back. “Cane has a grown son, but Liv was afraid of him. She’s not going to him.”
“Wait, how old was your friend’s husband?” Cam asked.
“You don’t get in the middle of family shit, Cecilia,” Casper said at the same time.
“Jesus,” Farrah muttered.
“Stop,” Cecilia snapped, smacking her hand on the table. “None of you have any say in this.”
“The hell we don’t,” Casper replied darkly.
Cecilia rose from the table. “If you wanna go rounds with me,” she said softly, staring unflinchingly into her dad’s angry eyes, “I’m all for it. But you don’t make my decisions for me, and you haven’t in a long ass time.”
“What you’re doin’ is wrong,” Casper replied slowly.
“That’s a little like the pot calling out the kettle, isn’t it?” she shot back. Then she turned and left the room.
We all stood silently, digesting everything we’d heard. I didn’t know what to fucking think. She’d carried the baby and I knew she loved her, but if baby girl belonged to someone else, it wasn’t any kind of right for her to keep her.
“What a godawful mess,” Farrah said, running her fingers through her hair the exact same way Cecilia had done the night before. “She can’t be serious about keeping that baby.”
“I feel for her,” Cam said, leaning back in his chair. “She was havin’ that baby for a couple that’s dead now. She wasn’t growin’ her for some relative to raise.”
“You and Trix had a surrogate and somethin’ happened, that woman would sure as fuck not be keepin’ my grandkid,” Casper said through his teeth.
“I’ve got no skin in the game,” I waded in cautiously. “But I’d give her a minute. Cecilia isn’t stupid. She always has a reason for the things she does.”
“She’s not stupid, but she’s selfish as fuck,” Cam muttered.
I waited a second for her parents to tell him to watch his mouth and my stomach soured when they didn’t.
“Keep your bullshit opinions to yourself,” I said, filling in the silence. “You say another word about your sister and you can get the fuck out of my house.”
“I’m gonna check on her,” I announced. “Coffee’s about done. Mugs are in the cabinet to the left of the sink.”
I walked away before I said what I wanted to. Fucking Cameron. Their whole fucking family. I wanted to shake them. It was the same old shit that Cecilia had dealt with when we were young. It was like they thought she was inherently bad or something, like she was just selfish and mean and they just had to deal with it. Never, not once, had they tried to get to the root of the shit she said and did.
Cecilia could be a bitch. Hell, she could be the biggest bitch you’d ever meet—but there was always a reason, even if it didn’t make sense to anyone but her. She had never gone around trying to piss people off.
What was that saying? Hurt people hurt people.
And I’d never met someone who hurt as bad as Cecilia and managed to hide it so well.
She hadn’t gone into the guestroom. Instead, she was sitting in the center of my bed.
“You here to give me shit?” she asked, looking up from where she’d set the baby between her knees.
“You’re in my room,” I pointed out, closing the door behind me. “And I figured I’d put a shirt on before I started frying bacon.”
Cecilia sighed. “I’m sorry,” she said, watching me cross the room. “I swear to God, they turn me into someone even I can’t stand.”
“You let them get to you,” I said, pulling on a t-shirt. “And I’ve never understood why, because in the end, you do whatever the fuck you want anyway.”
“Because they’re my parents,” she said, staring at the baby. “And I still want their approval.”
“Not sure you’re gonna get it this time.”
“When have I ever?” she said, chuckling humorlessly. “Same shit, different day.”
“Cec.” I sat on the edge of the bed. “She’s not yours.”
“You know,” she snapped, looking up to meet my eyes, “I’m so fucking tired of everyone always assuming that I’m doing the wrong thing.”
“This seems pretty cut and dry to me.”
“Well, you have no fucking clue,” she said. “None.”
“Then why don’t you tell me?” I said softly.
“It won’t even matter.”
“Try me.”
“When I say Liv was scared of Cane’s son, I mean scared,” she said after a long pause. “She called me to pick her up once from their house. It