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Scraping the sides of my mixing bowl with perhaps a touch too much aggression, I counter, “You didn’t know who he was either.”
“Iwas not bouncing on his dick.” Dodging the batter I flick her way, Willow asks, “Does August know?”
“That mommy was bouncing on his coach’s dick?” I pretend to think. “Hm. No. I don’t think I discussed that with my eleven-year-old.”
Willow hums thoughtfully, doing a terrible job at hiding her amusement. “That’s probably wise. He already hates him enough.”
“He doesn’thatehim.” He just has an inherent distrust of men, specifically ones who look at his mama like she’s dirt. “He’s protective.” And he might notknowbut heknows, y’know? Within seconds of that first practice ending, he was on my case, demanding to know what Cass did—why do you think he did something?I’d asked, to which my smartass responded,well he did, didn’t he?I lied through my freaking teeth but I know he didn’t buy a word of it. He’s too smart for his own good, formyown good, and I’m nervous it’s going to bite us both in the ass.
It frustrates Cass, August’s blatant dislike of him. That freaking gorgeous face is stuck in a perpetual frown whenever my kid is around. A man like him is used to being adored and August’s lack thereof is stumping him.
My fear? Stumped turning to pissed, and August’s spot on the team turning to dust.
Willow doesn’t get it. She’s only ever seen Flirty Bar Cass, and from a distance at that. She’s been on a business trip since The Incident—hence the belated interrogation—and hasn’t witnessed Grumpy Stompy Frowny Cass who looks at me and August like he’s hoping we’ll conveniently disappear. She does not have an eleven-year-old’s hopes and dreams slipping through her fingers because she couldn’t keep her legs closed.
When the metal of the electric whisk in my hand clangs against the glass bowl with a wince-inducing screech, Willow wisely decides to put an end to my frantic-bordering-on-frenzied baking and snatches the appliance. She confiscates the bowl too, ignoring my protests, uncaring that the raw batter is the only link to my sanity right now. Dumping everything in the sink—and making the money-conscious, waste-not-want-not, struggling teen mom part of me that’s never quite gone away cry a little—she guides me away from my addiction of choice, into the living room, onto the sofa. “What’re you gonna do?”
Slumping against the cushions with a huff, I shrug. “What can I do? He doesn’t wanna believe me.”
And I do get it, however begrudgingly so. I stumbled upon—okay, specifically searched for—the infamous story and in his defense, he didn’t jumpthatfar to come to the conclusion that the anonymous source was me. If the situation was flipped, I’d assume the same.
But I told him the truth. If he doesn’t want to believe me, that’s on him. If he wants to make things even more fucking awkward than they already are, that’s on him too. It’s not my responsibility to convince him otherwise, and I’ll gladly spend the rest of the school year cowering on the bleachers over apologizing for something I didn’t fucking do.
Even if the stress of that has me stress-baking myself out of house and home.
Willow, however, has a very different approach. “Y’all should just screw and get it over with.”
“Will.”
“All that sexual tension isn’t good for a person.”
“There is nosexualtension.” Just plain ol’ tension. The aggravating kind that makes my skin itch and my stomach hurt. Nothing sexy about that.
“That’s not what I hear.”
Anxiety twists my gut. “And what exactly do youhear?”
“Everything. Lawyers in this town are surprisingly full of gossip.”
It’s so fucking Willow, scoring a job at the town watering hole. Kind of hilarious, too, that the local law firm is said watering hole but hey, every small town has their quirks.
Their invasive, intrusive, panic-inducing quirks.
“Sunny.” Willow sighs. Reaching across the counter, she taps my free hand, coaxing it out of the fist it’s locked in. “It’s just curiosity.”
“Uh-huh.” What’s that saying? Curiosity killed the cat? I’ve learned from experience, I tend to be the cat.
“Stop it.” Mustering all the big sister authority the barely two years separating us allows, Willow shakes her head. “It really isn’t anything bad. Don’t make it more than it is. ”
I don’t have to. It’ll do it all on its own. Always does. Already has, really.
“You know if they were shit-talking, I’d kick their asses.”
That makes me smile. “Yeah.”
At least this time when the rumor mills swallows me whole, I’ll have someone on my side. I know that’s something Willow has always regretted, not being there when I needed her. I know I’ve always regretted not following in her footsteps when she got the hell out of dodge the second the clock struck twelve on her eighteenth birthday. My life would’ve been so damn different if I had. For starters, I wouldn’t have been sixteen and pregnant in a tiny, conservative town. I would’ve raised August away from my parents andhimand the judgment.
But then I figure Willow’s life would be different too, if she’d been barely twenty with two kids in her care, and I reckon the guilt of that would weigh on me far more than any scrutiny could. A few laters later, though, when August was older, when I was older, I should’ve followed her. I wish I had.
