he’s going to respond or try to continue the conversation. Once my nails are dry, I know I’ve waited long enough, and I decide to give up. He’s so infuriating. My phone tells me his stupid ass read my text, but he chose not to respond to it.

Daniel responds to my texts.

HEY, I type out in a message and hit send. Daniel should respond any minute. He always does. The moment I set my phone down, it chimes.

HEY BEAUTIFUL, the text reads. A light blush covers my cheeks. For whatever reason, he’s not just trying with me—he’s trying hard. Holly’s opinion matters to me, even if her judgment is questionable—she is dating my dad after all—and I can’t wait to talk to her about Daniel and Jeremy and this whole being mixed-up thing.

WHAT R U DOING? I text and wait for him to respond. The little bubble pops up immediately, telling me that he’s typing a response.

JERKING OFF TO YOUR TEXTS, Daniel says. I freeze with my phone in my hands and stop breathing. I stay like that for a while until my phone chimes again with a follow-up text. SORRY. TOO HONEST?

My eyes bug out. I toss my phone to the side and do an epic face palm into my pillow, all the while being wholly incapable of breathing. He did not. He so did not just text me that.

A few minutes pass before I work up the courage to look at my phone again. The messages he’s sent still take my breath away. I just don’t know what to do with this. High school boys don’t send me texts like this. Jeremy certainly doesn’t send me texts like this. Hell, I’ve never even been to third base, let alone being the recipient of dirty text messages!

This is too much, but I don’t know how to say that without sounding like a baby.

SORRY. I’M A JERK, he says in another text.

CAN WE NOT USE THE WORD JERK, PLS? I ask.

DON’T WANT ME TO SAY I’M A JERK-OFF? he responds.

I peek at the message and decide I just can’t take any more. This entire conversation is making me feel like a child, which I don’t like. My heart is beating way fast, and even though my toes are curling, I’m not convinced that this is a good thing. With that, I shove my phone back under my pillow and head downstairs.

“We could go
shopping or something?” I suggest. Holly’s getting better. It’s been a while since the attack happened. Still, she’s not leaving the house for things when she doesn’t have to if it’s not with Dad. It took her a few weeks to leave the house right after it happened. I get it and all. I just worry that she’s going to become a recluse if she keeps this up. Dad isn’t much of a shopper, and I swear he’s reaching his breaking point. Last time she dragged him into a clothing store, he was so bitchy that he scared the crap out of the poor sales clerk when she tried to upsell Holly on shoe inserts and Holly paused to think about it. Not only does Holly need to get better, but Dad needs his life back, and the entire town needs Sterling Grady to not go clothes shopping ever again.

“Where would we go shopping? There’s nothing here,” she says. We do have stores to shop in, but if I had to guess, I think she just doesn’t want to leave without Dad.

“We have places to shop.”

“I mean places that your dad hasn’t almost gotten us banned from,” she says with a bored expression on her face.

She has a point, but that doesn’t mean I can’t find an excuse to get out of the house. Besides, almost banned and banned aren’t the same thing. She might think I’m nuts, but I’m considering this a stage-four crisis. I just want her to get better, and better means getting back to her sassy self when she starts reminding Dad who’s boss again and doesn’t put up with his shit. His stunt with the beer last week is proof that he’s getting too big for his britches.

“I don’t know. There’s a bookstore downtown, and we can always go have lunch or something. There’s no reason we just have to sit here and stare at the TV.” Really, at this point I’m so desperate that I’m willing to hang out at a library.

“Your dad is going to be home soon. I don’t want to get out and leave before he gets home and then have him worrying about where we’re at.”

“He’s not going to worry! We’ll have Diesel with us. Sheesh.”

“Meh, I think I’ll pass. But thanks for trying to get me out of the house, kid.”

I sigh heavily and decide to let it drop. If Holly’s really not ready for another outing, then maybe I shouldn’t be pushing her. After all, I wasn’t the one in that room seeing what happened to Mindy.

“Hey, Holly. I have a question.” She looks at me curiously because she knows that anytime I start by telling her I have a question, it’s probably not good. I may or may not have earned a reputation over the last few months as being a slight pain in the ass, but I’m Sterling Grady’s daughter—what else can anyone expect from me?

“Hey, Cheyenne. What’s up?”

“What do you think of Jeremy?”

“He’s cute, he’s earning his cut, but I think he’s trouble,” she says.

This is something I respect about Holly. She never really bullshits me, and she’s never really mean about it either. I’d say that, all in all, Dad found a good one. Not that I don’t like Elle, because actually I had been hoping for a really long time that he and Elle would get together. It just didn’t happen, and there was probably half a second where I was upset about it. Elle’s been coming around here for years, and she’s really awesome and all, but with her job, she’s gone a lot. I used to think there was no way Dad would find anybody better suited for him than her. And then I met Holly. Holly is strong and tough and super sassy. She is basically everything my mother could’ve been if she weren’t so fucking screwed up.

“Are you saying he’s trouble because he’s prospecting, or are you saying he’s trouble because you think every boy I’m interested in is trouble?”

“Well, the day you’re interested in a boy who isn’t trouble, you’ll have to let me know.” Holly’s smile nearly overtakes her face. Now I really don’t want to tell her about Daniel. If she thinks Jeremy is trouble, then she’d definitely think the Jerk-Off King is major trouble. Holly’s really funny when she wants to be, even these days, but I doubt her sense of humor will extend that far.

It usually just takes a little bit more time to pull Holly’s funny side out now. Dad says we just have to be patient with her and hope her demons don’t get the best of her. He doesn’t mention Mom, but I know he must be thinking about her. Mom let her demons get the best of her and look where she is—somewhere up north whoring herself out for her drug of choice. Not that I think Holly would ever go down that path, and I know Dad doesn’t. He would never have brought her home to me if he had even the smallest inkling. Still, in the back of my mind I worry this is something she’s never going to be able to get over. She stronger than I am, though, so maybe I’m not giving her enough credit.

Just as I’m rolling my eyes at her, heavy boots sound against the hardwood floor in the entryway, and I know instinctively what that means. Dad’s home. Everybody else announces themselves, but not Dad.

As he rounds the corner into the living room, he sees us sitting on the sofa. He gives me a smiling head nod, but soon enough his attention drifts toward Holly. I might’ve missed it if I didn’t know him so well, but I’ve spent the last seventeen years looking into this man’s face. And I know what it means when his eyebrows draw together, just slightly, before he carefully corrects them and resumes that mask of indifference. He’s worried. He has every right to be, though I know he doesn’t want to show it. Holly keeps saying she’s fine and she’s working through it. Even right after it happened, she told Dad she was okay because she did what she had to do. It had something to do with her protecting him, and I have to admit that my soon-to-be stepmom is badass enough to think she has to protect my dad, who is one of the scariest and most intimidating men anybody could ever hope to meet, makes my heart swoon. Her strength is exactly why I have to help Dad and the club figure out what happened with Holly and Mindy. I need Holly to be strong, not just for Dad but for me as well. I’ve never had a mom before, and I like it, so I need her to be okay. She has to be.