Page 117 of That Girl is Trouble

I rake my fingers through my hair and let out a shaky sigh. I only make it about a minute into my explanation before she interjects.

“Let me just… make sure I’m understanding,” she says, an octave too high. “For seven months”—her words come out slow but articulated—“you’ve been at some trashy strip club. In Eden Hills. Am I getting that right, Kat?”

The nervousness flipping in my stomach quickly dissolves, and a new, angry kind of feeling erupts in its place. I take a breath. “I’m sure you could have phrased that differently.”

“Okay,” she says icily. “What words would you like me to use, then?”

I notch my teeth into my bottom lip, shoving down the verbal attack I’m dying to lay out on her. We do this. We say terrible things. We make up. But the words hang between us long after we’ve said our apologies. “I think I’d like you to refrain from using the word trashy.”

She hums in response, moving her hand to her mouth as if she, too, is trying hard not to let something slip that she can’t take back. “Sounds like the right word to me.”

“Babe,” Graves says as he slides his hand to the small of her back. He can feel it too, the storm coming, the part where we go out of our way to hurt each other.

Triss shakes her head. “How the hell did I get this so wrong? Was I seriously that terrible at taking care of you?”

I let out a loud groan. “Why do you do that? Every single time I do something you deem a fuck-up, you make it about you. This has nothing to do with you. Stop taking responsibility for everything I do and then crying about it when you don’t like how shit pans out.”

“I am responsible for you, Kat. I have been since Dad—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Since Dad died. But the second you had the chance, you ran. I was alone and—”

“And you resent me for that. You always have.”

Graves clears his throat. “Maybe if you two just… let the other finish—”

“I don’t resent you!” I shout. Tears sting my eyes and my face heats in anger. “You resent you. I’m trying to say that I was alone, but I figured out my shit. I survived. I got through it in my own way, and despite what you might think, I turned out just fine.”

“Just fine? Taking your clothes off for money isn’t fine! And the lies, Kat? How many times did I call you? How many times did I ask you to come home? And you were less than thirty minutes away? Don’t even get me started on Axel fucking Donovan.”

“He’s a good man, B,” Graves says.

“He’s almost fifteen years older than her!”

It makes sense, her anger. And I prepared for it. “You can be mad,” I tell her. “You should be mad. I get it, okay? But this wasn’t about you. It was about me. And Jesse. And doing what I needed to do to figure out how to survive all that shit. I watched him die, Triss. That doesn’t just go away, okay? I just… I just needed a fucking second to breathe.”

Triss looks away, and the room falls quiet. I cringe under its weight. I wish she’d yell or scream or fucking say something.

Finally, she says, “You should go.”

I scoff. “Seriously? Just like that?”

Graves interjects. “It’s like Axe said, Kitty. Maybe just some time, yeah? Let her… wrap her head around things.”

“Fine,” I say, snatching my keys off the counter. “But I want to remind you two that I’m an adult. You’re not my parents, regardless of how much you like to pretend to be. And Triss? For the record, I didn’t need you to raise me. I did that all on my own. I didn’t need you to be Mom. I needed you to be my sister. Just my sister.”

Grabbing my jacket, I storm out and head outside. It isn’t until I’m in the parking lot that I realize the keys I’m fiddling with aren’t mine. The car key hanging from the ring reads Toyota. I stop in my tracks and scan the lot, eyeing Preacher’s old beige truck. That’ll work.

I’m in the driver’s seat when I dial Axe. It goes straight to voice mail. Hot tears threaten to escape, and my heart beats hard in my chest. Hands on the steering wheel, I breathe deep. Five deep breaths. This will be fine. She’s just angry. It’ll all be fine.

The passenger side door rips open the moment I turn the ignition, and I jump. “Preacher.”

Tilting his head, he takes a long drag of his smoke and holds it in, then says, “Hey, Kitty. What, uh, what do you think you’re doing?”

“I need your truck.”

Smoke wraps around him as he exhales. He’s quiet for a beat, and then he flicks his cigarette onto the asphalt, hops in, and slams the door. “All right. Where we goin’?”

“You think you’re coming with me?”

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