Page 102 of Little Sunshine

“I can’t believe this.” Genuine shock filled her face. “It really wasn’t her?”

My folks weren’t good parents.

They were the fucking best.

I was tight with them and all four of my sisters. My dad sent hockey scores like I couldn’t just check ESPN. My ma still threatened to come cook me chicken soup every time I was sick.

If they weren’t spending their retirement RVing across the country, she probably would’ve.

I couldn’t imagine either of them would accidentally hurt me, much less suspecting they’d purposefully set me up to be hurt. But Mila had truly believed it because it was plausible.

Which was its own kind of jacked up.

“She had no clue,” I answered. “Showed up later, but you were gone.”

The hint of happiness disappeared quickly, and blankness took over. When she caught me watching her, she forced a smile. “So it was just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill mugging? Boring.”

I hated to make her relive it, but we had nothing else to go on. And from the haunted look on her face, I got the feeling she was already thinking about those bastards. “Tell me more about what happened.”

Grabbing a tortilla chip from the basket, she broke it in pieces over her plate as she gave only slightly more detail than what I knew. “There were two guys. One was tall and lanky. He had this”—she wiggled her fingers under her nose—“awful pube facial hair. He was blond, I think? Or light brown. He only got close to me for a minute. The rest of the time, he just, uh, watched.” When she’d turned the first one to dust, she sat forward and grabbed another chip but just held it.

Stared at it.

“Sunshine.”

She jolted at my voice.

“We can st?—”

“No, it’s fine.” Sweeping at imaginary crumbs on the table, she peeked up at me shyly. “I was just trying to figure out how to politely phrase that he had tiny-dick energy.”

It was a fucked time to laugh, but I couldn’t stop myself.

Thankfully, that made Mila relax, and she leaned back again. “The other guy called him Ease. Or Ezz. Something like that. He was shorter than the other guy but still probably around five-ten. Kind of muscular, kind of bulky. Dark hair. Mean.” She shivered. “Really mean. He’s the one who…” She forced a smile as she tossed the chip down. “At least I get the satisfaction of knowing it was a pointless mugging since all they got was my license and debit card with nothing on it.”

“What?”

Mila fidgeted with her hands and fake laughed. “Not actually nothing?—”

“They stole your license?”

“Didn’t I tell you?”

“All the details of your car accident? No, sunshine, you weren’t exactly forthcoming.”

“Yeah,” she drawled, scrunching her nose. “Sorry.”

I didn’t bother to tell her she apologized too much since she would just apologize for that, too. Pulling my phone from my pocket, I shot off a text to Cole before pocketing it again.

I watched Mila stack the dishes and tidy up the table and do basically everything to avoid looking at me.

That need deep in my chest pounded closer to the surface. Like an itch I couldn’t scratch. Not right then.

Maybe never.

Mila fought me on every-damn-thing. There was a good possibility that she wouldn’t ever let me take care of her. That she wouldn’t hand over her submission and let me worry about everything else.

That she wouldn’t want me to be her Daddy.

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