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I lifted my brows. “I’m pretty sure that with the twenty or so cameramen outside the club, she’s going to be all over entertainment news tomorrow.” I smiled sweetly at her. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“Not like this!” she screeched at me. “Why didn’t you use your influence to get her out of trouble?”
“My influence? Who do you think I am?” I demanded. “The fucking governor? I have no pull.”
“Bullshit. All you had to do was bat your eyes at Harris Cutter and he would have let Georgia go without any of this embarrassment.” Her nose flared as she took a step closer to me. I stiffened, squared my shoulders and stared her down. Did she think she could intimidate me? Really? “You’re grounded for the next week at least. You will not leave this house unless you are with the family. I won’t have you going around with that Thornton girl who could have easily gotten Georgia out of trouble just as easily as you could have.”
“You can’t do that!” I would go insane if I couldn’t leave the house. Winter break was only a few days away and I would be trapped.
Trapped.
With the step-monster and the two step-bitches from hell.
Jillian actually had the gall to smirk at me. Seeing that I was upset now, amused her. “Try me, little girl. What I say in this house is law. While you live under this roof, you will listen to me or…”
“Or what?” I snarled, taking a step closer to her.
Unlike me, she took a hesitant step back, but didn’t lose the smirk on her face. “Or you won’t be able to see, talk, socialize or anything else. No school friends. No long chats with those idiots back in Virginia who think you’re so special. Toe the line, McKinley, because I can make your life pure hell.”
My hands balled into fists and it took every ounce of willpower I possessed not to punch her right then and there. My mother and Carter’s voice was barely a whisper now, reminding me to respect my elders. “It’s already hell, Jillian,” I assured her and turned away, making sure my long red hair hit her in the face as I headed for the stairs. “And trust me, I’ll be out of here the second I turn eighteen.”
Promise or not, as soon as I was a legal adult I was gone from Scott Montez’s house.
Screw this shit.
Screw that bitch.
Chapter 14
Kin
The only good thing to come out of having to take Georgia home the night before was that I hadn’t talked to Jace. I was almost grateful for that. If I’d stuck around First Bass, I would have talked to him. Really, actually talked.
Talking to Jace, I mean really talking to him, was completely different than talking at him, as I’d been doing for months at this point. In the beginning, when Jace had been my world and I’d thought I was his, we had been able to talk for hours about nothing at all and it felt like we had talked about the biggest philosophy questions in the universe. We could talk about everything important and I was left reeling from how close we seemed. How alike we were.
How perfect we were.
Together.
That—and the blazing-hot chemistry we shared—had made falling for him seem like it had happened in an instant even though I knew it had taken at least a month before I’d known for sure. So talking to him? Yeah, that was a bad idea.
I had too much shit on my plate right then. I needed to get through the holidays with the step-monster from hell. Needed to bide my time and keep my nose clean until my birthday in February so I could get the hell out from under that roof. Then there was high school, but that was boring shit. I’d already been through most of the things that the teachers were trying to pass along to us so it was a total snooze-fest that I was forced to endure every day. But I’d take that over staying home with Jillian any day.
I also had college to think about. For some stupid reason I’d applied to some West Coast schools even though I had already decided that I would go to Virginia Tech like Angie and Caleb had done. Since they would be graduating in the spring I wouldn’t have them there with me, but at least I would be closer to home. Still I’d applied to UCLA and several more and gotten in to all of them.
Now?
I was still determined to go to Virginia Tech, but…
But.
There was that but and I didn’t understand it. I tried telling myself it was because I wanted to wait and see where Lucy was going to end up. Tried to tell myself I enjoyed the SoCal weather. Those were all weak excuses when I really looked at them, but I tried not to look at them often. Lucy and I would be close friends no matter where we ended up going to college at, and I was more of a four seasons person than the kind of weather I was faced with in Southern California.
If I was honest with myself—and I really didn’t want to be right then—I knew I wanted a West Coast school because of Jace. Having been forced to see him so often, listen to him talk to Harris and Lucy and countless other people, I knew that he wanted to call L.A. home. Even if it was only for part of the year.
If I was honest with myself, I would admit that after hearing him say that the first time, I’d applied to three different schools all within a few hours’ drive.
If I were honest with myself.
