Page 25 of Pool Girl - An Instalove Possessive Age Gap

Not tonight.

I smile, laughing nervously. “Yeah, uh… Will said you called. I took a tumble but I only got wet, nothing serious,” I lie.

“Then he helped out with the rest of the round. We didn’t get behind in the end, got everybody done. Even Ms. Perkins,” I chime, trying to sound upbeat, but noticing I sound more like a lunatic.

My teeth are almost chattering with nerves by the time my dad answers.

“Hmmm. Yeah, Ms. Perkins,” he says in a low tone, cryptically.

I shoot a glance at Will, who looks like he’s about to say something when that nurse clears her throat.

She stands in the doorway, tapping her foot with a hand on her hip, checking her watch.

“Alright, you two. I think that’ quite enough excitement for one night,” she says, giving Will an icy look.

“I told you, no more than one visitor and not for more than a few minutes.”

We both stay quiet as she crosses the floor, checking my dad’s monitor while she has a finger on his pulse, she tsks to herself.

“Please,” she says, turning to us both again. “Come back tomorrow and call before you do,” she says dismissively.

Will doesn’t seem to need a second reminder, and while the nurse blocks my dad’s view of us, he grabs me by the elbow and pulls me out into the hall.

I try to say something, but he shakes his head firmly, almost dragging me along the hallway until we’re clear of the ward.Chapter EighteenWillGuy doesn’t waste his breath, plus I know I don’t have long to visit anyway.

“It was Vanessa Perkins,” he says knowingly, sending a jolt of guilt through my gut.

I know Guy well enough to know what he’s thinking and he knows me just the same.

There’s no need for us to play games.

“I thought I could trust you, with Piper,” he says coldly, turning away when I meet his eyes with mine.

“Just like old times,” he muses bitterly to himself.

I know what’s coming. He always brings it up when things are bad for him.

“You went to the rich family, got the college degree, the overseas holidays, the tuition,” he starts to remind me.

I want to interrupt him, to tell him for the thousandth time that I made my own way in the world, being fostered to a well to do family had nothing to do with it.

But he’ll never see it that way. Guy was never fostered like I was, and although we spent so many years growing up in the same state-run home for boys, he only left once he was legally old enough.

I tried. I did do all I could to make it easier for him, both in the home and for his whole life afterward. But it’s something he’s never gotten over. That I had a family of sorts and he never did.

That I made it in the world and he only ever made it as a pool guy, and even that was only with my help.

And now?

Now he knows I’ve claimed his only daughter. The only family he ever had, lost to me, the best friend that always seems to get everything that Guy never can.

That’s the pity speech anyway, the gist of it. Lord knows I’ve heard it enough over the years, it’s the one thing that keeps Guy and me from catching up more often.

Every time he comes to do the pools, I try to make sure I’m not there or make like I’m busy.

He hates coming to my house. I know he does.

But I know he loves me, like a brother. And like brothers, we might have disagreements, even passionate hate for some things about each other, but we’ll always be there for one another.

That’s just what boys do.

“What about Vanessa Perkins?” I ask, hearing how weak my own voice sounds in the face of the truth I know is coming.

“She called me once she came to and noticed you two had left. She’d wiped herself out on margaritas once she saw you and Piper. She really thought she stood a chance with you. You, Will! You of all people!”

He stifles a laugh, which turns into a hacking cough that he mutes by sheer force of his own will.

“So you know,” I tell him, not telling him everything though.

Kissing Piper behind a tree while we’re cleaning pools, that’s one thing.

I’m not sure I feel like telling him everything right now, not until I know his heart can take it.

But he knows.

We never had real parents, but we always knew what the other was thinking. Always knew when the other was lying, even if it was only to protect the other’s feelings.

“I’ve paid your bill, for the hospital, you don’t need to worry about that,” I tell him softly, hoping to change the subject but knowing I’ve just made it worse.

“Of course you have!” he spits out, sitting up and making a fist I know is meant for me when I get close enough.

---