AllFreeNovel
Share Us
15
Addilyn
Lloyd and Mother had cameras installed throughout the house—minus bathrooms and bedrooms, but the idea of someone watching me walking the hallways creeped me out. I didn’t bother talking to Mother privately though. Her whole “keep my sweetheart pure as long as possible” speech would have been spewed yet again.
Not that I was allowed to have boys over, anyway. What’d they expect? Devon to come tossing pebbles at my bedroom window? He would never do something like that, but even if he did, I wouldn’t let him in. Yes, I wanted—promised—him my first kiss, but I wasn’t interested in that.
Not yet, anyway.
Maybe someday, a young man who wasn’t Gideon would make me crave the same way he did, and I’d be ready to give in. Until then, I would ignore my stepbrother and hide away until he got the point.
Hanging out in my bedroom became my favorite pastime, and I locked myself in from after school for homework and Chit’n Chat time until dinner when I had no choice but to sit as a family.
Every. Damn. Night.
Mother texted me less than ten minutes after I’d gotten home from school.
Mother: Come to the parlor, please. I’m finalizing plans for your party.
“Just great.” Huffing a groan, I shot back a Yes, ma’am and shut down my laptop, expecting I wouldn’t be getting back to my homework until dinner finished since I’d been putting off the required sit-down with her for a couple weeks. At least she had said please for a change.
Feet dragging, I made my way downstairs to her sitting room, feeling as though I walked to my doom.
Garish yellows splashed across the room like an artist’s canvas, blindingly bright from all the lights she kept on in attempts to ward off her winter blues. I blinked a few times, adjusting my eyes. She sat behind her desk in the corner.
“Have a seat, sweetheart.”
I did as told, folding my hands on my lap.
“I just got off the phone with Paul over at Perfect Pastries,” she said in a low voice while scribbling something on a sheet of paper with one of her gel pens—probably in yellow. “He’s agreed to make a chocolate, three-tiered cake for your birthday.”
Chocolate. Her favorite.
I bit my tongue rather than argue which wouldn’t have accomplished a damn thing.
“And I went ahead and also ordered centerpieces since you couldn’t be bothered to help in the decision-making.”
She hadn’t asked for my opinion for them, but whatever. I wasn’t in the mood to argue. My ears weren’t up to the task of being blasted.
“I decided on white daisies for purity—like you.”
That, at least, I couldn’t just let go. “They make me sneeze,” I told her, keeping my tone neutral even though my insides tightened up.
“Just don’t get too close.” She snapped the cap back on her pen and turned to face me while I blinked at her. “They’re elegant in their simplicity.”
“I’m allergic to daisies.” I couldn’t believe I had to remind my own mother of that fact.
“And they’re what I prefer,” she snipped back, “so just don’t go sticking your nose in them.”
While I wasn’t deathly allergic, she knew they caused my face to splotch up and my nose to run. Did she want me to look a mess for my sweet sixteen in retaliation for soaking her gown at the country club? Heat rose inside me like a swelling brush fire, ready to combust and burn everything in its path.
I managed to bite back my snort, but not my tongue. “Seriously?”
“You like what I like,” she reasoned which made no damn sense to me.
Since when?
“Name one thing we both enjoy, Mother.” I barely held onto the flames searing my insides.
