AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What about your mom?”
“I love my mom. She’s my mom, ya know? But sometimes I wish she’d grow a backbone and leave his sorry ass.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It is what it is. Anyway, what about you, Lily Ford.” My name rolled off his tongue with a heated smirk. “What do you want to do after graduation?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. Everyone has all these plans and I’m just coasting, I guess. My parents want me to go to college, obviously. And I want to go, I do. But I’m not sure I’m ready—”
“Ready?” Confusion clouded his eyes.
Crap. I’d revealed too much.
But Kaiden made it so easy. I wanted to tell him things, to open up and share my story. And that terrified me.
Because what if he didn’t like what he found?
“Lily?” he said, and I lifted my gaze to his.
“It’s a long story.”
“I have time.”
Securing my can of soda, I lay down and stared up at the sky. The sun was already sinking behind the fluffy clouds, the first signs of dusk on the horizon. “It started in middle school,” I whispered, fighting a smile when Kaiden lay down beside me.
“I was always a shy kid. I didn’t really make a ton of friends in elementary school. Everyone knew I was Jason Ford’s daughter, and he was an icon. NFL royalty.” I let out a soft sigh. “By the time I started middle school, I realized kids were more interested in my dad than they were me. But my parents kept encouraging me to try to make friends and give people a chance. Anyway, the summer before eighth grade, me and Ashleigh were invited to Chelsea Farnham’s birthday sleepover. She was the most popular girl in school, so being invited was kind of a big deal. I didn’t want to go but Mom said it would be good for me. At the last minute, Ashleigh got sick and couldn’t go. The girls seemed genuinely pleased I was there, and Mom was so excited for me… I didn’t want to disappoint her, so I stayed.
“It wasn’t so bad at first. I knew a couple of the girls. Lindsey was there. She kind of took me under her wing. Chelsea’s mom was nice. She made us pizza and set up a bouncy house in the garden. They included me in all the activities and I even won on the piñata. But when we all went up to Chelsea’s room to settle down for the night, everything changed.”
I could still remember it now. The second the bedroom door closed, and her mom disappeared, their sweet smiles and words of reassurance melted away as they circled me like a shoal of hungry piranhas.
“They started poking fun at me, calling me names, and teasing me about my dad. They said that I thought I was better than them because my dad was Jason Ford. I cried and said I wanted to go home but it only made them worse. Then Chelsea pulled out some scissors and said that we were going to give each other haircuts.”
“What the fuck?” Kaiden hissed.
Tears welled in my eyes as the memories of them holding me down while Chelsea hacked my hair off slammed into me. “I was so upset but they kept laughing and pointing. I crawled into the corner of her room and sat there all night, too terrified to move while they acted as if I wasn’t there.”
Warm fingers brushed mine as Kaiden slid his hand through mine. “What happened?”
“The next morning, they said if I told anyone about what happened, they would tell everyone at school that I peed the bed. But the second Chelsea’s mom saw me, she knew. She called my mom to come get me.”
It had been the worst day of my life, walking out of the Farnham’s house trembling with my lopsided ugly hair and tears streaming down my cheeks.
“I hope your parents made her pay.” The protective edge to Kaiden’s voice softened something inside me.
“I don’t know what my dad threatened them with, but eighth grade rolled around, and Chelsea and her family were gone. It didn’t stop the other girls though. After that, I became the snitch.” The snitch with bad hair.
I’d had to have it cut short to even it out and as it started to grow back, I became obsessed with it. Touching it, feeling the strands between my fingers. It became my security blanket, my armor. I felt safe touching it, pulling, and chewing it.
Kaiden’s eyes drilled into the side of my face. I peeked over at him, suspended in his gray orbs. “So the hair touching… it’s like residual trauma?”
I inhaled a sharp breath and nodded. “Something like that.”
Chapter Eighteen
Kaiden
“It’s called trichotillomania,also known as hair pulling disorder,” Lily said, studying my face, no doubt for my reaction.
