AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Or wasting away in bed with a raging hangover.
Shiloh narrows her eyes at me, all warmth bleeding from her expression like I’d stabbed her in the face. “I always show up formy family. Unlike some people who’d rather pretend we don’t exist.”
My mother titters nervously and shifts in her seat. “Now, you two. Please, let’s not bicker. It’s once in a blue moon that we all get to be together like this.”
Charlie nods, obviously eager to provide backup to the peacekeeping mission. “Your mother’s right. How about we order some grub? I know two little gremlins who are dying for some pancakes.”
But the damage is already done. Shiloh and I stare daggers at each other. The façade of happy families well and truly shatter on the floor, years of festering resentment spilling out.
“Dear me, Shy Girl. I know you’re really put out about this whole ball thing, but there’s no need to bring such a negative attitude to brunch. Are you feeling well?” I smirk at her, gleefully leaching out every last ounce of fury I can.
“Me?” she whisper yells. “No one fucking wants you here, Dom. Why don’t you do us all a favor and dragyourshitty attitude back across state lines where it belongs?”
“Language, Shiloh!” my mother gasps. But that’s all she says. No disagreement. No blubbering speech about how she’s desperate for her first-born to stay right here. It seems the limits of her stunned joy have been reached, and now she’s remembering how difficult I made life for all of them when Iwashere all the time.
Another second of tense silence and something in me snaps. I spring to my feet, nearly upending the table in the process. The rest of the diner has fallen eerily still, all eyes seemingly glued on our familial spat.
“You’d like that wouldn’t you?” I growl at my brave little step sister, yanking my wallet from my pocket. I pull out a wad of cash–easily a few hundred dollars–and drop it on the table witha satisfying slap. “Here. Consider this my contribution to our happy family fun time.”
Without waiting for a response, I spin on my heel and storm back out the door, my gloved hands clenched into fists.
Who the hell does she think she is, dismissing me like she has the high ground? As if she’s better than me for hanging around this backwater town for a family who couldn’t give two shits about her.
Fury causes my vision to blur. Over my dead fucking body, will Shiloh get to dictate what I do. If she wants me out of town, so she can go back to begging for scraps of our parents’ hard-won attention, then she can damn well have the opposite.
I’m here to fuckingbreakher now.
Good luck getting rid of me, Shy Girl.
You have no idea what’s coming to you.
7
SHILOH
Okay,seriously, that is not where I left my fucking notebook.
It’s entirely possible I may be losing my mind. Either that, or I’ve somehow attracted a poltergeist. Every minute I spend at home, I feel that prickly feeling on the back of my neck like someone’s watching me. And whenever I move from one room to another, I get the sense that things are out of place.
Not disordered enough to make me think I’ve been robbed, or that a messy little raccoon has taken up residence in some secret hiding spot. Just enough to convince me I’m losing my damn marbles whenever I find something on a different shelf to where I was sure I had left it.
The stress of life is clearly getting to me and we’re barely a month into the fall semester.
One saving grace of this week so far is that I haven’t laid eyes on Dominic since our disastrous run-in at Sunday brunch. If I’ve earned myself any good fortune at all, he’ll stay hundreds of miles away for another ten years.
Hell, forever would also work for me.
I stuff my notebook into my backpack and rush out the door for another Friday committee meeting. As much as I doubtwe can depend on her for anything, I find myself praying that Melanie has come up with some miraculous solution to our funding problem. Lord knows my attempt to save us all went up in black flames.
Trying my hardest to banish all thoughts of the shitshow that was Dominic’s brief visit, I push through the heavy wooden doors of the town hall and make my way to the conference room. The eerie silence that greets me as I reach the final corridor, has my eyebrows knitting together.
Has the meeting been canceled? Surely someone would have let me know if we’d called quits on the whole doomed affair?
As the door swings open, my entire world tilts on its axis, and I find myself wishing that a canceled Halloween Ball was the full extent of my problems.
There, sitting at the head of the table like he owns the fucking place, is my one and only stepbrother. He bares all his teeth in a wicked grin as our eyes meet, my stomach dropping to my feet like a lead ball. I find myself wondering what I could have possibly done in a past life to deserve this torment. My mouth has gone completely dry, my tongue reduced to a useless lump, incapable of forming any of the burning questions I’m dying to spit at the smug Dominic.
“Shiloh, there you are! You’re the last to arrive,” Melanie’s pointed barb cuts through my stunned paralysis. “Sit yourself down then and we can get started.”
