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Mom looks like she wants to argue.
“You should be ashamed of yourself, Patricia,” he says, “trying to take advantage of your daughter like she’s a fucking piggy bank.”
“Cash darlin’, I—”
“Get off my property.”
My mother blinks, her eyes flashing with heat and anger, before she stamps her cigarette butt out on the sidewalk, then stalks off. Her front door slams moments later.
“What the hell are you doing?” I turn on Cash. “You can’t—”
“Were you going to say anything?” he asks.
“Yeah, I was. I was going to tell her that I—”
“That you’d help her?”
I poke him in the chest, and my finger actually hurts from how hard it is. “Hey, stop interrupting me, would you? I don’t need you to step in and protect me every time something happens. I was going to tell her to leave.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“What?”
“June, you’re too soft. You give and give and give to everyone else and never take anything for yourself,” he says. “And she’s part of the reason. She’s the one who taught you how to do that, June. She’s not a parent. She’s a user. And she’ll drain you dry if you let her. You want to go to college, you want to save up to follow your dreams, but she doesn’t give a fuck about that or about you. She never has.”
I glare up at him. “Why do you care?” I ask. “What does it matter who—?”
He closes the distance between us, and his hands move to my arms. He holds me in place, and I have to tilt my head back to make eye contact.
Cash’s gaze pierces right through me, and I scan his face, the beard, his lips, parted, his deep blue eyes, the tan skin, the impression of wrinkles on his forehead.
“Cash?”
His touch electrifies me, but it’s different to the night we kissed. Intentional and soft, reserved. He sweeps his palms down my arms and holds my hands for a second before stepping back. He balls his hands at his sides then releases them slowly and gives them a shake.
“You’re my friend, June. Always have been. My best friend.”
“I—”
“I will always care, always want to help,” he says. “And I know you find it difficult to say no when it comes to her.”
“Friend or not,” I say, “I can fight my own battles.” But it’s hard to get the words out because Cash and Olivia were there for me after my father left. Just like we were there for Olivia when her parents abandoned her in Heatstroke.
It makes this entire situation worse.
“I know you can,” Cash says after a beat. “I just find it difficult not to help.”
The music cuts off upstairs. Dinner. Alex.
He opens the door for me, and I walk in, completely confused by old emotions that feel new again.
Nineteen
JUNE
“Areyou going to tell me what’s going on, or am I going to have to squeeze it out of you like blood from a stone?” Marci asks, then takes a sip of her beer and gives me the stare. The “tell me everything before I implode” stare.
Belle and Hannah are at the bar, getting us a second round of drinks, both of them dressed in beachy casual wear that everyone has on tonight. Cutoff jeans, tight-fitting tops, bare feet. Longhorn’s is the place most locals go for a bite and a drink after work. It helps that most of the tables are right on the sand, with a view of the distant waves, and that the moon is out tonight, glimmering on the ocean.
