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“Oh, so I get to hear their bullshit for the rest of my life? Great.”
“Yeah, but it changes. You’ll learn not to care what they think.”
“I don’t care now.”
He raised a brow at her.
She shrugged. “Much.”
“Uh-huh.” He tugged at one of her short curls. “Are they the reason for this?”
She ducked away and ran a hand over her head. “Hey, you don’t know what it’s like.”
“Nah, I get it, kid. More than you know. I grew up the same way. The outcast, the poor kid, the troublemaker.”
She blinked in shock, and some of the hostility drained out of her. “Was your mom evil like mine? I don’t mean Anna,” she added quickly. “Anna’s amazing. Annoying but amazing. I mean my real—” She stopped. “Well, I guess she wasn’t even my real mom, was she? I don’t know what to call her. Jessica? The woman who raised me? If you could call it raising. Whatever. She was evil. She killed my real parents. I know Ky is technically still alive, which is why Zak and Anna can’t adopt me, but he’s practically brain-dead because of some infection or… I don’t know. They don’t think he’ll wake up. Do you think he’ll wake up? If he does, I’ll have to go with him, and I don’t want to. Yeah, he’s my real dad, and I’m sure he’s great, but I don’t know him. If he doesn’t wake up, but he doesn’t die, then I’m stuck in foster care until the system forces me out into some transitional group home. I can’t leave Poppy. And I don’t want to leave Zak and Anna. But we don’t have a home anymore, so maybe they want me to leave. Maybe it would be easier for them to take care of Poppy without me around fucking things up with my bad attitude. Do you think I should leave?”
She finally paused to suck in a shaking breath, and Donovan exhaled softly with relief. He practically had whiplash from trying to follow the girl’s line of thinking and decided to answer her first question, which was less of a landmine than the others.
“It wasn’t my mom,” he said.
She impatiently wiped at her face with her sleeves and the heavy makeup around her eyes smeared. “What?”
“The evil one in my family? It wasn’t my mom. My dad was an asshole who dealt with his shitty life choices by drinking himself stupid and beating on his wife and kid.”
“Oh.” She swallowed hard, but at least she seemed calmer now. “What happened to him?”
“He’s dead. He got drunk and fell off his boat.”
“Good.”
“Yeah. It made life easier for Mom and me.”
Bella released an explosive sigh, and her shoulders dropped, heavy with more weight than a teenager should ever have to bear. “See, and I thought getting away from Jessica would make life easier for Poppy and me. Poppy’s doing so good. She’s thriving. For her, it’s like nothing ever happened. Anna and Zak are Mom and Dad, and it’s just… like, in her mind, that’s how it always was. I don’t think she remembers our life before.”
“That’s good, right? You should want that for her. She doesn’t need to remember.”
“I know, but… it was just the two of us against the world for so long. I miss that sometimes.”
What did he say to that? He was so far out of his league with this conversation. “Don’t you think you should be telling Anna this and not me?”
She gave a half-hearted shrug. “You’re easier to talk to. You get it. You’re like me.”
No, he wasn’t like her, but she was like Darcy. He saw so many similarities between them it made his heart ache. They had the same scrappy toughness, the same take-no-prisoners attitude. The difference was Darcy never had a chance, while Bella had a strong support system of people who loved her and only wanted the best for her—even if she didn’t realize it.
He released a pent-up breath and squeezed the back of his neck to ease the tension creeping up into his busted skull. “All right, kid. Give me your phone.”
Her eyes narrowed in suspicion, but she slid the phone from her back pocket and passed it to him.
He tapped in his number and saved it to her contacts before handing it back. “You can call anytime, okay? I’ll always answer. But you need to tell Zak and Anna how you’re feeling. Tell them about the mean girls at school—everything.”
Bella rolled her lip between her teeth. “Are you going to tell them?”
“Only if you don’t.” He held out a fist. “Deal?”
She sighed in the way only teenagers could, somehow imbuing that single exhale with irritation and oh-my-God-you’re-so-lame.
But then she rolled her eyes and bumped his fist with hers. “Fine. Deal.”
