The Not-Outcast(61)

“I’m going to make myself sparse for a bit.”

He was going down the hallway, and he stepped inside the bedroom just as my door swung open.

Melanie burst into the room, and I could smell the booze in her backdraft. “You’re fucked. I’m fucked. We’re all fucked.”

I opened my mouth… and nothing. I had nothing.

I closed it and waited.

Melanie went to my fridge, opened it, and stared for thirty full seconds. “You have no booze.”

She rotated, her head turning to stare at me. Her fingers were curled over the top of the fridge door. “Why don’t you have any booze?”

“I went back on my meds, remember?”

“Right.” She closed the door and went to my sugar container. Lifting the lid, she pulled out a container of tequila.

My mouth dropped. “You had that there this whole time?”

She snorted, going back to the fridge and pulling out a container of orange juice. “You don’t eat sugar. It’s my own personal stash.”

I watched, feeling like I should be dumbfounded, but not being dumbfounded at all. I was more impressed, as she poured a hefty amount of tequila into a glass. The OJ was next, and she swished it before popping some ice in the glass. Once done, she turned, hitched her hip to the counter and gave me a head tilt.

“I was just dumped, and your dad’s a dickhead.”

The dumping part got my attention first. “Wait. What? You were dumped? What happened?”

“Cassie and I were having dinner tonight when she brought up your dad.”

“My dad?”

I was not following this conversation, at all.

She snorted, cursing at the same time. “Your fucking dad, whom I want to drop a shit on because he’s a major fucking asshole. You remember mentioning that Dean proposed a charity gala at Come Our Way?”

Vaguely, because I felt bad nixing it so quick.

That was days ago.

Wait— “He didn’t?!”

“He did.” The drink was swirled around once, and she took a long drag. “And I know this because Cassie asked me about Deek Fausten. Ask me how Cassie knew about your dad. Do it. Ask me.”

I didn’t want to. So, I didn’t.

Melanie didn’t need the extra prompting. Her eyes were almost feral by now, and she was showing me her teeth. “That fucker had the balls to call the Mustangs. Cassie informed me that she’d been asked why Deek Fausten, who apparently has some connections to the Mustangs’ owners, why he’d think going to a charity event for Come Our Way would be a conflict of interest and why that had anything to do with Cut?”

I—was staggered.

It took a beat, and my brain never needed to take a beat, but it did this time.

Deek. My dad.

Mustangs.

Come Our Way.

Conflict of interest.

Oh, no.

No, no, no.

No.

Everything good that I’d been feeling, from Cut coming over, from Cut being here, from kissing Cut, from being able to touch him and knowing he wanted me to touch him, from all of it—was wiped clean because my mind caught up.

My stomach churned.

I wanted to throw up.

Vomit rose up in my throat, and I clamped it down.

My dad.

Not even.

I didn’t think of him as my dad, not back when I was a kid, not when I was a guest in his home, not when he came to my mom’s funeral, and not even when he paid for college.

My mom overdosed and I stayed away.

The truth was that I’d been fine with that, but Deek never fought for me.

He hadn’t wanted me. It made sense to me now as an adult. It hadn’t back then.

Natalie hadn’t wanted me either. She didn’t want me in the same house as her sons, breathing their same air. Me. The homeless kid. The crazy kid. The kid with the coked-out mother who decided she was done going to rehab, and never went again until she overdosed.

A stigma was put on me, and it was still there. I felt it.

Dean went ahead with the charity gala, without our say-so, and he approached all those ‘high-end’ folks whom he said he was going to approach. That meant the Mustangs’ team. That meant my father, I guess.

I hadn’t known.

And though their names hadn’t been brought up, I knew who else would be invited to that party. Natalie and her husband. Dean would approach her husband because he was a lawyer for a local big-name firm. And he’d approach because he would do his homework, and he would learn who was connected to the Mustangs, and Chad was connected, and then he’d go from there.

Damn Dean.

Damn him so much.

Melanie had been talking, but she fell silent until now. “Cheyenne?”

A door opened from down the hallway.

A muted footstep on the carpet, and I lifted my head.

Cut stood there. He had heard everything.

I asked, “Did you know?”

He nodded. “Yeah, just today.”

Another pang, this time it cut straight down my middle.

They asked him. The guy I thought I had loved since I first saw him. The guy whom I actually did love since I first saw him.

I asked, my voice cracking, “What’d you say?”

His eyes grew fierce. His jaw hardened. “I lied. I told my boss that it must be because of Chad.”