“Jordan.” It comes out just above a whisper. Jordan looks like he wishes I hadn’t addressed him. I like him already. J-Dawg and I are gonna get along just fine.
But Sadie?
“So, what kind of deal?” she prods.
I flick my gaze to Gwen to see if Sadie’s impertinence breaks any unspoken group therapy rule. Her tame smile tells me it hasn’t.
Well, fart.
I sigh. I don’t have to tell them everything. But it looks like I do have to tell them something. I won’t be sharing about Beck. He’s mine.
At least, I hope he is.
Team Guilt executes a dramatic charge.
I bounce my heel off the ground. “If I agreed to complete the program, my parents would get me a townhouse.”
There’s more to it than that. A lot more. But this is enough of an opener.
Gwen is the only one who shows no reaction. Even Jordan blinks in surprise.
“Posh,” Sadie mutters.
Maddie nods.
And they’re all looking at me now.
I’m not about to tell them that my parents—at least, my dad—had already floated the townhouse with no apparent strings attached, but when they discovered that I’d slept with my boyfriend of four weeks the night of my sister’s wedding, they were, to quote them, “forced to reconsider.”
“We just don’t think you’re ready for this,” Mom had insisted. And she didn’t mean that I wasn’t ready for a place of my own. She meant that I’m not ready for “an adult relationship.”
Which even I know means sex.
When I told them it was a little late for that, Dad suddenly got hyper-focused on his fingernails and Mom muttered an acidic “We’ll see about that.”
And that was when they gave me the choice. Summit House and get my own place after completing the twenty-eight-day program, or legal guardianship for a minimum period of three years while I lived in the townhouse held in trust.
Then they’d reconsider.
I exploded like a supernova and then crashed in a heap of sweat and tears for the next ten hours.
This was Sunday night. Late. After Margaret and Merrick left for Hawaii. And I’ve never felt so fucking alone.
Now, sixteen hundred miles away, I push through the rawness in my throat and share only what I’m willing to share.
“They said if I finished the program, it would make them feel more confident about me living on my own.”
Several heads nod.
I also don’t share what I suspect is Mom’s ulterior motive. I think she’s banking on the fact that thirty days away from Beck will cool things off—if not kill what we have altogether.
She’s wrong.
At least, she’s half wrong.
No way this will change what I feel for Beck. What I want with him.
I just hope it doesn’t wreck the way he feels about me.
