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I bury my face in his shoulder. I’m an emotional wreck. He holds me tightly and strokes my hair, kissing the top and whispering his love.
“Come home,” he begs, “come back to us.”
“I really just need to go right now.”
His arms get stronger for a moment and I know he understands.
Pulling free, I turn away and vow to never cry again. I’m done crying. I’m done feeling sad. It’s time to move on.
I head back inside, needing a reprieve from him and the swirling vortex of sorrow that surrounds him.
I meet Asher, Alice, Carter, and Presley back in the sports hall and jump onto Presley’s back, he grunts but holds me without complaint. I wave my fingers at Misha as we pass. She’s taken it upon herself to call me a slut what with me having two boyfriends and all, not that we give a fuck. She’s just jealous.
I bite Presley’s ear and point ahead. “North, my little wee pony. North!”
“That was a terrible Scottish accent,” Presley informs me.
“Yeah, it was more like a Scottish accident,” Alice says and follows it with her hands doing the, ba dum tss.
She then, because she’s Alice, decides to jump on Carter’s back, legs wrapped around his thighs like a monkey. He doesn’t even try to hold her up, he just keeps walking and she slides down his body until her butt is on the floor and he’s dragging her along with her hands around his thigh.
“COME BACK, MY LITTLE WEE PONY!”
“Now that,” Presley comments, “was a good Scottish accent.”
I laugh into his neck, feeling happy again now that I’m with them.
“Oh my God!” Asher cries and slaps a hand to her mouth. We stop in the crowd and she looks at me with big, round eyes. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.”
“What?” I ask, hopping off Presley’s back.
“It’s your uncle, the senator,” she shows me her phone and I see a picture of his burning house, a house I know very well. “He’s just been confirmed dead.”
“Not just dead,” Alice utters, looking at her own phone with a horrified expression. “Torn apart by an animal and then also burnt to a crisp.”
For some reason HELL BEAST flashes through my mind and makes me visibly shudder, no idea why. I must be in shock. Happy shock. Because I can’t stop laughing.
I jump up and wrap my arms around Carter’s neck, kiss him on the lips, then Presley’s and kiss him on the lips too. “Oh we are going to party tonight.”
“Is she happy about her uncle dying?” Asher asks quietly.
“I’d be perfectly fine if mine died. He bought me socks for Christmas and snuck the last three chocolates out of my advent calendar,” Alice puts in with a sneer.
“Maybe she’s hysterically sad?”
They both look at my grinning face. Alice cringes and pokes the ends of my lips, trying to pull them down. “Don’t do that… don’t… no… you stop that right now, Scandal.”
“My name’s not Scandal anymore,” I announce, breathing in a breath of fresh air. “It’s Keren.”
“I like it,” Carter approves and Presley nods too.
Looks like we didn’t need the panty box after all.
Living with Presley has its perks, like the fact he gets up earlier than me and makes coffee. Always a bonus. Or the fact I have somebody to hold all night. Sometimes I wake up automatically, so used to sleeping with an alarm set for every hour, and I’ll see Presley’s sleeping face. No nightmares, no monsters, just his peace which then becomes mine. And sometimes Carter when he stays over.
Our laundry is still done by Lane who doth protest about us living together in little notes on the clean bags she returns. The last one read:
“Please tell me you’re on birth control.”
I am and always have been no thanks to my uncle who had me put on birth control when I started my period. I’ll be due a change soon but I’ll make sure it happens. I don’t want kids yet. I want to dance my life away, not clean diapers.
Besides, with two very virile teenage men, because they are not boys in any sense of the word, I have to stay protected. They don’t ever leave me alone and I love that they don’t get jealous over each other. That would cause some issues for sure. And I don’t get upset with them when they want to do their own thing, though that has only ever been like once for an hour.
And it was so hard, let me tell you.
Christmas morning comes and I shift nervously before knocking on the door.
Full forgiveness is still a long way off, but I’m now at a state of mind where I’m willing to try.
So when the door opens and Lane smiles so blindingly at me, I don’t immediately want to punch her in the mouth anymore, like I did to Misha at that Christmas party after the concert and school dance that we didn’t end up attending. My right hook connected with her nose and the bitch flew into her boyfriend. She cupped her face, blood pouring between her fingers. I’m suspended for two days when we go back in January but it was worth it. She was creating drama she so desperately said she didn’t want to create when we first met.
