For The Win (Gamer Girls, #6) - Auryn Hadley Page 0,69
at me, but that's all.
Kate: I wish I was closer to help more.
Rhaven: Me too.
And then the door clicked. A split second later, the knob turned, and she yelped as her father shoved the door open. Her barrier was gone. On the other side, Dad looked like he was ready to break something.
"I'm not going to let you do something stupid," he snapped. "You will talk to me, Ethan, or you can live without this door."
"Doesn't matter, because I'm leaving anyway," she assured him.
"What?" he asked. "Where?"
"Denver. I have a tournament to go to, and this just means I'm leaving sooner than I expected."
"Not without talking to me first," he warned. "We saw the paper, and I want to know what the hell is going on. You're in a dress, Ethan. Was it a drag show? Did someone make you wear it? Did you want to?"
She felt her chest tightening again, and her throat got tense, but this was it. There was no going back now, so she grabbed her bags and marched forward. If she tried to answer him, she'd lose it again, and she'd spent most of the morning in a state of panic already.
"Ethan," her dad said, trying to block her.
But she just pushed past him. "I have a car that's going to be here soon," she said. "Need to get my stuff on the front step."
Unfortunately, Tyler was at the end of the hall, making a second barrier. "Just talk to us?" he begged.
"Nothing to talk about," she said. "You saw the picture. Yes, that's me in the picture, and I actually like that skirt. Oh, and I got fired this morning because of it. And there were protestors at the GasNGo. Yeah, and when I tried to leave, I almost got the shit kicked out of me." She paused to open the front door and then tossed her bags on the porch. But when she turned around, her Dad was there too, the pair of them waiting. "One of them kicked me in the back, because your 'little brother' is too fucking weak to fight back. Is that what you wanted to hear?"
"Ethan," Dad tried. "Son, we just want to help."
"No," she said, storming back to her room for the computer and equipment. "What you want is for this to be easy. I heard you. You're both freaking out because this is embarrassing. Well, imagine what it feels like for me."
"We just want to know what's going on," Dad insisted.
She grabbed the box with her case, then slung the bag with the rest over her shoulder, and headed back to the front door. "I got caught in a picture wearing a dress. What the fuck do you think is going on?"
"Was it an event?" Tyler asked.
She managed to juggle the large box and get the door open. "Yeah, it was a tournament, Tyler. I think that counts."
"So, why were you wearing a dress?" he asked.
"Because I fucking like dresses, ok?" she asked. "Because I'm not ever going to be the picture perfect little 'boy' people expect. This is me. This is all I can be, so you need to get used to it."
Her dad just let all of that blow past him. "Are you going to be ok?" he asked.
She just set her case down on the front porch. "I don't know! I was going to talk to you both tomorrow. I'd planned out how it would go, and this isn't fucking it! I..." Her voice broke, and she had to swallow to make it work again. "I don't care if I'm going to hell. I don't give a shit whether you approve or not. I tried to be normal like everyone else, and that ended up with me cutting my wrists, Dad. I'm not normal, ok? This is me, and I'm a mess, but I'm making it work and my friends can accept who I really am."
"I don't care if you're gay," her dad insisted. "That's what I've been trying to say. And when you had that guy show up, I thought you'd finally realize that you could tell us."
"I'm not gay!" she yelled. "Don't you get it? I wear dresses. I wear makeup. I'm not gay because I'm a girl!"
His breath rushed out. "What?"
"Trans?" Tyler asked.
"Yeah," she admitted. "My name is Rhaven, and I'm a woman. I've started taking hormones, too."
"When?" Tyler asked. "How?"
"Planned Parenthood," she told her brother, "and it was in December, just before Christmas."