Page 146 of Cherry Beats

“You don’t, Mum. You never have. You’re riding on the memories of your youth, and in a way, you take it out on me. You want to go back to the beginning so you can get out of this life, too, and I’m not going to sit around and be what you want me to be just to make your ego feel better.”

She was raging now, the colour rising to her cheeks in fury. “Howdareyou?” She took a step forward, her hand twisting around the door handle to hold herself upright. “Who in the hell do you think you are?”

“I’m the girl who has loved her family all her life, and who got betrayed by them the minute a reporter came sniffing along.”

“I didn’t know they were there. I didn’t know anyone was taking pictures when we were out in the street.”

I tilted my head to one side and studied her. “I think we both know you invited them here.”

The fact that I knew the truth made her pale instantly.

“You mattered more than I did when you made that decision, and now it’s up to me to walk away from anything poisonous in my life—anything that isn’t truly on my side. I won’t let you, Dad, or Freddie hurt me again, and if you try, I need you to know I won’t care. I’ll be out there, living my life, with or without Presley, doing my thing and becoming who I need to become. And if you can’t be happy for me, then I guess I’ll be seeing you around.”

She blinked once, her mouth hanging open.

“I still love all of you. I just don’t like you anymore.”

Digging into my pocket, I pulled out the spare key to their home, and I dropped it on the step between us. Standing tall again, I exhaled heavily and turned to walk away.

Halfway down the path, I stopped to glance over my shoulder, making eye contact with this stranger I loved for the very last time.

“Oh, and, Mum?” Her nostrils flared, and she pressed her lips together. “Tell Freddie he’s a dick from me, too.”

Then I left, walking out of the gate and down the street with a new sense of calm in my stride as my cherry Doc Martens helped me glide to a new existence.

* * *

“How did it go?” Bourbon asked from behind the bar. It was still early in the day, and we’d arranged to meet at BB’s at the crack of dawn to check in on one another.

“I stood my ground, which is more than I thought I would do when I came face to face with her.”

“It kills me that those people are your family,” Molly said from her position next to Bourbon.

I was leaning over the bar, my body weight resting on my forearms when I looked up at her. “They’re not bad, just blinkered.”

“You still won’t let anyone say anything bad about them, will you?”

“What’s the point? It makes me feel like shit. Like I’m dishonouring who I should be as a person rather than what I feel for them. And it doesn’t magically transform them into people I want to be around. Plus, I have my own family. People I chose. People I love. I have you guys.”

Bourbon and Molly looked at each other with a knowing expression on their faces. The two of them were standing the same, their arms folded across their chest and their legs crossed at the ankle as they leaned against the back shelf.

“You said she’d say that,” Bourbon told Molly.

“You owe me a tenner.”

“You owe me for all those damn broken bottles.”

“Don’t start with me now. You’re not my dad, Dad.”

I laughed as I watched them both, another wave of relief washing over me at knowing that if I did go away, and if I did drift off around the world to discover myself and be selfish again, they at least had each other.

“I’m going to miss this place.”

They turned my way, their smiles fading. I hadn’t even realised I’d said those words aloud until it was too late.

“You don’t have to go anywhere, dolly,” Bourbon told me.

“I do. Hollings Hill is all I’ve ever known. The minute I stepped out of it and went to all these new places in Europe, I forgot who I was and how to act. I became some mute version of myself, always worried she was about to get dropped from Cloud Nine. I need to see more and not feel guilty for living.”

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