Page 67 of Shortcake
From what I could ascertain, Conrad admitted that he likes me. He definitely wants to have sex with me. But I’m not the kind of girl he’d ever fall in love with…. That is, if he were to ever let himself fall in love, which it sounds like he wouldn’t.
I wasn’t used to being the romantic in the room. Usually, it was everyone else trying to convince me of true love, not the other way around.
Classic daddy issues, Dante had told me during our breakup fight.
Of course I had daddy issues. With a dad that took off when we were kids, how could I not? Add to that our recent discovery that not only was he getting married… apparently,again, since he’d been married multiple times since our mom. Throw in a surprise secret daughter that none of us knew about and you had the perfect recipe for fucked up trauma issues.
I wasn’t sure I had it in me to meet Hope. Would it be like reliving the moment my dad left us all over again? I watched as my dad walked out on my mom leaving her with four kids to raise alone. And a massive amount of debt.
While he went on to make another family and forget about us entirely.
Was this why I dated older men? Was it some sick, twisted effort to reclaim the father I’d never been able to hold down in my life?
I tucked those thoughts away and paused to brush my hair from my face with my forearm.
Out in the foyer, I heard a lot of commotion. Gus barked that happy, yippy sound he made when he was meeting someone new. Lots of footsteps.
“Good bones,” a deep voice said from somewhere in the hallway.
Finn. What thehellwas Finn doing here?
Conrad’s house was big. Significantly bigger than anywhere I’d ever lived before and the acoustics were such that you couldn’t hear someone in the room next to you, let alone down the hallway. I could barely make out some words from the next sentence.
“...chance of that happening here?” Liam. That was definitely Liam’s quiet, broody voice.
I tiptoed toward the end of the hall and peered out from behind the corner just in time to catch the throng of my family barreling down the hallway.
“We’ll find her,” Neil grumbled as I watched my mom and Conrad shake hands.
Chloe and Elaina saw me first and squealed, running over to hug me. They each took turns inspecting my jaw.
“Oh my God,” Elaina said. “I thought the guys were exaggerating when they said you got punched!”
Chloe reached into her purse and pulled out a tube of Kat Von D concealer. “Here. Use this. It works wonders. Just set it with some powder and poof…” she snapped her fingers to emphasize her point. “No one will even see that nasty bruise.”
“Um… thanks?” I met Haylee’s eyes over their shoulders and she gave me an apologetic shrug.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t close with Chloe and Elaina. At one point, we’d all been really good friends in high school. But then there was drama with my brothers, and Elaina became the town manager, and everything went to hell.
We were better now. But even as much as I liked them, I wasn’t sure we’d ever be besties again. First of all, I didn’t use words likebestie. And they did. And omg. Notoh my god, but they actually spelled out oh-em-gee instead of just saying the words.
And even though Haylee was chipper and happy, she was nothing compared to Chloe. Chloe was like a Disney princess. On crack. Getting head.
I’d never met anyone so goddamn happy in my life.
“Oh! It’s Eleanor!” Chloe squealed, right on cue, as though to prove my point. She rushed past me, bending down to greet Eleanor, nose to nose in her cage.
Haylee’s face also split into a grin and she rushed over to say hi to Eleanor, too. Eleanor had sort of been hers before I adopted her.
Or rather, her Aunt Meryl’s.
“Hey darling girl,” Haylee said, pulling out a ziploc of baby carrots. “I brought you some treats.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but what are you guys all doing here? Weren’t we supposed to meet at Mom’s house?”
Haylee sighed and gave me her most pathetic puppy dog eyes. “Your mom and I tried to stop them, I swear. But we were outnumbered.”
Finn was the first of my brothers into the kitchen and he leaned down to give me a quick hug. “The whole point of us cooking for mom is so that she doesn’t have to do anything. Including cleaning up after.”
