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Lucky

"Lee, sweetheart, just take a moment here –"

"I want him out of my house, Kyle," she hissed, eyes locked on me, glaring at me like I was a fucking parasite. And hell, maybe I was. "Now!"

"You can't just kick him out, Mom," Hope was screaming. "You don’t know the full story."

"I know enough," Lee snapped. "Enough to know that I want him out of my house and far away from my family."

"Mom!"

"Please leave my house."

"Mom, you can't throw him out."

"I've invited too many wolves in sheep's clothing into this house, and it turns out that you're just another. I want you to go."

"Let's all just hold the fuck up here," Kyle interrupted. Turning to his wife, he said, "Princess, come and take a walk with me and calm down. There's some stuff going on here that you need to know –"

"Don’t," Lee snapped, turning her glare on her husband. "You must all think I'm stupid. Well, I'm not. I see things too, Kyle. Like the marks on our daughter's face since she started messing around with him. Every bad thing that's happened lately? He's always in the middle. Always. And the lies? Jordan in the hospital? Thesecrets?" Lee shook her head. "I'm not going to allow myself to be sucked into another web of lies." She turned back to me and pointed a shaky finger in my direction. "You have one minute to get off my property. One second over that, and I'm calling the police."

This wasn’t the first time I'd been told I wasn’t welcome in somebody's home.

But it was the first time that it hurt.

And it hurt something fierce.

"Jesus Christ, Lee!" Kyle was shouting, but I shook my head, letting him know there was no point.

"Don’t worry about it, Kyle," I told him, ignoring the biting pain of betrayal. "I'm already gone, man."

I faced Lee then. "I'm sorry for what I've done, but I'm not sorry for loving your daughter," I told her, before turning around and heading for the door.

A small hand caught a hold of mine, and then Hope was beside me –standing right there beside me. "If you put him out, then you're putting me out, too," she warned, tightening her hold on my hand. "I'm dead serious here, Mom. If he walks out that door, I'm going with him and I'm not coming back."

I couldn’t do this.

I couldn’t fucking stand here and cause this friction between them all.

And I wasn’t going to force her into a position where she had to choose between her family and me.

"You should talk to your parents, sweetheart." Freeing my hand from hers, I pressed a kiss to her forehead and said, "I'll wait in the truck," before leaving the room.

****

Hope

"I don’t know what to say to you," Mom said, her voice little more than a whisper. "I don't understand this, Hope." Her hands were shaking as she slowly pushed her chair back and stood up. "I love you. I do. I love you more than you'll ever know. But this?" She whispered the words like they were tainted. "What you've been doing iswrong."

"Lee," Dad called out, his voice almost pained as he looked between his wife and his daughter.

"Don’t, Kyle," Mom whispered, physically flinching away from his pleading tone. "Please don’t try to defend this behavior to me."

"Mom!" I barked, and the word came out like a choked sob. "Mom."

She looked down at me with the saddest gray eyed expression, and that's when I saw it.

For the first time in my life, I could see the disappointment in my mother's eyes as she looked at me like she didn’t know me.

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