Trials and Tiaras (Untouchable #7) - Heather Long Page 0,46
Give you a break.”
When he offered me a hug, I took it, and he gripped me tight before kissing my cheek.
“Love you, Sprout. It’s going to be all right.”
“Love you too.” I couldn’t pretend my voice wasn’t tight. As much as I’d needed to hear it from him, knowing he was part of the reason a lot of this happened the way it did still ached. He meant well. But the road to hell was paved with good intentions.
After promising to keep in touch and to get him my proxy, I waited until he drove off before I headed to my car.
Inside it, I checked my phone, and there was a single message from Frankie on it.
Frankie: I love you. Come back to the apartment tonight if you’re not staying over with your grandpa somewhere?
Me: Just finished dinner and coming home. Kick out whoever is sleeping on your right. That’s my spot tonight.
Frankie: Coop’s just waiting for you to get here. Promised he’d ‘fuck off’ after. His words, not mine.
I laughed.
Me: I’m surprised he doesn’t want to watch.
My phone buzzed.
Coop: Of course I want to watch, but I’m not an asshole. Besides, be hard to beat your performance the other night.
The laughter that escaped me was sharp but real, and it knocked some of the jagged bits loose. I fired off a middle finger emoji to him.
Me: Just for that, you’re definitely not invited.
Coop: Shit, there was a chance before?
I smirked.
Me: You’ll never know, huh?
His middle finger emoji followed by a couple of crying ones made me laugh harder. I wiped the hint of tears from the corners of my eyes and then called Jake as I backed out. I needed to let him know I was heading to Frankie’s and see where we were. We had time, but we also wanted to make sure it was perfect.
Something to Talk About
“Anger at your mother is normal,” Erin said. “You’ve been working on expressing that in these sessions.”
“Yeah well,” I admitted as I leaned back in the chair, fingers interlocked over my stomach, “I have no problems expressing it at the moment.” How long had I defended her? “I just can’t even begin to understand what the hell she thinks she gets out of lying about who my biological father is.”
“Do you want to understand it?”
I stared at Erin and then went back to tugging at a loose string on my ripped jeans. “I’m not sure there’s a point in understanding it. At the same time…” I’d been talking in circles on this for the last few days since we got the test results back. Honestly, though, I’d talked about it even before. “I don’t know what to do with it all.”
“All right, let’s put a pin in that piece for a moment and come at this from a different angle, shall we?”
One of the things I liked about Erin, she didn’t always push, even when she did push. She made it sound like I had an option. I hadn’t really pushed back, not since the first couple of sessions. Weirdly, even when I wasn’t sure if talking helped, it helped to get it off my chest. I could and had talked to the guys, but this was different. Coop was right—she was unbiased, and what I told her didn’t hurt her or fill her with the need to fix it for me.
She wanted me to fix me.
“Frankie?”
Blinking, I tugged at the thread. “Yeah, sorry. Just thinking.”
“You okay to try and take this from a different angle?”
“Are you handling me with kid gloves today for a reason?” I frowned.
“Not kid gloves. In a very short period, you’ve been hit with a lot of information. A great deal of it has been emotionally challenging. Processing that is going to take time.”
Well, she wasn’t wrong about that. “What angle do you want to tackle this from then?”
“Do you want to know who your father is?”
Chapter Ten
This Could Get Awkward
Ian
“Thank you,” I said into the phone as I walked around the far edge of the pool. Mom and Dad had added a heater to it a couple of years earlier so we could keep the pool open in winter for me to train. After days of on and off drizzle and icy rain, I’d just left the cover on. “I can forward the email with the PDF files over to you.”
“All right,” Mr. Wittaker said. “According to young Mr. Standish, this contract would also be for Miss Curtis as well?”