Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Walking into my favorite café, I was hit with this sense of calm as soon as the smell of coffee filled my nose.
It was so nice to have my car again and be able to go places, even if I had two twin tagalongs.
We had yet to really warm up to each other.
Bash made too many rude comments for my liking.
Trying to think positively about their presence, I reminded myself they were here to keep me safe.
I was meeting Lemon here for coffee. We’d been texting so much, I was looking forward to finally talking in person again. Like with Mac, Lemon and I clicked. It was nice to be able to experience true friendships—something I’d used to envy others for.
When Lemon had mentioned that she really wanted to hang out, I thought it would be best to meet for coffee before I gave her my new address on the south side of the bridge.
Not that I didn’t want her to come over or thought that she would judge.
Lemon wasn’t like that. I just didn’t want to have to explain the new address and my situation over the phone.
Plus getting coffee got me out of the house.
And my wallet was among the things Prue had packed for me, so now I could buy my own stuff again.
As I waited in line, I glanced at the spot where I’d been sitting when Roe had snuck up on me while I had been drawing a motorcycle parked outside. Then Wyatt had walked up and invited himself to sit with me.
It had been three days since I’d asked them for space.
Wyatt stopped sneaking in at night and even Reid didn’t come over, which made me wonder if Roe and Wyatt had told him what happened—that I freaked out after Roe pretty much admitted he’d give up on something the three of them had worked so hard for.
I wondered if Reid didn’t have to “try” to hate me now and just did.
Over the past couple of days, Roe and Wyatt had kept texting me, saying that I should talk with them rather than take time alone to think. Every time, I was tempted to give in. I missed them so much it was torture. It was confusing how strongly I ached to see them.
I needed to figure out what the right thing to do was.
For me and for them. What I knew for sure was that they were leaving Summerhaven.
I refused to be the reason they didn’t go because what one did, the other two followed.
That was their dynamic. Wyatt had mentioned me going with them.
Roe was wanting to go to MIT or Stanford.
Was I willing to follow them to Massachusetts or California?
What about my future? My grandfather wanted me to go to Brown.
But after he learned I wasn’t blood-related to him and Mother had murdered his son, he’d more than likely cut ties with me.
I had applied to an art school in California.
I’d looked it up again. It was close to Stanford.
We’d be finding out soon which schools we’d gotten accepted to.
If things lined up that perfectly, I could see myself going with them.
But if they didn’t, I needed to figure out what I was willing to give up.
I ordered myself and the twins coffee. I had decided to order something sweet for the first time. I held my breath as I retrieved my card and used it to pay. I only exhaled when the card was approved.
As we waited for our drinks, I went to snag the most private table. It was in a corner. I took a seat in the chair that allowed me to face the door. Bash and Theo sat at the next closest table.
Lemon arrived less than a minute later. She was still in her Kendry Academy uniform.
Her long yellow-blonde hair, which she normally kept pin-straight, had been styled into loose spiral curls held back with a black headband.
She spotted me right away and gestured that she was going to place an order.
When she headed over, her green eyes flicked to Bash and Theo. Bash caught her staring and she quickly looked back toward me. As she sat across from me, she asked, “How are you feeling?”
“Better.” I sighed. I didn’t want to lie. “To be honest, I haven’t been sick. I got hurt. I got a bunch of stitches and injured my ribs pretty bad.”
Her eyes went wide. “Oh my gosh, Lottie. I could have come to your home to hang out.”
“I needed to get out. I was going stir-crazy,” I assured.
“I hope you’re not in pain,” she said.
Sadly, I was used to being in pain. “I’m still sore, but I feel better with each day.”
Then she asked me the question I knew would be brought up, but I was still dreading: “How did you get hurt?”
I stared down as I debated my response. On the drive over, I’d told myself to be honest. There wasn’t a need to lie about things anymore. “My home life isn’t—wasn’t good.”
Her eyes only got wider.
“We don’t have to talk about it. That’s not why I wanted to hang out—”
She put her hand on top of mine. “We can talk about it. I’m a good listener. At least, I try to be.”
“Order for Charlotte!” a barista called out.
“I’ll get it,” Bash said as he got up.
I nodded.
Lemon looked from Bash to Theo to me. “Are they with you?”
“Yeah. My father asked them to protect me,” I said.
She gave me a confused look. “I thought your father passed away.”
Bash set my coffee down in front of me before returning to his table with his and Theo’s coffees.
“I’m talking about my biological father,” I clarified.
She was the picture of shock. “Oh, shit.”
I nodded. “Yeah. Turns out I’m not really a Kendry.”
“Order for Lemon,” the barista called.
Lemon didn’t move. She just continued to stare at me, stunned.
“Your order is ready, Lemon,” I said.
She finally blinked. “I should go get that.”
“I can get it for you,” Theo said as he stood and headed over to the pickup counter.
Lemon watched him walk over to the pickup counter, grab her drink, and walk back. She glanced away the moment he set her cup in front of her, as if she were too shy to face him up close. “Thank you,” she said softly.
My gaze flicked to Bash to see if he was as surprised as I was.
He was staring at Lemon, his eyes roaming all over her.
Theo returned to their table and that seemed to pull Bash’s attention toward his twin instead.
Theo met his brother’s eyes for a moment before scooping up his coffee and scanning the rest of the café as he took a sip.
“I feel like coffee isn’t the appropriate drink for this conversation,” she said, drawing my attention back to her.
“I agree. After the last week and a half I’ve had, I could use a few drinks.” I sighed and glanced around us. No one was sitting close by other than the twins. “I guess if you’re comfortable listening, I should start from the beginning.”
I told her about my mother’s affair with Bram, how she’d gotten pregnant with me and lied to my father Noah about me being his.
Then I jumped to after my father died. I only went over a few times Mother had hurt me in the past, just to give Lemon an idea of how bad it could get.
I included how Mother had tried to sell me to the Carmichaels and hurt me when I hadn’t slept with Brandon right away.
I explained how I’d found out I wasn’t truly Noah Kendry’s daughter and only had my birth father’s name to find him.
Then I started talking about Roe and how he had always been different for me.
I caught myself smiling when I talked about stealing the guys’ joint despite how awful that moment had been.
Lemon listened quietly the entire time I spoke.
She looked sad in some parts, angry in others, and very surprised when I explained how I’d learned that Bram, the president of the Haven’s Rebels, was my biological father.
Toward the end, where I was telling her about how Reid had rescued me from my house and brought me to Bram, she barely blinked.
There were things I left out. I didn’t talk about how my father had truly died, or go into spicy details with the guys, or tell her how Clay had showed up at Bram’s house.
“I’m so sorry you’ve had to endure all of that,” she said. “All these years, you were so good at hiding it. You always seemed…”
“Perfect?” I offered.
She nodded. Then, like a switch flipping, she went from calm to angry. “Your mom is a real bitch and deserves to be punched in the vag.” She pursed her lips as if to hold back from saying more. It didn’t work. “I’m sorry, but I seriously hope she chokes on a cock.”
Bash snorted but tried to cover it up by clearing his throat.
I smiled, thinking she would get along great with Mac. “I’m not thrilled with the thought, but I get your meaning and agree.”
“And Brandon.” She shook her head. “He acts like such a good guy at school, but I always got a bad vibe from him. I hope he gets a nasty infection and his dick falls off.”
I snorted and bit my lip to stop myself from laughing. It would hurt if I did.
Lemon grimaced. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. Laughing is a good thing.” I finished off my coffee. “That was a lot of cock talk in under a minute.”
She laughed. “I guess I read too much smut.” She sighed as she calmed down. “Do you feel a little bit better after getting all that off your chest?”
I nodded. “Is there anything you want to unload?”
She leaned back in her chair as she pondered.
“I think I’ll save my vent session for the next time we hang out, where there’s hopefully alcohol.
” She leaned forward and set her arms on the table.
“What do you say we head down the street to the bookstore? After seeing you smile when talking about Roe and his friends, I have a new romance trope I think you will thoroughly enjoy.” She grinned this little mischievous smile.
“Then we can go across the street from the bookstore to the craft store. I know you like to draw and might need supplies, since you’re staying at your bio dad’s house.
It’s not much, but maybe some retail therapy and being silly will help you take your mind off of things for a bit. ”
That sounded like fun. “Okay.”
After a few hours of shopping with Lemon, I returned home. I thought Bash and Theo would just drive off the moment they saw I made it home okay, but they both parked behind my G-Wagon. Bram was home; I had made them guard me longer than they were supposed to again.
As I rounded my car to get my purchases from the trunk, they hopped off their bikes and came over.
“We can carry those in for you,” Bash said as he and Theo grabbed all the bags.
“Thank you,” I said.
Theo headed in first and Bash lingered as I closed up the trunk.
“Is everything all right?” I asked.
“I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for everything you’ve been through,” he said.
I tried not to smile. “So you were eavesdropping on my conversation with Lemon.”
“We were sitting right next to you,” he pointed out. “I also want to apologize for how I’ve acted up until now. You know, cracking jokes about babysitting you and all. I’m not usually a dick. Most of the time, I’m quite the gentleman.”
“Especially with the ladies, I hear,” I teased, finally letting myself smile.
“Your guys are just threatened by how good-looking I am.” He gave me a wink. “But in all seriousness, I had the wrong impression of you at first. I thought you were some spoiled girl from the north side of the bridge who I heard threw a tantrum and took a crowbar to Bram’s bike.”
“I had reasons for doing that,” I said. “It wasn’t the best way to go about things and I felt bad after, but it worked out in the end.”
“He must really love you to let you get away with doing that to his bike.”
His words made me freeze. “What? He barely knows me.”
Bash scoffed. “That’s not how that works.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
He stared at me in disbelief at first, but as we stood there, it looked like understanding washed over him. His mouth opened as if he were about to answer when Theo returned with Bram right behind him.
Bram’s eyes took me in, then Bash. I didn’t know what he saw, but he offered to take inside what Bash had in his hands. The twins took off and Bram followed me inside to my room.
“Are you all right?” Bram asked as he set down my bags on the floor by the foot of the bed.
I quickly masked my expression. “Yeah. I’m fine. I think my outing today wore me out.”
He put his hand on my head. “I won’t push. But remember that you can talk to me about anything, kid.” He messed up my hair a little bit with a smile. “Dinner should be ready soon.”
Mac walked in just as Bram walked out. “Thank God you’re back,” she said, and flopped down on her belly across my bed.
“What happened?” I asked as I sat next to her.
She rolled over onto her side and propped her head up with her hand. “Nothing. I was just bored. Did you have fun with your friend?”
“I did,” I said. “I think you would get along well with her. She’s the one who recommended the romance books to me.”
Last week, Mac had spotted the books Roe had bought for me.
I had let her borrow one and the next day, she had returned it asking to borrow another.
I didn’t know how she had done it between school, work, and hanging out with the new guy she was seeing, but she read through all five books faster than I had.
“You should invite her over on a night I’m off,” Mac suggested as she sat up. “So where did you go shopping?”
“The bookstore and the craft store.”
Mac stood before I could finish speaking and started peeking into the bags. Once she found the two bags from the bookstore, she brought them over and sat back down on the bed, facing me. “What spicy goodness did you get?”
I helped her unload the bags. There were three books I had bought with her in mind, and I handed them to her. “These ones are for you.”
She smiled down at them. “Thank you.”
“One is an alien romance, another is mafia romance, and the last is an enemies-to-lovers.”
She gave me a puzzled look. “Alien romance?”
I shrugged. “Lemon recommended it. I guess a girl is abducted and taken to another planet, has to fight to survive, falls for a nine-foot almost human-like alien with a giant cock who helps her.”
“Sold. I’ll read that one first.”
I snorted. “Which part of that intrigued you?”
She gave me a playful grin. “You know exactly which part.”
I fought with all my might not to laugh. “I do, and I would like to borrow it when you’re done reading it.”
Mac picked up one of the books I’d gotten and scanned the back. “What about the books you got? What are they about?”
“Lemon recommended something called why choose. She didn’t give me much detail. She just started handing me books and told me to go into them blind.”
Mac finished reading the back of the book she was holding with a big grin on her face. “I think you should trust Lemon. Go in blind. Then come find me and tell me what you thought.”
I guessed she wanted my opinion about it before she asked to borrow it.