Page 51 of The Last Good Man

“A boyfriend?”

I set my beer down andcrossmy arms over my chest.

“What boyfriend?” I mutter.

She breathes a quiet chuckle.

“Please don’t start. I have enough problems withher.”

“Who’s her boyfriend?” I insist.

“Samuel.”

My eyebrows go up in disbelief.

“Samuel is her boyfriend,” I murmur, still processing the news. “He’s like a brother to her. They grew up together. Since when is he her boyfriend?”

She shrugs, finishing her food, less concerned with my little sister’s boyfriend than I am.

“He kissed herin front ofthe school, and your father saw them. He gave her an earful and scared the poor guy off. She was livid and swore she wouldn’t talk to her father again.”

She pauses for a moment.

“Like father, like daughter,” she mutters. “You know him. He’s not exactly a smooth talker.”

“Now he’s concerned with her well-being?” I rasp, pissed.

She rolls her eyes in response before removing the lid of the pastry box and transferring a slice of strawberry cheesecake to her plate.

“You know him. He’s an idiot.”

I sure do.

I wanted to kill the guy more than once.

I’m still not sure I won’t do it someday.

“What did he say to her?”

“He banned her from seeing him again, which isn’t only stupidbut alsoimpossible. They go to the same school. He lives across the street. Tim is nuts,” she says mainly to herself. “I tried to reason with him, but he made no sense. Later,hecame to me and gave me the money. He said he was in a rush. I don’t know…” she says thoughtfully, chewing on her dessert. “Something’s going on in his life. Not that I care. It’s his life, and his new family, but I don’t want him to take it out on Rylee. Whatever’s going on is his business… I don’t want you to go to jail because of him again.”

I’m about to say something when she continues.

“I can’t believe he’s still screwing with our lives.”

My retort becomes irrelevant.

Besides, she’s right.

Tim London has made our lives a living hell for as long as I can remember, whether we lived under the same roof or not.

Reckless is his middle name. And recklessness couldn’t have been paired with something worse than an easily bruised ego and a violent temperament.

It took my mother a while to break up with him, file for divorce, and start from scratch.

Life hasn’t been easy, but we’ve made it.

Spending two years in jail because I punched him in the face multiple times and almost cracked his skull open was worth itin the end.

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