“Don’t call me princess.” I glare up at him wishing I was the Wicked Witch of the West and could curse him with my magic, turn him into a snail, but a big fat one whose body was swollen inside its shell and whose snotty undercarriage was all watery and unable to stick to the ground so he was constantly rolling down hills.
“Christ, what’s gotten into you? I thought since your stepfather was out of the picture, you and I could get together.”
“My step—how do you know about that?” I ask.
But the answer is obvious.
My mom.
She doesn’t care about me, but she wants to manage my life. I honestly do not understand her.
“Harry, do you think my mom’s hot?”
Harry looks slightly shocked at my question but recovers quickly. “Sure.” He shrugs. “She’s a milf.”
“You know she has a thing for younger guys, right?”
I’m feeling maleficent. The burning hatred inside me for her is expanding, ignited by Harry’s presence. If Baron was here, he’d be in deep shit. And that makes me even angrier. Daddy would want to protect me. But he can’t. All because of my vindictive, horrible mother.
Harry’s face twists into a corneous smile. “I did not know that.”
“Yeah, you should go in and talk to her. I bet she’d totally be down to fuck you.”
Even Harry’s cool demeanor slips slightly at that comment. “Say what?”
“Yeah. You have my permission to go for it, big boy,” I tell him coldly as I stand up. All I want to do is sit miserably in the rain, and he has to ruin that for me. “Because I’m sure as hell not going to let you touch me.”
He shouts something at me as I head inside, but I’m not listening, and the door closes behind me, completely drowning him out. My mom is still lounging on the couch but watching some kind of stupid reality show with a second bottle of champagne in her hand, the other lying on the floor.
I don’t even bother kicking off my shoes or parka. Dripping wet, I march straight through the living room to the stairs.
“There’s another young stud outside,” I tell her. “I don’t want him, but maybe you do.”
Fire in my heart, I march straight upstairs and into my bathroom. The cold has finally gotten to me, and I strip down and climb into the shower and turn the water on as hot as it will go. It stings at first, but I quickly get used to it. A fresh wave of tears falls from my face as I collapse onto the floor and pull my knees up to my chest.
If only Baron was here…he’d know what to do.
He’d protect me from this. From my mother. From Harry. From life.
He’d be ruthless about it too. Take no prisoners. Take no shit. But now he’s tied up behind a bunch of false charges completely engineered by my spiteful mother. It’s Shakespearean what she’s done to him. How could you do that? Pretend to love someone only to stab them in the back later?
Baron may have been a monster to me at first, but at least he was honest. He never lied to me or made me think he was something that he wasn’t, and then he let me discover the real him.
And now he’s gone, and it’s over.
I slam my fist into the tile wall, again searching for the physical pain to provide me with a moment’s relief from my sorrow. I have to do something. But what? The cops have him, and even if he manages to get out of jail until the trial, there’s no way they’ll let him around my mom or me. And then what if he’s actually found guilty? My mom’s clearly a great actress. It won’t be hard for her to get on the stand and lie her ass off.
No. I need to do something.
Anything.
I need evidence. Evidence that she lied about him. But how am I supposed to get that?
Suddenly, a light bulb bursts in my mind.
Out of nowhere, like a blessing from the universe, an idea pops into existence.
Slowly, a smile creeps over my face. It just might work, and if it does, Daddy will be so proud of me.
All of our problems will be gone in one fell swoop, and I’ll be his forever.
A deep, deep feeling swells within me. A feeling so intense I don’t even want to acknowledge it lest it slip away like a drop of rain on the window glass.
Now, with a burning flame of determination inside me, I shut off the shower and quickly dry off. Wiping away the haze on the mirror, I stare at myself for a long time as I summon all my determination and will power and squeeze it into a tiny, dense ball of passion.
“You can do this, Pixie,” I tell myself with a deep breath. “You can. You can.”
I take my time drying off and getting dressed. I even moisturize my skin and put a dab of perfume on each wrist as though I’m on my way to a job interview or something. Then, I slowly make my way downstairs. I pass my mom on the way; she’s all but passed out on the couch, so I leave her there for the time being and continue down into the basement.
I make my way past Baron’s sports cars to the utility closet. Thankfully, it’s not locked, so I tug the door open and look inside. I’m not that great with computers, but I’m able to make out what I was looking for. An even broader smile on my face, I head back upstairs.
“Hey!” I blurt out, kicking the couch as hard as I can. My mom wakes with a start and tips the champagne bottle all over her chest.
“Jesus Christ, Pixie! What the hell?”
“Don’t use the Lord’s name in vain, Mom,” I say, just to piss her off. It works. She frowns at me as she uses
