Callan Reed is the finest specimen of a boy ever created. That’s just fact.
Too bad he hates me.
Sometime during our childhood, he decided our friendship didn’t mean anything to him. We went from best friends, the three of us being the three musketeers, to him despising my existence. In all the years since then, he’s given me the brush-off. When we’re at school, he pretends he doesn’t know me. When we’re out in public, he gives me the cold shoulder. And because I’m an idiot who enjoys pain, his brashness toward me only makes me want him more.
We always want the things we can’t have, don’t we?
I heave a deep sigh. “Crap. Sorry, Rosie. I was daydreaming, and I must’ve tuned you out.”
Rosalind crosses her room with a roll of her eyes, perching next to me on her reading nook in front of the window. She looks down pointedly at her shirtless brother, who is still playing basketball.
“Mm-hmm. You were daydreaming, all right.”
I nudge her on the arm, feigning disgust. “Gross. Stop it. I wasn’t even looking at him.”
Rose laughs, a gut belly laugh that prompts her to toss her head back. “Oh, Daisy. I don’t know why you try to lie about your feelings for my brother when they’re so obvious.”
I narrow my eyes. “The only feeling I have toward your brother is indifference. I can’t stand him.”
She purses her lips, trying to hide her smile. “That’s not indifference.”
“Okay, fine. I hate him. Happy now?”
Her smirk spreads. “You know what they say about love and hate, don’t you?”
I shoot her a glare. “Please stop it. I feel nothing for him. And he feels nothing for me. End of story.”
She shakes her head, obviously not believing a word coming out of my mouth. Damn her. She knows me too well. “I can’t stand the two of you sometimes,” she mumbles as she pushes to her feet. She props her hands on her hips. “How about this, we get pizza somewhere far, far away from my fugly sibling, and then you finally listen to my damn story?”
I smile, despite myself. “You mean, I’m going to have to relisten to this story all over again?” I tease.
“Don’t push it, Casillas. You’re on thin ice.”
She yanks me up by my arm, and I follow her as my laughter echoes around us. The lightness dissipates the second we step outside, not because Callan is out here; it’s because she is.
My entire body stiffens when I spot my cousin, Skylar, practically dry-humping Callan. I’m being dramatic, but she might as well be. I know my cousin, and I know how vindictive she can be. She’s one of those girls that thrives on everyone else’s misery.
“Cal!” she whines in her annoying voice as she tries to dribble, rubbing against him in the process. “I need more help. Come show me.”
With his hands on his hips, Cal watches Sky pretend she doesn’t know how to dribble a damn basketball. It’s not that fucking hard. His chest is still glistening with sweat, and if I’m not mistaken, he looks bored by her antics. But then again, he always has that look on his face. He adopted it a few years back, and it hasn’t changed since. This new version of Callan? I can’t stand him. He’s cold and mean. Gone are his beautiful smiles and the soft twinkle in his gray eyes. Instead, they’ve been replaced by a hardness I can’t comprehend.
As if noticing our presence, Sky glances at me, and I watch as the flare of evil lights in her eyes. It’s like watching the gates of hell open and seeing the flames eat up her irises. She knows exactly what she’s doing. She doesn’t care about learning how to dribble. Hell, just a few days ago, she said she thought all sports were stupid. She’s doing this because of me. Because she knows how I feel about Callan. I just wish it wasn’t so obvious to her. But that’s just what Skylar does. She seeks out your weakness, and she always finds a way to exploit it. She’s been doing it for the past two years, ever since she moved in with us.
I didn’t know much about her, other than that she was my mom’s half-sister’s daughter. I never met my aunt. Her relationship with my mother was strained because of drugs. She was an addict, and that eventually killed her.
My mom tells me to try to understand where my cousin is coming from, and believe me, I have. I know Skylar hasn’t had an easy life. Hell, I even get why she does half the stuff she does, but does it hurt any less?
Nope.
I don’t know what it’s like to go your entire life without the love of a father because my father is quite literally the best dad on this earth. I don’t know what it’s like to have a mother who loves drugs more than me because my mother is the most loving and selfless woman on the planet. I’ve never been uprooted from foster home to foster home. I’ve never had to share a room with five other children I wasn’t related to. I didn’t have the life Skylar had, and I won’t even pretend I understand what any of that must’ve been like for her.
After my aunt’s overdose, my mother spoke to my father and stepped in, making the tough, but necessary, decision to adopt Skylar into our family. It was a difficult transition because I knew next to nothing about her. I’d only met her once or twice over the years, and each encounter wasn’t one I wanted to revisit. She was crass, mean, and vindictive. It was like she saw the life I had, the family I was born into, and hated me for it. Blamed me for her problems. Even though she was only a year older than me, it was like she had lived through just about everything. Her past had made her cynical and jealous. I was the naïve little cousin, and she was the wise one. She thought I was an idiot who didn’t know how the real world worked while I tried to see the best in people. We were opposites in all the ways that mattered.
“Oh, hey, Daisy.” She smirks, inching closer to Cal. I covertly grit my back teeth together, hating their proximity. “Guess who’s teaching me how to play basketball? Care to join?” She raises a brow in challenge because she knows exactly what my answer is going to be.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Rosalind mumbles under her breath. There isn’t a person she hates more than Skylar.
My chest squeezes like it’s in a vise when Skylar sidles up to Callan’s side and fits herself against him as though they’re a couple. The sight makes me sick to my stomach. So much so, I place a trembling hand over my abdomen to hold down my nausea.
Despite my better judgment, I glance up at Cal to see what he’s thinking and immediately wish I hadn’t. He’s watching me, but it’s not with the same look he used to watch me with when we were friends. Now, it’s with a look akin to disgust. His ice gray-blue eyes are like fire on my skin—it’s such a contradiction. It’s almost as if the sight of me makes him sick. The real blow to the gut is the fact that he hasn’t stepped away from my cousin. Not even once. I want him to push her away, to brush her off the same way he brushes me off.
I hurriedly avert my gaze, looking at anything but them standing so close to one another. My heart feels heavy in my chest. There’s an icy drizzle down the center that I can’t seem to shake, but I steel myself. I throw on that façade I wear so well as of late.
“Hard pass.” My voice comes out strong and controlled. And to anyone else, it sounds like I’m telling the truth. My gaze sweeps over both of them one last time before I force myself to turn my back on them. The last thing I see is my cousin rolling her eyes and the muscle in Cal’s jaw clenching with annoyance.