43. Kai #3
Haven pulls her hand off my leg, wrapping both around her nearly empty glass like it’ll somehow give her strength. Mom is stirring the green beans, her face vapid and serene.
“Was your trailer park roach keeping you too busy? Or were your professor’s extra duties too much for you to handle?” Ezra sits back, both hands going into his pockets, grinning slyly as he waits for me to escalate the situation like he fucking knows I will.
I’m at a crossroads.
Every fiber of my being wants me to launch myself over the table and have another go at ending Ezra’s life. Not just for insulting Haven—again—but because of his insinuation about Rooke.
It’s not my imagination. Haven heard it too. Ezra suspects I’m close with our professor, and fuck knows the lengths he’ll go to prove it.
But it’s only ammunition if he thinks it will hurt me.
So, yeah, I could show him just how deep that wound goes…or I could take the fucking bullets out of his gun before he has time to fire a single shot.
“Kai,” Haven murmurs beside me, like she senses I’m about to do something catastrophic.
I slide my hand over hers, gently squeezing her fingers, trying to reassure her.
“Not at all. I loved how hard he worked me. He really knows how to get the best out of me.”
Haven stifles a snicker, and Ezra turns his glare on her. “Your boyfriend is gay for his teacher, and you think it’s funny?” he demands.
“So what if I am?” I take another sip of my beer, nonchalant as fuck. And damn, the way Ezra’s face goes red, I don’t even care about the fallout.
Come what may, seeing my brother thrown off balance is totally fucking worth it.
“You’re saying you’re gay?” Ezra scoffs.
He snatches up his phone, shaking his head with a disgusted sneer on his mouth as he unlocks his device with his fingerprint. He obviously sees something even more displeasing than our conversation, because he tosses it back to the table hard enough that it bounces.
It happens so fast, I don’t have time to respond before Ezra turns that same sneer to Haven. “And you’re okay with him sucking dick?”
“As long as I get to watch,” she says sweetly.
Sharon chokes on her wine. “Language, Hayley!”
“I didn’t swear,” Haven says, still smiling.
When I glance at Ezra, I know I finally got one over on him.
He’s got this absent look in his eyes, like I knocked the wind out of his sails. It’ll take him a few minutes to recover, then he’ll dredge up something horrific he can use to emasculate me again, but I’m ready now.
I’m ready to give them hell, and I have Rooke to thank for the guts to do it.
I shove back from the table, my chair scraping against the hardwood floor.
“Her name is Haven,” I grate out, directing the comment at my mom. “H-A-V-E-N. Haven Lee, from the Riverside Trailer Park. We grew up together.”
Sharon doesn’t seem to know what to do with this information. She stirs the green beans again, dusts crumbs off the linen tablecloth, picks up her empty wineglass and stares at it like she wishes it were full.
But she says nothing.
“I used to go play with her every afternoon after school, Mom,” I say slowly, so it’ll sink in. “Will you stop pretending you don’t know her?”
“Yeah, Mom,” Ezra whines in falsetto, before dropping his voice back to normal. “You used to hate Haven. Don’t you remember how you threw away those letters she used to send Kai? How you told me it was for his own good?”
“You fucking what?” Haven’s mouth drops open as she whips her head to stare at Sharon, then me. “That’s why you never replied?”
“What letters?” I say, on top of Ezra’s mocking, “Only intelligent thing you’ve ever done, Sharon.”
My mom dabs her lips with a napkin, then the corners of her eyes, leaving a smudge of foundation on the pristine fabric. I don’t see any tears for her to blot away—maybe her tear ducts don’t work after all the plastic surgery.
“And here I thought we could have a nice Thanksgiving. Just one nice dinner where no one’s shouting.
” Her voice cracks, and for an awful moment, I see the woman she used to be.
Before the money, before the Botox, before she learned that looking away and not asking questions meant less pain. “You boys have ruined it!”
The anger drains out of me as quickly as it came, leaving an aching hollow in its wake.
She’s really broken.
My mother is broken, and I don’t know how to fix her, or if she even can be fixed.
“That’s what they do, Sharon,” comes a voice behind me.
My father appears in the dining room doorway, still wearing his overcoat, briefcase in hand. He’s grayer than I remember. His face more lined. But his hard, unforgiving eyes are the same they’ve always been as they sweep over the scene with open contempt.
He drops his briefcase and walks to the empty place setting at the head of the table. Everyone has gone silent, unmoving and stiff as he sighs and takes his seat. He runs a hand through his hair, for all the world like he does have a demanding job that keeps him from his family at Thanksgiving.
“These two always ruin everything,” he mutters, giving me and Ezra a dead-eyed stare before his attention snaps back to Mom. “Go get me a fucking beer.”