“Don’t let her play,” the boy says to the other one.
“I don’t wanna play with you anyway,” I say, reaching out and shoving the boy with the blue eyes.
He growls and shoves me back, pushing me down onto my butt. They laugh at me before they turn around and walk off.
It’s me! The girl in the picture is me! I remember now. My father had a get-together with his friends, and I was the only girl there, and the boys wouldn’t let me play their stupid game.
“I don’t wanna play with her,” the little boy says with his lips pulled back.
“Cole, that’s not very nice,” the pretty blonde says, bending down to our level.
“So, she poured my juice out, Momma,” he whines.
“That’s because you threw dirt at me,” I say.
“Cole Ethan Reynolds,” she scolds. “You tell her you’re sorry right now.”
He crosses his arms over his chest. “Sorry,” he growls.
She pats his back and nods her head at him. “Now you play nice.”
He watches her walk off, and then he turns back to face me. “I’m not sorry.”
“You will be,” I tell him.
His blue eyes narrow on me. “No, I won’t.” He yanks the Barbie out of my hand and rips her head off and then throws her head down into the dirt, stepping on it. Then he tosses her body out to the grass. “Have fun playing with that now.”
I place the picture in my back pocket with a smile on my face. Even back then, Cole Reynolds was a pain in my ass.
“I found Hippo!” Lilly says excitedly, bouncing back into the closet. She hugs him tightly to her chest, wearing a big smile on her face.
“Ready to go?” I ask.
She nods happily and reaches out for me. I pick her up in my arms and kiss her soft cheek. “Let’s get going then, princess.”
I pull up to the clubhouse and see Cole’s car is parked outside. Lilly and I walk in hand in hand, and he stands from the couch. “Hello, girls,” he says, holding his arms out. Lilly runs to him, and he picks her up, giving him a hug.
“I thought I lost Hippo,” she tells him.
“What? I had put him on your bed,” he tells her with a frown.
She nods. “I found him on the floor.”
“He must have fallen off.”
Lilly hugs him as I look him over. Earlier, he was dressed in blue jeans and a white long-sleeve t-shirt. Now he’s dressed in a short sleeve black t-shirt and his black jeans. His hair is damp as if he just got out of the shower.
He sets her down, and his eyes meet mine. “Ready to go?” he asks, stepping into me.
My eyes search him for a hint of where he went or what he did. But his stare gives nothing away. He never does. “If you are,” I answer.
He nods. “I am.”
Then he takes my hand, and I look down at them to see his knuckles busted and dried blood. “Cole …”
“Shh,” he whispers against my lips. His eyes go back and forth between mine. “What did I tell you, sweetheart?”
I frown. What did he tell me? “When?”
He smiles softly at me. “That time I came and saw you and you were swimming in the pool.”
“That no one would ever touch me again,” I say, remembering it.
He nods, sliding a hand in my hair. “That was a promise I’ll never break, Austin.” Then he kisses me gently.
When he pulls away, I pull the picture out of my back pocket. I hold it against my chest so he can’t see it just yet. “I went through the box in your closet.”
His eyes meet mine, and he tilts his head in confusion. “Box …?”
“The one hiding in the corner. And I found something.”
“What is it?”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
COLE
SHE TURNS THE picture around, and I look down at it to see Deke, Eli, Bennett, and me. We were young. No older than seven. Maybe eight. There’s a girl in the picture. We’re all smiling, and Deke is laughing. The little girl looks pissed. She has her brown hair up in a ponytail, and her green eyes are narrowed in anger at the camera.
I look up at her and then back down at the picture. “Who …?” My eyes shoot back to hers, and she smiles at me.
I turn around, walking away from the girl that my mommy is making me play with.
We don’t want her here.
I had to play with her yesterday too without my friends, and we swam. She wouldn’t stop talking about dolls.
I fist my hands. My mommy made me apologize. But I’m not sorry. She wasted my juice. And she ripped Deke’s shirt when she yanked on it earlier while we played tag. Celeste made us play with her.
“Cole?” Deke calls out to me from the swing set.
I go to walk over to him, but I’m shoved to the ground. “Hey!” I turn over onto my back to look up at the girl.
She points her finger down at me. “You ruined my doll!” she screams.
“Austin?” my daddy’s best friend, Bruce, hollers at her as he comes over to us. “Did you just shove him?”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “He ruined my Barbie.” She huffs.
He lets out a growl and then grabs her by her arm. She cries out, and he lowers his face down to hers. He says something to her and then yanks her away. She softly cries as he drags her back into the house.
“That was you.” I say, looking at her wide-eyed.
She nods once, smiling. “That was me. You owe me a Barbie, by the way.”
I step into her and cup her cheek. The smile drops off her face. She was there in my closet all those years. I never looked at those pictures. My mother had them in her and my father’s closet. After she died, he threw all her stuff out so his whores wouldn’t see it, but I kept that box. I never got into it because it was too painful to see them. There are some of my mom and me, and I hated that I would never have any to show to Lilly of them together. I almost burned them so many times. “I owe you a lot of things.” I say honestly, and she frowns. Bruce had yanked her into the house that day, and I never saw her again. He had shipped her back to her mom’s. Back then, I was thankful. We hated her. She was a girl. We thought they had cooties and couldn’t play with us. But what if I hadn’t gotten her in trouble? Would she have stayed with Bruce and Celeste? If so, her mother’s sick boyfriend would have never touched her. Hit her. She would have found out about Lilly eventually, and I would have had her all along.
“Cole?” She gets my attention. I blink. “I’m sorry if you’re mad that I went through your box …”
“I’m not mad.” Far from it. I lean in and kiss her.
_______________
Things were different after I quit the group. Austin and I seemed to be in our own little world all the time. We spent every moment we could together and with Lilly. She and Becky brought Lilly to our meets. Blanche cut back, and Austin took her to school and picked her up.
We hung all over each other at school, but that was nothing new. It was just no longer for show. It was because we just wanted to touch one another. Kiss one another. She spent nights at my father’s house. He never said a word about it and neither did Celeste. I think she’s going through some midlife crisis. Even at her young age. Kellan’s drinking a lot and fucking his way through the high school. So my guess is that whatever they had is on the rocks.