Page 166 of Falling in Reverse

“Yeah,” she replies quietly, probably because I’m standing right here. “He wants to go to a movie.”

“You say yes?” Bay tries to sound excited. I’m assuming Peter is a crush of her sister’s or something.

“I was going to ask you first if it was okay.”

“Of course, it is. Just…” Bay scratches the edge of her hairline before continuing with, “We’ll talk more about it when we get home. We can go through my closet, and you can pick something to wear.”

“Can I wear your leather jacket?”

Bay immediately groans out loud. “Ugh, my prized possession, though? Can’t you pick anything else?”

“You never wear it,” Ellie retorts. “And I’ll take good care of it.”

“Girl, you’ll get buttery popcorn on it, and I’ll have to kill you.”

“I’m not going to get butter on it. I’m not a kid.” They stare at each other, waiting for a few seconds for the other to back down. “C’mon, Bay. I promise to take good care of it.”

“Yeah, c’mon, Bay,” I urge, clearly not in this conversation, but her sister sounds like a good kid. “Share.”

“Why don’t you be quiet?” she mutters under her breath.

“Oh, you mean like you?” I hold out my hand for Bay’s sister. “I’m Cairo, Bay’s sister. What’s your name?”

I obviously know it, but I don’t want to give away how I’ve looked Bay up, and her family. Plus, it’s only polite to allow her to introduce herself.

“Her name is you’re never going to see her again,” Bay replies instead for her with a foreboding warning.

“Ellie.” She returns my hand gesture gently, overlooking her sister's comment.

“It’s nice to meet you.” I flick my victorious gleam at Bay before landing back to Ellie. “Your sister and I go way back so I apologize for the back-and-forth.”

“You do?” Ellie inquires with a lifted brow.

“Oh, yeah. We met in jail.”

Her blue eyes bulge then. “Jail?”

“Are you serious?” Bay complains through a whine, lightly hitting my bicep with her fist.

“How?” Ellie solicits, sounding intrigued and excited as she steps closer. Then she steals a glance at her older sister. “You went to jail, Bay?”

“God…yeah”—she brings her fingers up to one temple— “but it was…it’s a long story. I didn’t get in trouble.”

“But…what did Mom do?”

Bay isn’t so quick to answer that question, alluding that she’s suddenly reluctant to talk about it.

My mom hates me.

I remember her saying that clear as day. How her face fell, and disappointment filled her eyes. No child should ever endure that, and it made me wonder why she’d feel that way.

“She was happy to see me home,” Bay replies, but there’s no truth behind those words, forging me to believe it was the exact opposite.

Levi doesn’t take long to show up, and when he sees Reeve and I, he doesn’t utter a word or form a glare. He only pulls the two girls into his chest and squeezes them tightly to him.

His weakness.

FORTY-TWO

---