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I felt the tears fall faster. “I don’t want to go.”
He wrapped me up in a hug and held on until I had to force myself to let go.
And forty minutes later, after he dropped me off at the airport and walked me inside, I wondered why my chest hurt so bad.
It was only after I was sitting in my plane seat that I realized the truth.
I was in love with him.
And that chest ache business was actually heartache because I hadn’t wanted him to let me go.
CHAPTER 17
Little Miss is it Halloween yet.
-Text from Slone to Ari
SLONE
I tried calling her for the third time in an hour, and I didn’t have any hope that she’d pick up this time. But god, I just needed to hear her voice.
To my surprise, she actually picked up.
“Slone,” she breathed in answer.
“Hey,” I rumbled into the phone, finding my first smile since she left me two days ago.
Who knew that I’d come to depend on her presence?
I was such a sad sac.
“I don’t know why I came home,” she grumbled into the phone. “Hades has been on an absolute rampage since I got back, pissed as hell and taking everything that happens out on me. She’s also mad I didn’t keep her gifts, because, and I quote, ‘she paid good money for them.’ Simi has been throwing up so much that she had to go to the hospital. Coffey’s splitting time between the RV they bought and the food trailer. Val has decided that she’s no longer going to play nice with men who question her. We lost four children today. I’ve fallen asleep four times in the middle of my shows, and I miss you.”
I missed her, too. Which I told her in the next breath.
“I miss you, too, honey,” I replied.
Her words made my heart hurt even more.
Because literally before I’d talked to her, I’d talked to my mom, and she’d told me that her and my sister were going on vacation to the Bahamas, and though they wanted me to come, they hadn’t bothered to invite me because they knew that I couldn’t go.
I didn’t dislike them or anything, I just hated how they always went to these places as a ‘family’ and didn’t bother to wait for me. There was no reason they couldn’t wait for two months and go during the off season.
But telling my mom that was like telling the wind not to blow. It was just inevitable, and my sister was just like my mother.
I know that she sacrificed a lot when Briley was born. She’d hated that she couldn’t live her life how she wanted to. And my sister resented me because our mom had to start paying for one more mouth, meaning she didn’t get what she wanted.
That was why I funded their trips now.
Every month, I padded my sister and mom’s bank accounts.
Well, might I add.
“Hey, are you okay?”
I came to staring at the bed spread I was currently sprawled across.
It was ugly.
