Page 52 of Should Have Been Me

My mother’s exasperated voice carried through the phone. “Because!” she cried out in affront. “We don’t have any here, and on the off chance you and your boyfriend would like a glass while you’re enjoying the meal I slaved over all day, I want to be prepared.”

As I sputtered, Vaughn chuckled quietly, telling me he’d heard every word the psychotic Lorene Prescott had just spouted.

I closed my eyes and counted to ten, praying for strength as I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Mom, we aren’t coming over for dinner tonight.”

“Sure you are,” she chirped cheerfully. “We discussed it ages ago.”

I flipped through my mental files to see if I could place that conversation and came up empty. “I remember you demanding I bring him over, but I never agreed to anything, and we certainly didn’t put anything on the schedule.”

That was it, my mother had officially lost it. I was going to have to call Dalton and discuss having her committed. Dad could join her if he insisted on putting up a fuss.

“Now, I know I raised my sweet, thoughtful, kind-hearted daughter better than to blow off a family obligation. Especially when I spent all day slaving over a hot stove. And in this heat!”

“You have air conditioning,” I deadpanned. “And it’s been in the high seventies all day. With a constant breeze!”

“Oh well, worth a shot,” she chirped. “See you at seven! Don’t forget the wine.” With that, she hung up so I wouldn’t be able to say no.

“Oh my God,” I breathed, staring down at my phone in bewilderment. “My mom is certifiable.”

“Better crazy than evil.”

I gave him a flat look. “You say that now, but you haven’t met Lorene in person—something you’ll apparently be doing later this evening. When you’ll be forced to attend family dinner. Because she won’t take no for an answer, and if one or both of us don’t show, she’ll track us down. Damn woman is like a bloodhound.”

He walked toward me, all confidence and swagger, bending to bury his face in my neck again. Like it belonged there. “I’m looking forward to it.”

I scowled when he pulled back. “Liar.”

He grinned unrepentantly. “Okay, so that’s a bit of a stretch, but I’ll gladly suffer through it for you.”

“Careful, I might swoon right out of this bed,” I deadpanned to cover up the fact I was actually giddy at the thought of him meeting my family. Even if it did feel rushed.

Yanking the covers from my grip, he bared my body to him and took his time looking me over before climbing on top of me. “The way I see it, we have a couple hours to kill before we have to be at your parents’ house. Either you can keep grumbling about it, or you can let me make you come as many times as possible between now and when you have to start getting ready.” He lifted a brow in challenge. “What’s it going to be?”

The answer was simple. “Option number two, please.”

27

VAUGHN

Iwould have been lying if I said my stomach wasn’t tangled up in knots. I’d never met a girlfriend’s parents before. Hell, by the definition, I’d never really had a girlfriend, not in the way most people would consider them. I’d never felt for another woman what I felt for Jolie.

I’d given up the idea of feeling something like this a long time ago. Once I was back under my mother’s roof, it was easier not to form any lasting attachments. If she found out there was someone I was interested in, it would be a daily lecture on how all romantic entanglements did was lead a person off the course of the life they were meant to have. I’d hear endless complaints of how miserable she’d been when she was married to my father and, in her words, living a domestic life as a wife and mother, two things she’d never intended to be.

Hearing things like that enough had a serious way of damaging a kid’s psyche. Constant ridicule and reminders she’d never wanted me in the first damn place had gone a long way in making me who I was today. Well, who I was before Jolie, at least. In the beginning I’d asked her if she was so unhappy being a mother, why had she bothered coming to take me from Hershel at all? Why not let me stay? I couldn’t recall her ever giving me a definitive answer, but I eventually realized it was her way of maintaining control over both of us. She might not have wanted to be a wife or a mother, but she sure as hell wanted to control us both.

She thought that by giving birth to me, she had the right to use me when it came to furthering her own career, and that was exactly what she’d done. To the outside world, she might have looked like a loving single mother doing her best, but I knew better. If there wasn’t a need for a photo op, I remained at whatever private school she’d shipped me off to until I was eventually old enough to leave on my own. By then, the damage had been done.

As for Hershel, all I could figure was that, even though she didn’t love him, she also didn’t want to see him happy and thriving. What better way to make that a reality than by plucking his kid away from him?

It was ironic really, how similar Leighton was to Estelle. It was hard to believe that a woman as nurturing and caring as Millicent had raised her. I suppose that was what happened when you raised a child to be a spoiled, entitled brat. No amount of good intentions could undo the damage.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Jolie asked for the millionth time as I pulled my G-Wagon in front of the well-maintained brick ranch house Jolie had guided me to. She told me during the drive over it was the same house she’d grown up in. It was where she and her brother had been raised, and the walls were full of happy memories from her years there. “I understand if you want to throw the car in drive and take off. I’ll make an excuse. In fact, I’ll take the blame.”

Unbuckling my seatbelt, I twisted in my seat and shot my hand out, gripping her gently by the back of the neck and pulling her across the console so I could fuse my mouth with hers. She didn’t hesitate to open on a greedy moan, and I didn’t wait to give her a taste of me, sliding my tongue inside her mouth so it could dance with hers.

Her breathing was labored and her eyes were heavy when I pulled back a handful of seconds later. “This will be fine, you’ll see.”

I wasn’t quite sure I believed that, but if it helped put her at ease, I was more than happy to lie.

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