AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I see,” I can hear her swallow. I’m sure she does not want to have to pick up my broken pieces again if this goes south.
“I met his teammate,” I switch gears.
“Oh, Dante Renzo? He’s a looker.”
Part of me hates that Mom keeps up with Cole’s career enough that she knows his teammate’s name and knows that Dante is a classic tall, dark, handsome type with a swoon-worthy Italian accent.
“He was nice,” I say, even though I could have sworn I saw Cole tense up when Dante kissed my hand. I was trying not to look at him too hard, though, so I can’t be sure.
“You haven’t heard from the Ballentine’s, have you, honey?”
“Hell no. Why?”
Technically, I’ve never spoken to Kristy, Cole’s mother. I only saw her in person a few times and in photos. She was hauntingly beautiful and gave Cole his stunning turquoise eyes. Stan, on the other hand, only spoke to me when I’d run into him at Cole’s house. I wasn’t worth his misplaced rage, he saved that all up for Cole.
“Oh, no reason. I saw Kristy not long before we moved and wondered, is all.”
“Really? What was she doing?”
This is weird, Cole’s mother was never around for long when we were teenagers. She was forever flitting in and out of his life, leaving a trail of destruction behind.
His dad had plenty of other women coming and going, but his mom was mostly absent. As far as I know, the last time she was spotted, was around the time Cole left for Europe.
“Just shopping at the grocery.”
I wonder what’s going on with that mess, but that brings me to another point we need to address. “What is Dad going to say about this?” Mom may love Cole, but Dad… does not.
“Oh, you leave the Major General to me, honey,” she reassures me.
“He’s going to lose his shit,” I reply.
My father made it abundantly clear what a disappointment I was to him when he finally found out about Cole. He wanted to believe it was Cole who talked me into having sex when it was quite the opposite, and we were both consenting adults.
Little did he know how consenting I actually was. It was me who had to convince Cole to finally take my V-Card. One does not share those sorts of details with their military father, though.
Still, he stormed into the Ballentine household to talk ‘man-to-man’ with Stanley about controlling his bad-influence son. I wish it was just the one time, but they went at it time and again. Because that's what the Major General does. He treats everyone like a cadet who needs to obey and get in line.
Yes sir, Major General, sir.
When Cole moved to Europe, I didn’t just lose him. It was the final straw that severed any warm feelings I had for my father, too. At the lowest moments of my life, Dad regularly threw it in my face that he warned me this would happen.
He was right, I was wrong. He’d ask me if Cole called that day. I’d admit no, and Dad would literally say, ‘Good. I told you so.’
I never felt like daddy’s little girl, but rubbing salt in my gaping wounds was more cruelty than I’ve ever formally forgiven him for.
And then there were the fights about Cole between him and Mom, which just added more stress to the worst time in my life. Out in the garage, yelling at all hours of the night about it. Cole was like a nuclear explosion that leveled the whole damn neighborhood.
“Your father just wants you to be happy, honey,” Mom says for the billionth time in my life.
“Well, then he should support this decision and not give me shit because this is an amazing opportunity, and I’m taking the job.”
Look at me, growing a backbone today. I hang up with Mom feeling like a proper adult.
I’m reading the bottle of the magic hair product Klara has lent me while I finish preening in the bathroom. Whatever is in this stuff, my hair is on point. It has full, beachy waves and swirls around my shoulders like whitecaps inside a tide pool. It smells like bottled sin.
No more straight, dull, brown.
Don’t analyze the ingredients on the bottle. This is a new you.
