Page 45 of Catching Sparkles

After a few minutes of watching him coach her, her confidence with the ball growing before my eyes, I was basically swooning. I’d actually had no idea he was so good with kids. It was so cute I could have melted into a puddle in the grass. I finally forced myself to look away so he wouldn’t feel like I was staring at him like a creep, choking down the rest of my cupcake despite my jumpy stomach, and tossing the wrapper in the trash.

As I made my way back over to where people were seated, talking and laughing, a familiar voice entered my ears and stopped me cold.

“Well, you’re too busy to answer your mom’s phone calls, but I guess you ain’t too busy to prance around showing off for everybody else, huh?”

Stomach-churning dread, the kind that I’d felt almost constantly in my childhood, the reason I’d spent so many nights at the Kensingtons’, or needed to hide out to scribble in my diary in the sanctuary of the abandoned house on Mulberry. The man who’d given me my eye color and basically nothing else.

Hayward Austin.

My mother was at his side, looking meek and cowed like always. Like she was always just waiting for him to snap at her, which he often did. As far as I knew, he’d never raised a hand to her like he had to me, but his bad moods were frequent and unpredictable. Or, they had been. I’d crammed as much of my stuff as I could manage into a couple of garbage bags less than a week after my 18th birthday, and had never gone back. I’d lived in the guest room in Benji’s house during summers and school holidays, rooming with him on campus during all four years of college.

She was a little thinner than I remembered. He was, too. He didn’t look as powerful or frightening, but that didn’t stop my guts from feeling like a ball of solid ice was sinking into them.

“I wasn’t prancing,” I denied automatically, a holdover from when I’d been so desperate to make him believe that the way I talked and the way I walked and the way I stared at other boys when I didn’t think he was watching me, didn’t actually mean anything and I wasn’t the terrible thing he was accusing me of being. “And I’m not too busy to take anyone’s calls. I don’t want to talk.”

“Boy, you are just real fucking ungrateful, aren’t you?”

I didn’t know what to say. Maybe I was. When I didn’t respond, he went on.

“Your mom and I did everything for you. Put a roof over your head, put you through school-”

“You did not!” I argued back, stunned he would even suggest that. I still had fucking student loans I was paying back every month because they hadn’t helped put me through school. And if they meant elementary, middle and high school, that was a joke too. I’d been a good student, all A’s and B’s, despite the fact that my blood pressure constantly hovered at a point just below the fucking ceiling. I’d succeeded despite my terrible upbringing. “You never helped me with anything!” I added. “Mr. and Mrs. Kens-”

“Don’t start with that shit,” he warned me. He hated them, but I wasn’t exactly sure why. He should have been happy someone had been willing to take me in, since he so clearly hadn’t wanted me around. But I’d heard his bitter rants about Mr. Kensington especially, about what a pussy he was, and how he didn’t have a clue what it took to keep his family in line. And that was without him having any idea that Mr. Kensington was the guy I called Dad.

I could see people at various distances were staring at us now, pointing and whispering. I felt blood rush up to my face, burning my cheeks while my vision started to blur at the corners.

“You never were normal,” he hissed. “Sneaking out any and all hours, like a damn dog in heat. You just couldn’t wait to get over there and spend the night with your best buddy, could you?”

He’d never wavered on his theory about Benji and I being more than friends, accusing me of all manner of offensive things, even when I’d been barely old enough to even fully comprehend what he’d been talking about. Ironically, I’d never had a single moment with Benji that had fallen under the umbrella of the things he’d constantly accused us of doing.

And now I’d practically fucked his brother, the poster boy for traditional masculinity. Rhys was the only Kensington my dad had ever respected. I was pretty sure he’d drop dead from shock if he knew the star quarterback he’d always admired had come down my throat and painted my stomach after rutting his hips on me like a porn star.

“I’m not doing this,” I finally said. I was too fucking tired, and I’d already been toeing the line of mental stability before having this nightmare confrontation thrown in my face. I hadn’t even considered that I might see them here. They’d never cared about showing up to town events or being involved in the community.

“Don’t you walk away from me!” He snarled, and for a moment all the muscles in my body went stiff as I instinctively froze. I knew that voice. That was the final warning voice. “Your mom has things she wants to say to you and you’re going to plant your fucking feet and listen.”

“No, I’m not. I don’t owe either of you a fucking thing. And I don’t give a fuck what you have to say.”

His eyes widened with a shock I’d never seen in them. I’d never stood up to him before. I wouldn’t have dared, for fear of what he might do to me. But that Kendall was long gone, swept away by the years of experience I’d had away from them, and had my eyes opened to how other people in the world would feel about me. How I felt about myself.

And then when that shock faded into obvious anger, I regretted everything, instantly thrown back into the brain of my child self. He moved toward me with the speed I remembered, and all I could do was flinch and brace for the impact. It wouldn’t even be that bad. He wasn’t even drunk. I’d taken much worse hits.

“Hey, what the hell is going on?”

My eyes flew open, my brain swirling with confusion as it processed another very familiar voice to me. There was a long shadow over my body, cast by who had stepped up behind me to catch my dad’s wrist. I felt all my breath leave my body in a tumble as I turned to stare up at Rhys. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at my dad, his dark brows drawn together like he was trying to understand the situation.

“Now, Hayward.” Mr. Kensington, the man who’d become my real dad, the one who randomly texted me to check in and always made sure to get me one of those big plastic candy canes filled with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups every Christmas because they were my favorite, stepped up and gently peeled Rhys’ hand away. “Let’s not have words in front of the kids, huh? He doesn’t want to talk. There’s no need to make a scene.”

“Don’t try to tell me what the hell I can do with my own fucking son, Will. This has nothing to do with you.”

I felt shell-shocked, like I couldn’t form words or even thoughts, really.

Mr. Kensington glanced back at us with a pleasantly calm expression before speaking. “Rhys, why don’t you get Kendall out of here?”

Rhys finally looked at me. Just for a moment before his eyes darted away.

“Uh, yeah, Dad. We’ll go.”