Depends on Who's Asking - Lani Lynn Vale Page 0,3

be able to continue playing this little game.”

My ‘little game’ was my ‘life.’ My father didn’t like me living my life the way I wanted. He wanted me to live my life the way he wanted. The way that benefited him the best.

“I’m not playing any game, Dad,” I replied tiredly. “I’m living my life. And I’m living the life I want to live, not the one you want me to live. So no, I’m not coming home to help you get reelected. I’ll come if you make it, though. On inauguration day.”

My father sighed.

“Not even for Christmas?” he asked.

No. Not only no, but fuck no.

“Last time I came for Christmas, you made me fucking sit at dinner with a woman that you and Mom wanted to set me up with so you could talk to her father about your possible reelection,” I told him. “So no, I don’t trust you anymore.”

My father sighed again, longer and louder than the previous time.

He seemed to do that a lot.

The year that I’d joined the military, my father lost his reelection to his opponent, knocking him out of the White House after his first term.

And now, my father decided that it was time to run again for his second term. Something that had never, ever been done before but by one other person. I hoped and prayed that he didn’t win, but I had a sick feeling that he might.

Which didn’t spell good things for my future if he did.

“Call your mother in the morning to wish her Merry Christmas. Don’t forget,” Dad ordered.

“Isn’t it a better choice for her to call me and wish me Happy Birthday?” I countered.

I was born on December twenty-fifth, which was why I had such a stupid name. Having a birthday on Christmas day has to be the worst, which is why I always changed my birthday in my mind to a different day of the month.

The bad thing was, years later, they would come to regret naming me ‘Saint’ Nicholson due to not my embarrassment as a child, but their realization that it made them look weird to the political world when my father started running for higher positions in the government.

“Son,” my father continued, “hope you had a good day.”

I didn’t bother telling him about the stitches.

I was sure he’d figure it out sooner or later. I just didn’t want to have to be the one to tell him, because then that’d bring on another lecture that I wasn’t willing to have at that moment in time.

“You, too, Dad,” I said cordially. “’Night.”

Us Nicholsons didn’t say ‘love you.’ We also didn’t do mushy.

So, I didn’t bother to say any terms of endearment, nor did I do anything other than hang up the phone.

And, as I looked at the eighteen stitches in my arm as I reached for a gallon of milk out of my fridge, I wondered if I needed to move again. This time to somewhere much smaller where people wouldn’t know me.

For sure I would have to do it after he won.

Everyone around me would know who I was after that.

CHAPTER 1

Due to personal reasons, I’ll be drinking again this weekend.

-Caro’s secret thoughts

CAROLINA

“And then he started to laugh.” Brielle wiped her eyes. “I didn’t know what to do.”

I’d met Brielle through a grapevine of friends, and for some weird fucking reason, she’d latched on to me.

I wasn’t sure why, or how, I’d somehow become her keeper, but I didn’t like her.

Not at all.

She was petty and fake, and she was also not a person that I would normally spend time with.

I especially didn’t like how she treated people.

I looked down at my corn dog and wondered, idly, how long I had to wait to take another bite.

I mean, she was really crying here. Like, big, fat drops.

I looked at my watch and realized that regardless of whether Brielle was crying or not, I had shit to do, and listening to her cry about some man that didn’t return her attentions wasn’t one of them.

“I gotta go,” I said to her. “I’m due back in court in fifteen minutes. I haven’t even gotten to eat my lunch yet.”

Brielle wiped her eyes and shoved her lunch away with a ferocious scowl.

I stood up and wondered if I should address her attitude, but decided that I didn’t have time for that, either.

Honestly, I really wasn’t quite sure what the hell was going on with me.

I shouldn’t have agreed to this lunch date in the first