Page 64 of Start A War (Saint View Psychos)

BLISS

I’d been planning to let myself mope on Tuesday. Too much had happened the day before, between the Vincent and Caleb showdown, an emergency trip to the hospital, losing my job, and then running into War. I needed a minute to process.

But at 8:00 a.m., the doors to my suite flew open and Nichelle strode in, peering at me beneath the pile of bedclothes. “You’re still in bed? You do know what time it is, don’t you?”

“I am, and I do.”

“You’re late for work.”

“I got fired.”

Nichelle’s pretty blue eyes went round. “You what? You can’t get fired!”

Despite the fact I was normally very patient with Nichelle, and even liked her most of the time, it was early, and she was screechy, and that plus an overall grumpy mood made me punchy. “I realize you’ve never been fired, since you’ve never worked a day in your life, but the general way it goes is the person getting fired doesn’t actually get a say in it. So yes, I can get fired.”

“David,” Nichelle yelled out into the hallway.

I stared at her. “What are you doing? Tattling on me? I’m twenty-five, Nichelle.”

She was only five years older. Not that she was acting like it.

I sighed. This was my fault for still living at home. But I hadn’t wanted to rock the boat. All young women in my social circles lived at home until they were married. It was very old-fashioned, and many acted as if they just really believed in the sweet tradition of it all.

The reality was, so many of the women in my circles, like Nichelle, had no ambition other than marrying a rich man who would keep them in the lifestyle their fathers had brought them up in. To move out of home, they’d need a job. A very well-paying one if they were to keep up with the rest of their friends.

It was why I still lived at home. Even working full-time, I couldn’t afford the lifestyle without the help of my father.

He arrived in the doorway, still dressed in his pajamas, his hair rumpled with sleep. He was slightly out of breath, like he’d actually run at the banshee-pitched shouting of his wife. “What is it?”

“Bethany-Melissa got fired from the daycare center.”

Dad’s grip on the door handle tightened. “Oh.”

Nichelle stared at him. “Oh? That’s all you’re going to say? David, I know she’s your little princess, but if you haven’t noticed, our bank accounts are dry. We don’t have the money to pay for her if she can’t pay for herself.”

Apparently, Nichelle was feeling punchy this morning too.

She spun back around to face me. “Don’t be thinking you’re just going to lie around here all day and sponge off us.”

“Nichelle,” my father warned. “Bethany-Melissa has never just laid around all day.”

“Unlike some other people in this house,” I murmured.

Nichelle shot me a dirty look. “I’m a stay-at-home parent. It’s a very busy job.”

I rolled my eyes. Me and the nanny were more parents to Everett and Verity than she’d been. She was just lucky, now that there was no money to pay a nanny, the two kids were in school from eight ’til four.

My father pinched the bridge of his nose. “Please don’t argue. I don’t have the energy for it. Nichelle, shouldn’t the kids be on their way to school?”

She huffed off, and my father gazed down at me. “I don’t like to put pressure on you, but you do know how precarious our situation is at the moment, don’t you? When you marry Caleb, things will turn around for all of us, but until then…”

I sat up, pulling the sheet up around me. I hated the stress lines that had appeared on his face in the last six months, since everything had gone downhill for him. “You don’t need to worry about me. I already got another job.”

“You did? Where? Another childcare center?” He perched on the end of my bed, his eyes filled with pride. “I should have known. You’ve always been so responsible.”

The day Nash and Axel had brought me to this house with a tiny Barbie backpack filled with the few things I owned, Axel had crouched so we were eye to eye. His big hands had gripped my skinny little shoulders, and he’d held me tight. “Be good, Bliss. Do whatever they tell you to do. Don’t argue, okay? This is your big break. Your chance to get the hell out of Saint View. Don’t give them any reason to send you back, okay? Promise me.”

I would have done anything Axel asked of me. If he’d asked me to swallow razor blades or wrestle crocodiles, I would have done it without question. He and Nash were my big brothers and the only heroes I had.

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