Rocking Kin (Lucy & Harris, #3) - Terri Anne Browning Page 0,71

pulled out of the driveway. “Food and then fun.” His eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. “Missed you, Kin.”

My heart twisted and I had to blink back a flood of tears, but my smile was bright when I offered it to him. “Missed you more.”

Over the next few days I got to spend a lot of time with Carter and the twins. I didn’t see Lucy at all, but I texted her a few times. Jace texted too, but I was so caught up in spending time with my loved ones I didn’t have time to text him back. For the most part that was good, because I still didn’t know how to handle this new change in our relationship.

I kind of missed him, though.

Okay, not kind of. I did.

More than a little, but with things at my father’s house going crazy I didn’t have time to think about how much I was missing him. Again, a good thing. I wasn’t ready to examine why I missed him.

Not yet.

After the first week, Jillian started manipulating things to get her way and I was forced to go to more parties. She was making the Christmas holiday—my favorite holiday in the past—my least favorite time of the year with all the parties I had to go to. Since I usually spent my mornings with Carter, she started keeping me out later and later for her damn parties and I was exhausted when I went out with my stepdad and the twins.

I was being pulled in two different directions, one I wanted to go in—shit, one I wanted to run in—while I would rather have had a root canal than have to go in the other. Tensions were high by Christmas Eve. I only wanted one present that year and that was to go home, but that wasn’t going to happen. The promise I’d made to my mother was still ringing in my ear. I knew if she had still been alive she wouldn’t have held it against me if I went back on that promise, but she’d raised me not to be a quitter.

I would be eighteen in February and then I could say I tried. I would finish out my school year there, but I wouldn’t be under the same roof as the twat queen known as Jillian Montez. I didn’t know where I would be living once I turned eighteen, but I knew I didn’t have to worry. Not only had Lucy’s family offered me a room, but Carter had already promised to rent me an apartment if that was what I wanted.

The Christmas Eve gala that I attended was another party I was forced to go to, but I’d talked to Lucy’s Aunt Emmie and was able to score invites for Carter and the twins. My stepdad was a hugely successful businessman in Virginia and wasn’t a poor man by anyone’s standards, but he wasn’t a celebrity so people gave him the cold shoulder.

I hated the way some people looked down their noses at him that night. Carter was a superstar in my eyes and everyone else could suck it for all I cared. Especially Jillian, who stood in a corner surrounded by her small flock of friends. She shot Carter and the twins sneers and whispered in the ears of anyone who would listen about them.

Gritting my teeth as the small group shot Angie a glance and then burst into giggles, I turned away from them. It was either that or go over and punch the step-monster in the face. As much as I wanted to do that, I wasn’t going to give Jillian the satisfaction of a) grounding me again, or b) using my actions to her advantage by gaining sympathy from the tabloids for the story about how her stepdaughter was ‘uncontrollable and dangerous’. I could just see the headlines and knew that Jillian would soak up every drop of the spotlight that would follow.

“They sound like a small pack of hyenas when they laugh like that, don’t they?”

I nearly jumped out of my skin at the voice behind me. I’d been hiding in a corner, away from everyone, including the twins. I’d thought my hiding spot was pretty good. I could see everyone while they couldn’t really see me unless someone was looking hard.

Turning, I couldn’t keep my eyes from widening when my gaze landed on Jace. I hadn’t seen him at all in the last three weeks so seeing him right then had