She grunted, taking a drag. “So Nightmare from Mommy Street sprung the new girlfriend all the way to France for a trip…and you’ve gotten what from her?” Her eyebrow lifted. “A big fat nada, right?”
If she was hoping to get a reaction, she was barking up the wrong tree. Yes, Helen Malbourne had always hated me with Mason, and yes, she seemed to adore Taylor, the love of Logan’s life, but that didn’t bother me.
I shrugged. “You really think I would go on a trip with her?”
“Touché.” Her eyes narrowed as she flicked her cigarette into the empty fire pit. “Since we’re on the topic of nightmare mothers, have you talked to yours?”
“I see Malinda every day.”
“You know who I mean.”
And there was the look. She was waiting for me to break down, or throw my chair across the pit, or take off running for six hours every day. It was the same look everyone had been wearing since my mother came back.
I was tempted to give her the middle finger, but all I did was sigh. “She’s here.”
“That’s all you’re going to say?”
I rolled my shoulders back. “What do you want me to say? She’s back. There’s nothing I can do about it. It is what it is.”
“She lied to you all your life about your dad.”
Yep. She’d done that. David wasn’t my actual dad.
“And when your real one came around, she blackmailed him into leaving.”
The lady was dedicated.
“Then when you started dating Mason, she threatened to turn him into the cops for having sex with you.”
Oh yeah. Statutory rape could be a bitch, but Mason wasn’t two years older than me. He was only one. I found out that nice little bit of information later. I hadn’t needed to worry that his entire future could’ve been ripped to shreds by the woman whose loins I came from.
I was good with this. Really. It didn’t bother me to hear a list of all the shitty things Analise had done before finally disappearing into a mental hospital for two years.
Then Heather dropped the last bomb. “She killed your unborn siblings, and you were the one who found her.”
In a pile of blood.
I called 911.
I was eleven.
I suppressed a shudder at that one. “What do you want me to say? She’s back. She’s going to marry James, who is also Mason’s father. There’s nothing I can do.” I cooled my tone. “I refuse to let her matter to me.”
“Good for you.” Heather saluted me with a pretend drink, her hand curled around an invisible glass. “Now get wicked drunk so you can tell me how you really feel.”
I snorted and covered my face with my hand. “I can’t believe I did that.”
“Thank God you did.” Heather grinned, a dry note in her normally husky voice.
I eyed her, waiting. This was when she’d normally return to her shift, but this was our first visit since Mason and I got home to Fallen Crest from college a week ago. Yes, that made me a small coward. Heather Jax had been one of my most loyal friends since high school, and she had the ability to cut through the bullshit.
Mason and Logan held the same qualities, but I lived with them, so they weren’t constantly calling me out. They were just watching, waiting.
A second shiver wound its way down my spine. I ignored it. It was a habit fast becoming a daily routine.
“Why don’t you tell me about you and Channing?” I asked. “You two married yet?”
I meant it as a joke, but her eyes shifted. Her lips pressed into a strained line. “He wants to. He’s nuts. That’s what he is.”
“Are you joking?” My mouth hung open. “Channing asked you to marry him?!”
She rolled her eyes. “No, but… Well, yes. He asked me a while ago because we had a pregnancy scare, but it was only a scare. No baby. I thought he’d drop it.”
“He didn’t?”
“He didn’t.” She was so glum. “He wants to settle down. I think it’s mostly because he’s raising Bren since their mom died.”
“Wait. What?”
Channing Monroe? An older brother? Now like a dad to some little girl? This wasn’t an image I could wrap my mind around. Mason and Logan had run Fallen Crest Public High School, and Channing, a model look-alike, had done the same with his high school, Roussou Public.
Roussou was the neighboring town and our usual rival, which had sometimes led to bloodshed back when Brett and Budd Broudou ran Roussou. Channing had worked with Mason and Logan and helped take control of Roussou. It helped that Brett Broudou eventually realized how much of a psychopath his brother was, and now Budd was currently residing in prison for attempted rape. Channing kept his town in check, but I wasn’t so sure about him raising a child.