Page 68 of Lucky 14

Stealing a glance back to assess how bad her leg is, I see the red, inflamed skin.

I suck in a breath, and Holli glares at me. “What’s the matter, princess?”

I have the sudden urge to puff up my chest and yell at her that I’m not the enemy here. I open my mouth, but Holli flashes me a look. Underneath all that fury is something like…fear, and it makes me pause.

There’s silence for a while, just the sound of the rain hitting the leaves of the trees. Holli snarls at me, and I wonder if I saw the fear in the first place.

She hates me. The turmoil makes me want to rip my skin off. I don’t like her thinking badly of me.

Then, Holli snaps, “Tell me about your childhood.”

I glare at her. My…childhood?

She ignores me, cleaning at her mark with a wipe. I see now that there are two distinct scabs that have crusted over with pus. Without meeting her gaze, I can tell hers is on my face, and my skin heats. What does she see? Suddenly, I’m self-conscious about the fact that I don’t have a shirt on.

I clear my throat and bark, “What?”

“Who did you grow up with?” she asks.

“Amy and Bill,” I recite.

“Do you always call your parents by their first names?”

I freeze, defensiveness making me want to cross my arms. But there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Fostering is not a bad word. “No,” I cut back, too quickly. “They were my foster parents.”

There’s a pause, and I look to see if Holli feels any sort of embarrassment for being an asshole. She just stares at me, then gets back to work.

“Did people say you were a problem in school? Did you get bad grades?”

I scowl. My grades weren’t anything great, but I still passed.

“Did you wet the bed?” She’s still going.

“No.” I glare at her.

“Start fires?”

“No.” I feel hot.

“Hurt animals?”

Hurt animals? I squeeze my hands into fists so hard my fingernails dig into my palms. “What the fuck is your problem?”

“Just trying to figure out how you turned into the person you are.” Holli looks up at me, throwing the used wipe onto the ground at my feet.

I can’t keep the growl in. “You know nothing about me.”

“Oh, really?” She arches an eyebrow. “Did you have any friends growing up? Or were you the loner? No one understood you.”

“I had friends,” I fire back, but her words make me remember Jeremy and how he left me. And how I could never seem to get friends to stick.

She arches an eyebrow. “Abuse in the home?”

“No,” I say with finality. Amy and Bill never did anything to me.

Holli waits with a loaded silence, but I hold my ground. Amy and Bill were good people. My mom was a good person, too. Even if she did leave me to fend for myself for days. She was just sick.

Holli gets back to her leg, acting like she can see through me, and doesn’t like what she sees. It makes my skin crawl. I’m a good person, damn it. “You know nothing about me,” I growl. “I was a good kid—Am a good kid. I’m a project manager at my job, and I own my home.”