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“You think you’ve tried?” Chloe questions.
“Hmm.” Nessa Anne chuckles knowingly. “How much has Lance told you about us, Scarlet?”
My nostrils flare at her tone, and I know I’m about two seconds away from snapping.
“A little,” Scarlet says, her hand slipping into mine under the table and lacing our fingers. She squeezes tight. “I’d have loved to have had sisters. You’re lucky to have one another.”
No one replies to her, not that there is a lot to say, but the blunt way everyone’s gone silent makes my blood boil.
Ihavetried. I’ve tried for years to be what they need. What my mum needs. But it’s never been enough, and I don’t think it ever will be.
I’m not enough for them.
The dog begins scratching at the door, and I stiffen.
Scarlet’s thumb dusts mine desperately, and it’s almost enough to pull me back. Almost. “If you can get those documents, Mum… I need to get Scarlet home.”
“Lance, we—”
“I’m about done with this bullshit.” Nessa Anne’s utensils clang to her plate, cutting Scarlet off. “Yourdocumentsaren’t signed, but you already knew that. I don’t know why you even came over. You know mum is desperate and will do anything to get you to feel sorry for her.”
“Nessa Anne,” Chloe hisses.
I watch my mother’s face redden.
“Am I wrong? No.” She shakes her head at me as if I’m a piece of shit on the bottom of her shoe and not her flesh and blood. “He waltzes in here expecting us to play happy family and act like he’s not trying to monopolise our lives, all while looking down his nose at us. I’m sick of it.”
“Enough,” Ben warns, his eyes pinned on Nessa Anne.
“You say you have time for us, Lance, and yet the only time you show your face is when there are pound signs flashing at the start or end of the conversation. You don’t care about us. You don’t give a shit. You’re just bitter and twisted over something you know you’d have been a part of if you hadn’t been swanning off at university for all those years.” She stands from the table and walks from the room, the front door slamming a second later.
Blind rage simmers on the surface of my control, a heaviness on my chest the only thing keeping it at bay.
A heaviness andher.
Both of Scarlet’s hands now fiercely grasp my hand under the table, blindly grazing the cuticle on my thumb.
I sit and stare at my half-eaten plate of food, wondering why I thought coming here, or worse, bringing her here, was a good idea.
My mother breaks the silence. The silence andme. “Go home, Lance. Dinner’s ruined, and I don’t need Nessa Anne going off in one of her strops.”
Scarlet’s whole body flinches at my mother’s words, her head snapping toward the woman at the head of the table as if ready to go to war.
I look down at her, embarrassed beyond words. “Let’s go.”
Scarlet
Lance leads me out of the house with calculated steps, his head down and angled from view. I follow him in disbelief, processing the words thrown across the dining table.
His mum told him to go home.
He didn’t even say goodbye.
My family, no matter how dysfunctional, is the one thing that means more to me than anything else. Even when Mase is being a complete ass, I know he loves me. From what I’ve seen, family means just as much to Lance—maybe more than I even know.
And I know, can visibly see, that the words his sister voiced have struck a chord somewhere deep inside of him.
He knocked on his own front door.
