Page 18 of A Dose of Pretty Poison

Heard you got Isaac kicked off the team. Just wanted to say thanks.

Putting it away, I grab my bag and head out. But by the time I get to my truck, my phone dings, and a response for Cam shows on the screen.

Didn’t do it for you.

It’s meant to be a slap in the face, but it only makes my grin widen because he and I both know he’s completely full of shit.

I PULL INTO MYdriveway and turn off my truck. The whole ride home, I kept thinking about the way practice has been without Isaac there, now that I know it’s permanent. And there really has been a shift. He’s not being an asshole or putting people down. We all get along, and that’s exactly what you want in a team.

Once Cam and I get back on track, we’ll be fucking unstoppable.

Everything feels like it’s starting to fall into place. I’ve got the girl of my dreams. The biggest pain in my ass is gone. And my best friend might not be talking to me right now, but this was the sign I needed. The one that tells me it’ll be all right.

Maybe I can have both after all.

I’m in such a good mood that there’s a pep in my step as I hop up onto the porch. But the second I open the door, I know there’s something wrong. My mom is sitting in the living room with Devin, and I don’t know if it’s my sister’s tear-stained cheeks or the grave look on my mom’s face, but my stomach sinks.

“What’s going on?” I ask carefully.

Mom smiles sadly, and it blasts me right back to the day she finally told us that Dad wasn’t coming back. “Come sit down, H.”

My brows furrow as I walk around the couch and sit next to Devin. She leans against me, the way she used to when we were kids and she needed someone she could rely on. I know whatever it is, it can’t be good.

“Lawrence Gent stopped by today,” Mom tells me, her voice cracking as she speaks.

That’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. Lawrence is my dad’s best friend, or at leastwasthe last I saw him. But that doesn’t explain why he would be coming here. Unless…fuck.

“Say it,” I tell her. “I need to hear the words.”

She takes a deep breath, her eyes full of sympathy. “Your father is gone. He passed away.”

WHEN I WAS Akid, I used to hear my parents arguing through the walls. My dad would come home drunk again, and my mom would scream at him about what a piece of shit he was being. That he was wasting all their money away on booze.

You’re going to drink yourself to death and leave these kids without a father,she would say.

Never knew my mother was a psychic. Though he left us without a father long before he finally drank himself into liver failure.

I remember being so confused when he left. I think I spent weeks going over everything in my head, wondering what I did wrong or what I could’ve done differently to make him stay. As I got older, I realized it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with himself. He was a selfish prick who chose alcohol over his own flesh and blood. But man, as a fifteen-year-old kid, I really beat myself up over it.

Even as years passed and I accepted the fact that he wasn’t coming back, there were still times where I’d think about it. I imagined what I would say if he came walking through the door, or if he called me up. I never told my mom, but I used to check the mailbox every day for the two weeks around my birthday—hoping a card from him would show up.

It never did.

And now, it never will.

I sit on the porch, a lit cigarette in my hand, as the door swings open and Devin storms out. She marches right past me and over to her car, peeling out of the driveway like a bat out of hell. I glance back at the door to see my mom standing here, a hopeless expression on her face.

“She’ll be okay,” I assure her to ease her nerves. “Her emotions are just running a little wild right now.”

I know because mine are, too.

I don’t think there’s ever been a time where I was so conflicted. Not even during the push and pull with Laiken. There’s a part of me that wants to be sad. It’s that fifteen-year-old kid tucked away, who still wishes for his family to be whole again when he blows out his birthday candles. But I can’t find it in me to be.

He doesn’tdeservefor me to be upset. Or to even care that he’s gone. He was so fucking absent in my life that he’s been dead for six months, and the only reason Mom found out is because his best friend came by to let her know. He said his assets are out of probate, and he needs Devin and me to come by his office and pick up our inheritance checks.

According to what Mom told us, he hit it big at some casino about a year ago and he used it to drink himself into the grave. He died before he could spend it all, though, and being his kids—at least biologically—it goes to us by default.

Joke’s on him because I don’t fucking want it.

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