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She nodded but I could tell we were back where we’d started, with her not believing I was looking out for her. In the beginning, she’d been right. I had wanted to push her out and keep it all for myself.
That wasn’t the case anymore. I cringed at even the thought of her not having everything she needed. That house was hers, as long as she wanted it. I would get her the money from my father’s business, even if it meant falling in line, doing as Harold Coker told me.
And staying with Brooke.
I still didn’t trust Rebel’s dad though. The fact he’d just popped out of the woodwork screamed of a scam. “Your dad has an ulterior motive, Roach. We both know it.”
She slammed another flyer onto a windshield and dropped the wiper down to hold it in place. “We both know nothing about him. Especially you. You don’t know he has a farm in Texas, do you? You don’t know I have four sisters and a stepmom who all want to meet me.”
I scoffed. “How surprising! They’re country bumpkins whose long-lost sister suddenly came into millions. How funny they only now come looking for you. Where were they all this time? You’re thirty, Roach. Did you even ask him why?”
“My mom kept him away.”
“Convenient excuse. Blame the dead chick. Nice work, Torrence. You’re a real class act.”
She stormed across the parking lot and put both hands on my chest, shoving me backward. “What the hell is up your ass tonight? What happened between you going down on me in your father’s study, where you couldn’t get enough of me, to now, where you apparently hate my guts?”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t make a habit of licking the pussies of people I hate, Roach.” But she was right. It wasn’t all about her putting herself in danger. It was me fucking up with Kian. Again. It was Harold Coker. It was Brooke and the thought of having to go back to Cali, which had never felt like home and held nothing but bad memories. If I had it my way, I would never go back to that hellhole.
It was full of big, flashy houses and expensive cars.
Yet I’d rather live in Saint View.
“Sorry if I just don’t want to see you hurt or taken advantage of,” I muttered sullenly.
“Ugh! He’s not taking advantage of me, Vaughn! He just wants the opportunity to get to know me. He invited me out to his farm to meet his wife and his kids—”
I widened my eyes at her. “You told him no, right?”
“I told him I’d come as soon as the funeral is done, actually. Or maybe even in the couple of days before it.”
I gaped at her. “Are you insane? Do you want to end up on an episode of My Daddy is a Murderer?”
She cocked her head to one side. “Is that a real show? Sounds good.”
I just stared at her.
She rolled her eyes. “He’s not a murderer.”
“You’re so blinded by your need for family you’re overlooking the danger signs. You are not going out there.”
She was practically growling at me. “Actually, I am. And I’m blinded by a need for family? Oh, I’m sorry, mister ‘I grew up with two parents who adored me but took it all for granted to piss off to the other side of the country and never come back.’”
I snatched the flyers from her arms. “I’m coming with you to meet your family.”
She snatched them back. “You weren’t invited.”
I glared at her, refusing to back down on this one. “Don’t. Care.”
She slammed her papers down on the trunk of a car so hard I was surprised the alarm didn’t go off. Though this was Saint View. The car probably didn’t have one. “I haven’t met your family! Why do you get to meet mine?”
I wanted to close the gap between us and tell her I got to meet her damn family because she was mine. My girl. And if she was going to be a stubborn, pigheaded fool, then I was going to be the one standing behind her, backing her up, making sure she was safe and taken care of while she did it.
But we weren’t there. Maybe we never could be. Not with Harold and Brooke in the picture, always holding shit over my head.
I would have to leave at some point. But she didn’t have to. She didn’t have to go running off to some middle-of-nowhere town to find the family she didn’t have here.
“Come with me to dinner at my mom’s house then. You want to meet my family? Fine. Meet them.”