Under the Lights (The Field Party #2) - Abbi Glines Page 0,22

why I had chosen this photo. It was the laughter on Poppy’s face, on both our faces. It was what I remembered most about Poppy. The laughing and the feeling like I had someone who cared. When I had left Lawton at eleven, I’d thought I would never have a friend again.

Then Poppy had shared her peanut butter sandwich with me because my mother had forgotten to make me a lunch. It had been instant friendship.

My chest clinched tightly until it was only pain. Tears blurred my vision, and I slipped the photo back in the drawer and covered it with the albums. That was a life I’d never have again. Laughter I’d never feel. Even now when I smiled, I felt guilty for being able to. I didn’t deserve to smile and definitely not laugh. Ever again.

I often wished I was physically unable to laugh and smile. It felt good when I did, until I remembered why I shouldn’t. The guilt was consuming. It ate at me. It destroyed me.

Looking around the dark room, I wondered what life would have been like had my mother never sent for me. If I’d stayed here in Lawton. Lived this life instead. Gunner and Brady both seemed okay. They weren’t unstable. It was safe in this small town. But hadn’t it been safe in the one I’d lived in too?

Bad decisions could have been made anywhere. Like me. I was a product of my mother’s bad decision. She’d made that in this small town, and I’d been nothing but disappointment.

I’ll Collect When the Time Is Right

CHAPTER 14

GUNNER

I stopped by my father’s office door on my way downstairs for breakfast. It was closed as always. When I was five, I had wanted to show him a turtle I had found and went barging in that door unannounced and invited. He’d been on the phone while I’d been jumping back and forth on my feet with the thrilling news of my new pet. Trying hard to keep quiet until he was off the phone so I could show him. Ms. Ames had been happy when I had shown her, so I thought maybe I could make my father equally happy.

It was something I did often back then. Try to please the man. Make him smile at me. The eternity of his phone conversation had been enough of a reason to praise me, because I was rarely quiet. When he had ended the call, he’d leveled his dark brown eyes, very different from my own, on me and glared with fury.

“Why are you in here, Gunner?”

I held out my turtle, who I had named Charlie Daniels because Ms. Ames listened to music by that name often and I liked to dance to it in the kitchen. “I found a turtle!” I announced with great pride.

My father looked down at the turtle and then back at me. The rule was I wasn’t supposed to go in his office. He didn’t like me in here the way he did Rhett. Sometimes I wondered if he even liked me at all. But I’d found a turtle, and he needed to see it.

“If you ever walk in that door again without being invited in, I will take off this belt and beat your ass. Do you understand me?” His voice was a little less than a roar. I didn’t understand him at all. He’d not even acknowledged my turtle. So I held it up higher. Until my elbows were over my head. “But I found a turtle!” I exclaimed, thinking he had somehow missed this information.

My father reached in my hand and took the turtle from it, then tossed it out the open window behind his desk. “There. Go find the damn thing and stay out of my office.”

I never did find my turtle.

And I never called him Dad or Father again.

The man behind that door I hated. I knew he hated me equally, and it wasn’t until much later that I had understood his hate. One day I’d demand my mother tell me my real father’s name. I wanted to carry that last name. I no longer cared about the name that held power in this small southern town. I wouldn’t live here much longer. When I graduated, I’d take my money and leave. Never to return.

Except maybe to throw a party the day of that man’s funeral.

The kitchen already smelled like muffins, bacon, and coffee when I entered it. My parents never came to the kitchen to