Leaning across the table to where my dad was sitting grinning, I hissed, “What does he mean?”
His reaction got him added to the revenge list. Why? Because he just chuckled. “Oh, you’ll see.”
Tapping my hand, Sadie said loud enough for the rest of the table to hear, “They all seem so nice when you first meet them, but they’re all evil.”
“I know,” I sighed, rubbing my face with both hands, wishing I could just disappear.
Then she said something that shocked the hell out of me and made me burst out laughing. “Damn if I don’t love that. You’re a lucky girl.”Later that evening…
I usually loved being at home, alone and in my own space with just my dogs and cat, but tonight I felt antsy. I’d had a shower, shaved, done a deep conditioning treatment on my hair so I didn’t look like Simba, I’d moisturized… Hell, I’d even done one of those face sheet mask things. Could I switch my brain off to sleep? Nope.
Strangely enough, my thoughts weren’t focused on the footage from the bar. With my history, people would probably assume it was because I was self-conscious. What was being shown, though, was funny and didn’t give away any deep secrets, so it wasn’t hitting any of my triggers.
Instead, I was thinking about Parker.
Was I enough for him? Could I help him on his road to getting past what’d happened to him? Would he get there and then find someone better for him? And about one hundred what if questions.
It was driving me crazy, and I just didn’t have the answers to it because only time would tell. Was I willing to open myself up to the possibility of getting hurt, though? Normally, no, but with Parker, it was yes. I’d known him for so long that I knew he was worth all of the what ifs. I also knew deep down that he wouldn’t do anything to hurt me purposefully and that if he wanted to move on, he’d treat me with respect—which was more than could be said for most.
What was now worrying me was: where was his stepmom? Did she know where he was? Why wasn’t she in prison? What if she was doing it to someone else? And, why the fuck hadn’t his dad done anything about it?
Those thoughts left me feeling pissed off, so I got out of bed and walked downstairs to make a cup of chamomile tea. I was going to do something I had big issues with—I was going to do an internet search on both of them. I wanted to know what they did, where they were, see if I could find out any information on them to give me an idea of what to do.
Yeah, I wanted revenge for Parker and Dale. Was I the kind of person who could do that? No, but if I had an idea that’d make an impact on them in some way, I could probably find it in myself to do it. Actually, fuck that. I wasn’t talking about hurting them physically or doing anything significant, but even just a fuck you would be something at this point.
I was just looking through the search results for Chantal Knight, curled up on my couch with the cup of steaming hot tea lifted to my lips to take a mouthful of, when the sound of a train horn roared through the silence of my house, and someone knocked on the floor to ceiling window beside the door, scaring the fuck out of me.
I’m sure most people will understand why I did what I did next.
In this day and age, the expense and inconvenience of water damage to our phones make us overly protective of them. We spend a fortune on screen protectors and cases just to prevent them from getting damaged. So, at that moment, when the cup went flying into the air, I did everything I could to protect my cell phone, leaving me open to the freshly boiled water from my beverage.
The biggest irony was: I’d upgraded my phone three months ago to the iPhone 11 Pro plus.
Yeah, the phone was fucking waterproof.NineParkerI had to remind myself why I’d become a doctor sometimes when viruses and bugs hit. Covering for sick doctors when I was hoping to spend some time with Ari wasn’t fun. For some reason, tonight had been busier than we’d expected, so I was only just getting a break.
Or, at least, I had been getting a break.
“Parker, we’ve got a burn patient who’s just come in,” one of the nurses called, stopping me as I got to the break room.
Sighing, I turned and walked back along the hallway I’d just come down, picking up the form from the nurses’ station.
“Liquid burns to the chest. No blistering…” I muttered, reading the information to myself as I walked to cubicle five.