Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 79488 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 318(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79488 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 318(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
I wasn’t going to go there today, though. Nope. I was mostly doing well pretending my dad didn’t exist and that my new self-imposed money problems wouldn’t become an issue. Because I wasn’t going to let myself take any more cash from him, wasn’t going to use my credit cards or let him pay me off. His money had always been able to get him what he wanted, but it wouldn’t with me.
“We have like, no food,” Ford said from the kitchen. “What’s up with that? We’re growing boys. I need some chips or something.” Ford came back in and plopped down on the couch. The guy could eat all day, every day. I should probably do some shopping, but I was trying to preserve the cash I had in my account.
I had no idea what the hell I was going to do. My tuition and housing were paid through the year, but what about the next one? What about random shit that popped up along the way? All I knew was, I’d figure it out because I sure wasn’t having anything to do with Montgomery Langley, not until I absolutely had to. Not after finding out I had a brother, Perry, a year younger than me. A brother he’d known about but never told us…and that little bombshell leading to the fact that since then, he’d been cheating on my mom, again. That he and his new girlfriend had a one-year-old daughter. And then he left Mom to be with them.
“Hello? You in there, Langley?” Collins flicked my ear.
“What the fuck?”
“You were spacing out,” Collins replied.
Aaand, definitely time to change the subject. I wasn’t going to risk them asking what was up, but the truth was, I didn’t know that they would anyway. It wasn’t something we did. They didn’t pay attention to shit like that, and I liked it that way.
“Gimme that.” I pulled the controller out of Collins’s hand. “Let me show you assholes how it’s done.”
As I’d hoped, they immediately forgot about me getting lost in my head, instead talking shit while I kicked their asses at the game.
Watty, whose real last name was Watson, said, “Speaking of pricks, was Asshole Bartender giving you shit again?” That was their nickname for Braxton, so clearly, I wasn’t the only one who thought he was a dick.
“Yeah, what the fuck is his problem?” Ford added.
I shrugged. “Nothin’. It’s just a thing.” I wasn’t going to tell them I liked it more than I should.
We chilled for a couple of hours. When my phone buzzed on the coffee table, Dad lighting up on the screen, I bit back a groan and scooped up my cell. Watty and Collins were currently playing. Ford was looking in the fridge and cabinets again like he expected food to have magically appeared since the last time he looked. “Be right back,” I told them.
They didn’t pay me much attention as I slipped out the door and into the quad area in Liberty Court. There were barbecue grills, hammocks, picnic tables, and a fountain between the white, Spanish-style houses matching the school building. I eyed the cactus and palm trees in the area.
When I didn’t answer soon enough, he called right back. When Montgomery Langley phoned, you picked up. I’d always respected that about him, the way he’d commanded everyone’s attention. Now it made my skin crawl.
“Hold on,” I said, walking out of the quad and around a building. I didn’t want to risk anyone hearing me. It was early evening, the sun already having gone down, the air a cool midfifties, which was basically the coolest it ever got here. I loved that about Southern California. “What?” I asked.
“I don’t know who you think you are, Tyson, but it has never been okay to talk to me that way, and it never will be.”
“You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to dictate how I spend my life anymore.” Not after twenty-one years of lying to me. Lying to Mom.
“What’s going on between me and your mother has nothing to do with you.”
“The fuck it doesn’t!” I said too loudly, a few people walking by looking my way. “I have a brother and a sister you never told me about! One of them is twenty years old! Hell, for all I know, there could be more. I respected you. I thought you loved me, but you were lying the whole time. You threw fake-affection and money at me while paying off my brother’s mom so no one would know about him. I’m sure you did the same with your new girlfriend before she made you come clean.” His whole life, he’d been able to get away with whatever he wanted by offering to write another check. Hell, even I’d ignored signs that he might not be who I thought he was, and every time he’d distract me with some kind of gift. I wasn’t doing that anymore.