Page 37 of Dirty Crown
Mom’s eyes were telling me she knew what Reg was capable of at long last, she was no longer blaming me for what had happened.
“Wait, what did he do?” I asked, and braced myself for the response.
CHAPTER15
“He didn’t do anything yet,”she said, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and fumbling to open them. “But I see the look in his eyes and I think about what you said.”
“So you’d rather send her away to live with me than give up on that abusive asshole?” I asked, sneering at her. I could feel hands on my back, comforting me.
“I’d rather give her the best life she can have,” mom replied, putting the cigarette on the edge of her perfectly painted red, puffy lips. She dug in her Chanel purse for a lighter. “You’re gonna provide it, because I can’t.”
“There’s no smoking in here,” Kingston said, his voice a coiled serpent of tension. He wasn’t pleased with my mom’s appearance, not because of Nat but mostly because she was upsetting me. He hated that, they all did.
“What are you gonna do about it, neighbor kid?” she scoffed and pulled the lighter from her bag. It was gold and encrusted with diamonds with her initials in blood red rubies. I wondered how much of Nat’s money it had cost and realized she was right. Nat would be better off without her as the only parental figure. It would have to be me.
“We’re going to make sure you respect Everly’s house,” Ryker said, stepping towards my mom. “Please give me the lighter or take it outside.”
He held out his hand, polite but insistent and full of the message she needed to hear. She wasn’t in charge in this house, she couldn’t walk all over me, and her bullshit wasn’t welcome.
“I’ll smoke at the hotel,” she said. “I’ll tell Nat to bring her shit in, she can stay the night and move in I guess.”
“Wait, what?” I stammered. “She’s here with you? Why did you make her stay outside?”
“I figured you’d turn us down if you knew,” mom replied. She was more sneaky animal at that point than my own caring mother. I wondered if she’d ever been a mother to me or if I’d just imagined her as more loving so I could cope with my life somehow.
“I’ll come out to get her,” I said, leaving back through the front door to the driveway. Mom had parked on the street a short ways down from the house so we wouldn’t notice her there.
I saw Nat hunched over in the passenger seat scrolling on her phone, completely checked out of reality as the glow from her screen lit her face up. She was beautiful, that was one tragedy, she would have a harder life because of it. She had been exposed to enough bad stuff that she understood the power of her beauty at too young of an age, and that was the difficult part of it all. She had a sharpness about her aura that made her dangerous, depending on which side the blade was facing.
She would need help learning to direct it towards the right kind of people, those who deserved it. Perhaps she even carried the same darkness that I had inside and I could help her redirect it outward, against horrible bastards who needed to be hurt.
“Hey brat,” I said as I opened the back seat of mom’s little car. I took Nat’s bags and slung them over my shoulders. Archer reached for them one at a time and took them from me as my Kings showed up to help.
God, I loved them.
“Hey,” Nat replied, miserable as could be. “I’m sorry about this.”
I supposed that was one good thing about having a psycho for a mother who would abandon you at the drop of a hat. It was humbling and made you realized the ground you were standing on could dissolve beneath your feet at any time. Nat’s normal arrogance was gone, replaced with fear and a subdued hope for acceptance.
“Don’t you dare apologize, I was just telling the guys the only thing that would make this life better would be my sister living with me again,” I smiled and shut the back door. Nat opened the passenger side and slid out, stood in front of me, and wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Sure,” she said, but a smile played around her lips. “I’m sure that’s the exact thing this horny sex house needed. An annoying little sister showing up with her fractured life and fucked up family.”
“Your fucked up family is my fucked up family, remember, you dork,” I snorted. “Everything you’re going through is normal, because our lives aren’t.”
“Thanks,” she said again and looked behind her at our mother. “And thanks for nothing.”
Nat flipped our mother the double bird, extending her middle fingers on both hands and clicking her long nails together.
Mom smiled, but her face fell as we walked away. I couldn’t read what she was thinking, but I hoped it hurt.
When I turned back to look at her, she was inhaling her cigarette and a cloud of smoke already hovered above her head. She didn’t wait long, it seemed.
“So, let’s get you settled,” I said brightly. “You didn’t bring much, did you?” I asked, eyeballing the two oversized backpacks my Kings carried ahead of us.
“Mom wouldn’t let me take anything she bought,” Nat said. “She wanted to keep it all, the clothes and make up and everything.”
“The joke’s on her, because she looks like shit,” I laughed. “She’s aged a decade cine I saw you guys last.”
