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With another screech she stomped her foot, looking more like a spoiled child than the adult she so obviously was. “I will not stand for this, Scott. Make this man leave. Now.”
“Happy to leave,” Carter assured her. “But Kin is coming with us. We haven’t seen her in months and we’re here for four weeks to catch up. Whether you like it or not, she’s going to see us all she wants.”
“Scott!”
Carter reached for my hand. “Get ready, Kin, honey. Your brother and sister and I will be outside waiting on you.”
I didn’t have to be told twice. I rushed upstairs, pulled on boots and grabbed my phone and a coat. If Carter was going to break me out of the ninth circle of Hell I wasn’t going to say no. I was running back down the stairs before they had even made it to the front door. Without a glance in my father’s direction who was now soothing Jillian’s rumpled feathers, I grabbed Caleb’s hand as he offered it to me and let him pull me out into the sunshine.
Laughing, I jumped up on Caleb’s back and he carried me to the rented Escalade Carter was climbing behind the wheel of. With us all finally buckled in, I glanced around at the three Jacobsons and wished with all my heart I had the same last name.
“Where to?” Angie asked from the front passenger seat.
“Breakfast,” I told her. “I need food.”
Carter chuckled as he put the SUV in gear and pulled out of the driveway. “Food and then fun.” His eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. “Missed you, Kin.”
My heart twisted and I had to blink back a flood of tears, but my smile was bright when I offered it to him. “Missed you more.”
Over the next few days I got to spend a lot of time with Carter and the twins. I didn’t see Lucy at all, but I texted her a few times. Jace texted too, but I was so caught up in spending time with my loved ones I didn’t have time to text him back. For the most part that was good, because I still didn’t know how to handle this new change in our relationship.
I kind of missed him, though.
Okay, not kind of. I did.
More than a little, but with things at my father’s house going crazy I didn’t have time to think about how much I was missing him. Again, a good thing. I wasn’t ready to examine why I missed him.
Not yet.
After the first week, Jillian started manipulating things to get her way and I was forced to go to more parties. She was making the Christmas holiday—my favorite holiday in the past—my least favorite time of the year with all the parties I had to go to. Since I usually spent my mornings with Carter, she started keeping me out later and later for her damn parties and I was exhausted when I went out with my stepdad and the twins.
I was being pulled in two different directions, one I wanted to go in—shit, one I wanted to run in—while I would rather have had a root canal than have to go in the other. Tensions were high by Christmas Eve. I only wanted one present that year and that was to go home, but that wasn’t going to happen. The promise I’d made to my mother was still ringing in my ear. I knew if she had still been alive she wouldn’t have held it against me if I went back on that promise, but she’d raised me not to be a quitter.
I would be eighteen in February and then I could say I tried. I would finish out my school year there, but I wouldn’t be under the same roof as the twat queen known as Jillian Montez. I didn’t know where I would be living once I turned eighteen, but I knew I didn’t have to worry. Not only had Lucy’s family offered me a room, but Carter had already promised to rent me an apartment if that was what I wanted.
The Christmas Eve gala that I attended was another party I was forced to go to, but I’d talked to Lucy’s Aunt Emmie and was able to score invites for Carter and the twins. My stepdad was a hugely successful businessman in Virginia and wasn’t a poor man by anyone’s standards, but he wasn’t a celebrity so people gave him the cold shoulder.
I hated the way some people looked down their noses at him that night. Carter was a superstar in my eyes and everyone else could suck it for all I cared. Especially Jillian, who stood in a corner surrounded by her small flock of friends. She shot Carter and the twins sneers and whispered in the ears of anyone who would listen about them.
Gritting my teeth as the small group shot Angie a glance and then burst into giggles, I turned away from them. It was either that or go over and punch the step-monster in the face. As much as I wanted to do that, I wasn’t going to give Jillian the satisfaction of a) grounding me again, or b) using my actions to her advantage by gaining sympathy from the tabloids for the story about how her stepdaughter was ‘uncontrollable and dangerous’. I could just see the headlines and knew that Jillian would soak up every drop of the spotlight that would follow.
“They sound like a small pack of hyenas when they laugh like that, don’t they?”
I nearly jumped out of my skin at the voice behind me. I’d been hiding in a corner, away from everyone, including the twins. I’d thought my hiding spot was pretty good. I could see everyone while they couldn’t really see me unless someone was looking hard.
Turning, I couldn’t keep my eyes from widening when my gaze landed on Jace. I hadn’t seen him at all in the last three weeks so seeing him right then had my heart racing. He was dressed in a tux with his hair styled in a careless kind of way that I had perfected for him in the past by running my fingers through it over and over again.
I wanted to run my fingers through it again as he kissed me.
Shaking my head to dispel that sudden need, I frowned up at him. “What are you doing here?”
“Natalie Cutter got me an invite,” he told me with a smug grin as he put his hand on the wall behind my head and leaned forward. “I figured it was the only way I was going to get to see you before the New Year. You haven’t been returning my calls or texts.”
I lowered my eyes to his jacket, not wanting to watch as his gaze seemed to eat me alive as it skimmed over me like a physical caress. “I’ve been busy,” I told him honestly.
“So Lucy tells me,” he said with a nod. “Stepparents have been playing tug-of-war, I hear. But have you been so busy you couldn’t take two seconds to text me back and let me know you were okay?”
My teeth sank into the inside of my bottom lip. He sounded truly concerned and that caused butterflies to start fluttering in my stomach in a way that made me fee
