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I smiled. “What about the loud noises? None of that bothered you?”
I remembered my father talking about his boot camp experience, and I wasn’t sure how that worked.
“Surprisingly, once I got the hang of it, none of it bothered me.” He hesitated. “I think that was due in part to how structured it was. Once I figured out the day to day plans for what we were going to do, it got easier. There was a time and place for everything.”
“And how did you do with the being screamed at bit?” I wondered.
He winced. “That was how Drill Sergeant O’Malley found out at first,” he laughed. “He was in my face, screaming his head off, and I was looking around wild-eyed. When he told me to meet his eyes, I did and started to freak out more. He told everyone to drop down and do push-ups until I could make eye contact with him. I think the worry that I’d be outed as different freaked me out more than making eye contact, so when I did, he saw the wildness in my eyes. Jesus, that was a fuckin’ mess.”
I shook my head. “I knew it would be.”
He laughed. “It was. You were right. I might’ve should’ve listened to you.”
I tilted my head in surprise.
“I…”
“Hey there, stupid.”
My back stiffened at the hateful words.
“Hello, Father,” Benson said, looking unaffected by the words.
Meanwhile, I wanted to shove the palm of my hand straight down his throat.
His father just called him stupid. What kind of parent did that?
“Why don’t you go get yourself a plate of food and talk to someone that’s not a teenager?” he asked. “Jailbait, son. You can’t stick your dick into that.”
I lifted my lip at his vulgar words. “In case you need clarification, it’s not illegal to talk to someone underage.”
“Is that what you were doing?” He laughed. “My boy is stupid, though, so there’s a possibility that that really was all that y’all were doing.”
My spine stiffened once again. But before I could open my mouth and tell him that he needed to leave, that Brielle chick—I’d learned her name over the last year, too—that Benson was so protective of came into view.
The father immediately changed his tune. He went from a hateful bastard to a sweet, charming man in the blink of an eye.
If I’d met this man first, I might’ve actually liked him.
Luckily, I’d seen his true colors in how he’d treated his son.
“Hey, Brielle, my girl,” the man said, holding his arm out for Brielle to walk under.
Brielle did, grinning wildly until her eyes landed on me. Then they narrowed.
She took in me, Benson, and then stiffened.
Benson hadn’t looked up since his father had walked into view.
“What’s going on?” Brielle asked. “What happened? Donald?”
Benson’s father, Donald I assumed, looked between me and Benson. “Seems my boy here was talking to this underage girl.”
“Benson doesn’t talk to any girls but me,” she said, looking skeptical.
Or pissed.
I wasn’t quite sure which.
“He was talking to this one,” Donald grinned. “Weren’t you, boy?”
Before anybody could say anything, Benson’s large expressive eyes landed on me. I felt the weight of his stare, and my heart skipped another beat.
“Have a good life, Fancy.”
And I had a feeling that would be the last I’d ever hear from him.
I felt like there was a hole the size of Kentucky in my chest.Prologue III need to go to the gun store. I don’t know what for, but I’ll figure it out when I get there.
-Bayou to Hoax
Bayou
I never forgot her.
No matter where I went, what I did, or how much time had passed.
There was just something about the young woman that I’d spoken with—that had told me that I should stick up for myself—that had stayed with me.
When I saw her for the first time in eight years standing in the middle of her sister’s lawn, watering her flowers? I became obsessed.
All the confidence I’d been able to insert in myself over the years, all the change I’d forced myself to go through? All of it was ripped away like a flimsy shade umbrella in the middle of a Texas thunderstorm.
I saw her, and everything I’d worked so hard to perfect was exposed, raw and bleeding, all over again.
But she didn’t recognize me—at least I didn’t think she did—and I went on for almost a year thinking that I had to move past whatever the hell it was that made me unable to stop thinking about the girl.
Then we finally met—thanks to her sister—and the understanding dawned in my Fancy’s eyes.
I knew the moment she recognized me that it would be bad.
Then my cousin, Hoax, had to go and fall in love with Fancy’s sister, and I realized two things.
One, I’d never be able to get away from her. My obsession with the woman—something that’d been going on for nine long years—was going to be fueled. She’d be there. At every club party. At the birth of Hoax and Pru’s children. At anything and everything that I would be at.
