“I actually just came by to drop off some homework for Cora.” He reached into his backpack and handed me a few packets of paper. “You know. So you don’t fall behind on your education.”
He hit the last word a little extra hard, and I saw something glint in his hazel eyes as his gaze flicked to my face quickly, but otherwise, he gave no indication that he’d heard or been bothered by the snobby undertones in my mom’s voice.
“See you at school, Cora.”
With a dip of his chin, Bishop turned and left.
Mom stood there and watched him walk all the way down the cracked front path and all the way across the street to his house. I thought the entire display was a little much, and more than a little uncalled for. When Bishop was gone and out of sight, and Mom had securely closed—and obnoxiously locked—the door, I turned to her with an angry glare.
“Mom, what the hell? That was uncalled for.”
Her eyebrows shot up, and a surprised little noise fell from her lips. Now that I thought about it, I didn’t think I’d ever truly talked back to her or Dad. Not once.
There had always been “yes, sirs” and “no, ma’ams” and even when I had pushed back a little, the words had never come out harshly. But she’d just insulted and run off someone I considered a friend… or a… something.
That was unacceptable. Especially when Bishop was the one who’d probably saved her life.
“Excuse me?” Mom’s voice was soft.
“That was uncalled for,” I repeated. “He’s a friend from school, and he was just coming by to drop off homework. He’s helping me. He wasn’t doing anything wrong.”
“He looks like trouble.”
I had never seen my mother turn her nose up at someone before, but I definitely saw the upturn in the way she looked away from me and back to the door—like she expected Bishop to just barrel on through it and wreak havoc. I openly rolled my eyes. He was trouble, but she didn’t know that, and she definitely didn’t know why or how.
“He is also the reason you were able to get to the hospital so fast after your accident,” I said bluntly, my voice growing hard. “So maybe next time he comes around, you should thank him.”
Mom’s eyes flashed with surprise and something like shame. But instead of softening, her expression just grew harder.
“I don’t want a boy like that around here or around you, Cordelia. I mean it.”
I had never snuck out of my house before.
Not when we were still living on the “good side” of Baltimore; not even when I was invited to college parties by guys at my school who were looking to get an in and a head start on mingling.
But there was a first time for everything.
In the few months since I’d started at Slateview, I had experienced more firsts than I had in the entire year before that. And tonight was another one as I opened up my bedroom window and slipped out of it.
Mom was safely asleep; all the sleeping pills we’d had in the house had been flushed down the toilet by Bishop when he’d cleaned up that first night while she was still in the hospital. It made me a little wary about sneaking out—we were closer to each other’s rooms in this house than in our old, sprawling mansion, and that meant that without sleep aids, she could very easily hear me.
On second thought, I don’t care if she hears me.
Landing smoothly on my feet below my window, I carefully closed it enough so that no animals or anything would be able to get in, but it wouldn’t be hard for me to slip back through when the time came. For a split second, I wondered what it would be like if I just stayed out all night and didn’t come back until morning, striding in through the front door to a mother who thought her daughter was comfortably still in bed.
Pushing those thoughts away, I crept across the street to Bishop’s house. His foster father was gone again—the man was seriously never home.
The streetlamps flickered above, casting a faded yellow over the cracked sidewalk as I stepped on it. A few moments later, I was knocking on Bishop’s door. As I waited, I had a vivid recollection of the last time I had popped over to his place unexpectedly, and I chewed on my lip, glad as hell that things were better this time around.
He answered the door—a beer in his hand. I raised a brow as he raised his.
“Well, well. Hello, Princess.”
I smirked, pushing inside.
“Hey. Can I crash here for a little?”
“Can you crash here? Picking up the lingo, I see.”