than me because my mother is the most loving and selfless woman on the planet. I’ve never been uprooted from foster home to foster home. I’ve never had to share a room with five other children I wasn’t related to. I didn’t have the life Skylar had, and I won’t even pretend I understand what any of that must’ve been like for her.
After my aunt’s overdose, my mother spoke to my father and stepped in, making the tough, but necessary, decision to adopt Skylar into our family. It was a difficult transition because I knew next to nothing about her. I’d only met her once or twice over the years, and each encounter wasn’t one I wanted to revisit. She was crass, mean, and vindictive. It was like she saw the life I had, the family I was born into, and hated me for it. Blamed me for her problems. Even though she was only a year older than me, it was like she had lived through just about everything. Her past had made her cynical and jealous. I was the naïve little cousin, and she was the wise one. She thought I was an idiot who didn’t know how the real world worked while I tried to see the best in people. We were opposites in all the ways that mattered.
“Oh, hey, Daisy.” She smirks, inching closer to Cal. I covertly grit my back teeth together, hating their proximity. “Guess who’s teaching me how to play basketball? Care to join?” She raises a brow in challenge because she knows exactly what my answer is going to be.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Rosalind mumbles under her breath. There isn’t a person she hates more than Skylar.
My chest squeezes like it’s in a vise when Skylar sidles up to Callan’s side and fits herself against him as though they’re a couple. The sight makes me sick to my stomach. So much so, I place a trembling hand over my abdomen to hold down my nausea.
Despite my better judgment, I glance up at Cal to see what he’s thinking and immediately wish I hadn’t. He’s watching me, but it’s not with the same look he used to watch me with when we were friends. Now, it’s with a look akin to disgust. His ice gray-blue eyes are like fire on my skin—it’s such a contradiction. It’s almost as if the sight of me makes him sick. The real blow to the gut is the fact that he hasn’t stepped away from my cousin. Not even once. I want him to push her away, to brush her off the same way he brushes me off.
I hurriedly avert my gaze, looking at anything but them standing so close to one another. My heart feels heavy in my chest. There’s an icy drizzle down the center that I can’t seem to shake, but I steel myself. I throw on that façade I wear so well as of late.
“Hard pass.” My voice comes out strong and controlled. And to anyone else, it sounds like I’m telling the truth. My gaze sweeps over both of them one last time before I force myself to turn my back on them. The last thing I see is my cousin rolling her eyes and the muscle in Cal’s jaw clenching with annoyance.
“You know, I really can’t stand your cousin,” Rose grumbles as we make the trek down the street.
I blow out a sigh, fighting the urge to look back over my shoulder. “The feeling is entirely mutual.”
After walking through the mall together, Rosalind and I stop at our favorite pizza spot for a bite to eat. We get our usual, half combination and the other half pineapple and cheese, because yes, pineapple does belong on pizza, and I refuse to let anyone tell me otherwise.
She wrinkles her nose at the cheesy deliciousness on my plate. “You know, it’s absolutely criminal that you think eating that is okay.”
I shrug, popping a pineapple into my mouth. “You still love me.”
She sighs, like loving a friend with an adoration for pineapple on pizza is such a hardship.
“Anyway, back to what I was saying in my bedroom before I was rudely interrupted by your fantasies featuring my brother.” I’m just about to refute that statement when she raises her hand, silencing me. “Let me finish this time, please. I don’t need to hear any bogus excuses from you today.”
I can’t help but pout as I continue chewing. Guilt slowly creeps in as I realize what