Page 78 of Restrained

And like that, I'm truly free.

33

HAYDEN

Lola loves me. And I love her.

How the fuck did this happen?

It wasn’t long ago I was just an angry, lonely guy trying to find out if his sister was worth a damn. And now I'm sitting in the same coffee shop where I met Lola and am about to sit down with Penelope for the first time since the DNA test came back.

I see Penelope walk in, and I stand from my seat as she lifts black sunglasses from her eyes and rests them on top of her head, still eyeing me with suspicion as she makes her coffee order.

I would have paid, but something tells me not to push it.

When they hand her the cup, she walks over, staring at me for a long moment before she says anything. “Are you a crazy person?”

“What?” The question shouldn’t make me flinch, but it does.

“You heard me. She was insane. Completely. And hateful. And horrible.”

“I’m aware.” There was no one on this earth I hated more than my mother, not even my father. She was my mother. She was supposed to protect me, and she fed me to the wolf.

“So?”

“So what?” Neither of us have taken a seat as she continues to stare at me, her chest rising and falling. I’m almost afraid she’s going to collapse.

Penelope is definitely intense.

“Are you insane? Do you have some sort of diabolical plan?”

“No.” I place my hand over my heart. “I get why you don’t trust me. I wouldn’t trust me either. It’s in our nature not to.”

She scoffs, folding her arms. “Our nature. Jesus.”

“We may not have grown up in the same place, but we grew up similarly.”

“How did you start with her and end up here?” She gestures to my suit.

I motion to the table. “Sit down with me, and I'll tell you anything you want to know.”

She watches me with a guarded caution, but she relents and takes a seat. I follow, sitting across from her.

“I moved in with my grandmother—my father’s mother. She couldn’t stand him and hadn’t talked to him for years, but she took me in. She was good to me until she died.”

“Were you young?”

I nod my head as she takes a sip of coffee. I notice her hand shaking. “Yes, but I was old enough to get a job and become emancipated. I worked my ass of and went to college where I met my mentor.”

Her dark eyebrow raises. “Is that code for a secret older lover?”

I laugh and then shake my head. “He was a sixty-year-old professor at K-State.”

“You went to K-State?”

I nod. “You too?”

She half smiles. “Yes.” Her shoulders relax, and she places the coffee on the table in front of her. “He could have still been a lover.”

---