Page 89 of Lipstick Kiss

“How is she now?” Luke asked.

“Like you care,” she snarled.

“I don’t care. I hate her. But I don’t wish her dead.”

Jennifer narrowed her eyes, leaning forward from the waist.

“Where’s the tin?” she asked quietly.

Is that all she cared about?

“Fuck the tin. Is my aunt okay?”

“Luke Turner,” she snapped.

Luke let out a strangled groan, looking to the skies for help.

“You’re as bad as her for asking questions to which you already know the answer. You know what I said to her because she told you. You also know I said those words a few days ago. So if she is suffering from angina, clogged arteries or a heart attack, that’s on her. That’s her guilty conscience plaguing her.”

“Her conscience is clean,” Jennifer shouted.

“The fuck it is. I remember it differently. I remember what you did too. How’s your conscience these days? How do you sleep at night?” he sneered.

Jennifer didn’t answer. She huffed and moved her mouth around like she was chewing a lemon. Luke knew she didn’t have a clean conscience.

“If she dies, it will be on you. Just like your dad’s death is on you,” Jennifer barked out.

“Jennifer, that’s enough,” Archer said, coming to stand next to Luke.

Jason flanked him on the other side.

Jennifer looked at each of us in turn, her mood sourer as the seconds ticked by. Luke couldn’t believe she had the balls to call him out on his dad’s death. It’s a line his aunt had used often. Why did Jennifer care? She was the hired help. He couldn’t see her in the same light as Maggie and Bailey. They had both taken care of him when he needed it and sometimes when he didn’t. He could make his own breakfast, but he found something about sitting in Turner Hall kitchens comforting. With his brothers standing next to him and his soon-to-be wife behind him, the strength they gave him straightened his spine and filled him with courage.

“I didn’t kill my dad, Jennifer. This place did. If anyone is to blame, it’s Cynthia and her selfishness. Do you remember the last time I told her she was selfish? Do you? The day I accused her of getting rid of my mother?” Luke bellowed.

Luke knew the moment Jennifer remembered what he was talking about. She took a step back and tightened the belt on her long bottle green cardigan, resting the cane against her hip. She was no longer as feeble as she first made out.

Clearing her throat, she said, “I do what she says.”

Luke was shocked she could twist what happened and excuse herself from any blame. It begged the question, what did Cynthia have on her. Or, what did Jennifer have on Cynthia that she had the audacity to call out Luke on perceived bullying.

He was done with this woman and the secret he’d buried so deep it had begun to fester. It wasn’t until the split second that he thought he would lose Freya to the water that he knew. Luke knew it wasn’t watching his father die in front of him that caused him pain. It was the incident in the library.

The shame ate away at him.

“You watched her beat me with her cane,” Luke yelled. “You guarded the door when she struck me over and over again.” Luke drew a breath, trying to keep his temperament even. “I was a child.”

Archer and Jason both looked at him, but Luke was so angry, hurt, and in pain, at the memory, he couldn’t look at them. Slowly he unbuttoned his shirt. Once the last one was undone, he shrugged it off and let it drop to the floor.

Jennifer paled, trying not to look at his torso, yet Luke watched as her eyes went to the area.

“Do you like my tattoos?” he barked out. “Do you notice they’re only on one side of my body? The side of my body that was at the mercy of her beating? When I was curled up on the floor, holding my arm up to take the blows. Do you remember the sharp edge of the bottom of the cane scratched down my side, ripping my shirt?”

Jennifer’s eyes welled up, but Luke didn’t care if she had feelings about that day.

“Do you?” Luke shouted.

“You should go,” Jason said to Jennifer.

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