Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 144571 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 723(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 482(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144571 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 723(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 482(@300wpm)
He felt something wet on his cheek. He was crying. He hated it. His mom would tell him boys needed to cry as much as girls, but he also knew how everyone who wasn’t a therapist would see him. Weak. Emotional. Still, the tears came. “I’m sorry.”
He didn’t have anything else to say.
His dad sighed and drew him in for a hug. “It’s going to be okay. I would bet she’s on her way to Lou’s.”
He didn’t think so. Lou promised she hadn’t heard anything. Lou had been the one to tell him if he didn’t get the parents involved, she would. Lou had been so worried. But he wasn’t going to argue with his dad. He’d fucked up enough for one night. “Sure.”
His dad stopped. “Cooper, it’s going to be okay. Kala is actually quite capable. She wouldn’t do something stupid.”
Oh, but she could. She was capable of burning down everything around them when she was angry. Was this her way of taking him down with her?
He hated he’d even had the thought. Why had he thought she was dragging him down?
Because his friends told him so. Because his athlete friends thought she was weird. Because the cheerleaders who were also flirting with him told him he could do better.
Ian was right. He was playing a role. Golden boy. He wanted to be the big man on campus, and he wasn’t going to let a little thing like love get in the way.
How many times had she heard his friends make fun of her? How many times had she seen him wave it off and move on?
“Go out and stay in the lobby. Your mom will follow Tasha back to her place and take you home.” His dad sounded tired.
Cooper did as he was asked, wiping his eyes and trying not to look like the snot-nosed kid he apparently still was. When he got to the lobby, Tasha was talking to her cousin. Kyle Hawthorne definitely wouldn’t cry. Hell, he’d killed someone and probably hadn’t cried. He’d been a badass. Kyle wasn’t a Taggart by blood, but he fit in. Like Tash did.
“Remember what I said about staying inside,” Kyle reminded her. He nodded Cooper’s way as he moved down the hall. He was walking opposite the conference room.
Kala wasn’t the only drama playing out tonight. What was happening to Kyle and MaeBe was serious and could end in someone dying.
He sat his ass down.
Tasha sat beside him. “It’s going to be okay. She’ll turn up and I’ll have pissed off all my siblings for nothing. I’m pretty sure we’re all getting grounded, and they’ll blame me.”
He didn’t care about the grounding. He had a lot of thinking to do. He didn’t like the person he saw in the mirror right now. “Are you not worried?”
“About Kala? Of course I am.”
Not the question he was asking. Tash might be the only one who understood. “I mean…aren’t you worried you disappointed them?”
“My parents?” She huffed. “Weirdly I will have disappointed them and they’ll be proud because I covered for her. They’ll ground us all, but at some point I’ll hear my dad talk about how I remind him of him at this age. He would have covered for Uncle Sean. He’ll say his kids are a team and he and Mom made us that way, so they can’t be too pissed.”
“My dad won’t say anything like that. I left Hunter and Vivi alone.” Guilt was a pit in his gut. He’d talked to his brother, and from what he understood his sister slept through the whole thing. They were fine, but he’d left them.
Tasha put a hand on his arm. “They’re fine, and don’t take my dad’s words to heart. He’s scared, and he kind of processes fear as anger since he understands anger better. At least that’s what my mom says. Trust me, my wayward sister is going to get a full-on dose of my dad’s fear as anger response.” Tasha sat back with a long sigh. “She’s going to be utterly impossible to live with.” She turned his way, her gaze oddly both sympathetic and a bit steely. “You need to let her go. You need to break it off with her in a way that doesn’t keep her dangling on a string. You and TJ are being cruel.”
“TJ loves Lou.” And he loved Kala.
“But he doesn’t want to be with her,” Tasha pointed out. “Any more than you really want to be with Kala. I don’t blame you. You’re obviously not a good match.”
Oddly, her words bugged him. Even though he’d heard them a million times before, wondered about it himself. “I think we’ve always been good friends.”
“She’s always chasing you, and you like to be chased,” Tasha replied. “It doesn’t make you a bad guy, but after this if you don’t let her go, you’re moving into bad-guy territory.”