Wrong Side Girl (The Girl Series Book 1) (27 page)

“I have had my life ruined by my loyalty and commitment to my family. I will not stand by and watch while you try and do the same to someone else. I know both of you think I’m stupid enough to fall for the games you’re playing because I’ve always turned a blind eye. But believe me, Courtney, I’ve always known you are nowhere near the sweet little daddy’s girl you pretend to be to get your way. I’ve always known you were just like your mother. I tried, I tried so hard to do right by my cousin and raise his daughter to become a kind young woman. But I didn’t stand a chance against your mother’s bitterness, her games and manipulations. But this is the last straw. I’m done.”

I gasped as his words registered. His cousin’s daughter? What the hell was going on here? Cole pulled me close and wrapped his arm around my shoulders, tucking me into his side tight.

“George, what the fuck are you saying?” He had caught it, too. Courtney’s father’s, George’s, eyes turned to Cole at hearing him speak, then to me and softened.

“You must be Elizabeth. Lizzy. It’s nice to finally officially meet you.” His voice had softened considerably as well as he was addressing me now. I couldn’t say anything, so all I did was stare at him as my mind went into overdrive, trying to make sense of what this man had just said.

Cole answered for me. “Yeah, this is Lizzy. My fiancée. Now, tell us what the fuck you meant.” Cole was getting impatient, and I had to say, I was right there with him.

“George,” Courtney’s mother hissed under her breath, at the same time Courtney whined, “But daddy—,” but George cut both of them off with one look and a “Not one more word from either of you.” Courtney’s mother was seething, it was easy to see, while Courtney dropped the act and narrowed her hateful eyes on me right before she spat, “You fucking bitch! You worthless, meaningless little slut! Not only did you take my real father from me, now you’ve turned my other father against me too. But I will not let you take Cole! Mark my words—”

“I said, enough!” George’s voice boomed once more. “Sit down and be quiet, Courtney. I don’t want to hear one more word come out of your mouth.” She glared at her father, but sat down. As did her mother, whose eyes hadn’t moved from me through any of this.

George turned back to me. Then he started to explain, and his words once more tipped my world upside down and over its own axis. “Shortly before your father, my cousin, died, he told the family that he was filing for divorce. He couldn’t stand his wife, didn’t want to be with her for one more second. Their marriage had been arranged, it was never a love match. He also claimed that he had found the love of his life. Your mother.”

I made a whimpering sound in the back of my throat. Cole pulled me in closer, wrapping his second arm around me, cocooning me with his body. I had known about the intended divorce, of course, but hearing it first-hand from his cousin, my—what exactly was he to me anyway? My head was spinning too much to figure that relationship out at the moment—and hearing the truth and sadness in his voice, was something different altogether. It made it real.

“He said that they were pregnant, and that he wanted to marry your mother. He loved you. Both of you.” My body started shaking and tears were forming in my eyes. My father had loved me. The love of a parent was something I had no idea how to grasp. I was struggling. George went on, not giving me a chance to get myself together. “He wanted to marry your mother. And he wasn’t just going to file for divorce, he was going to file for sole custody for Courtney as well. Your mother was delighted to raise your half-sister as her own, he said.” My eyes went to Courtney, whose eyes were shuttered and resentful. Then they went to her mother. Bitterness, loathing, and hostility rolled off of her in waves. George continued. “My family is old-fashioned. Divorce is not acceptable, no matter if you’re miserable or not. You have a duty to your family, and nothing or no one is ever to interfere with that duty. But my cousin didn’t care. He was getting divorced, no matter what that meant. My parents were furious with him and threatened to disown him. Then he died unexpectedly.” His voice grew grave at his last words. He really seemed to have loved his cousin, my father. He missed him. “When he died, everyone pretended that your mother and you didn’t exist. I had heard about your mother going into labor the same night of the accident and giving birth to a girl, but I was too devastated by the loss of my cousin to think straight, to do the right thing.” His apologetic and sorrowful eyes shifted from me to over my shoulder as he got lost in his memories. “I was four years younger than your father. I adored him, looked up to him, was proud of him. He was my idol. But then my parents started talking about how he had gone against the family’s wishes, and how that had resulted in his death. I was stupid and grieving. I know that is no excuse, but it’s the only thing I can offer. They talked me into marrying my cousin’s widow, for the sake of the family, said that I needed to honor his memory and take care of his wife and child. I thought I was doing a good thing, convinced myself that I was. So I married her and adopted Courtney.”

My mouth hung wide open at this point. Who were these people? What kind of world did they live in that they thought they could make decisions like that about other people’s lives? They were immoral and selfish, and I hated every single one of them. My anger was coming back, making the shock and sadness recede.

Good!

“Now I wish I had been braver,” George continued. “That I had been smarter. I’ve been living a lie, covering up many a lie and deceit for my family’s sake, while you and your mother had to endure the life you were doomed to live. I wish things had been different, that I had helped you, had supported my cousin’s true love. It’s what he would have wanted. I know that now. If I’m honest, I’ve known for a while. But I didn’t. I was a coward. I have not only failed my cousin, I have spat on his memory, and I have to spend the rest of my life with that knowledge.” He swallowed hard, then his eyes came back to me and he finished with, “But there is one thing you need to know, and again, I know this is poor as excuses go, but when I learned that Cole had taken you under his wing, I knew you had him to rely on. I have always known he was a good kid, so I knew he would take care of you, protect you, make sure that you were okay as much as it was in his power. I knew you were in good hands.”

This was all too much. I didn’t know what to think, what to do with this information. My father had loved me. Had loved my mother. Had wanted me. And Courtney’s stepfather was my first cousin once removed, which in return made her not only my half-sister but also my what? My second cousin? How fucking messed up was all this? And all these people had been in on it. I just knew it. Even Courtney, by the looks of it.

“Did you know?” That was Cole’s voice. I looked up at him to see that his eyes were going back and forth between his parents several times before they finally stopped on his mother’s face.

“Of course we knew. Everyone in our circle does. Why do you think I wanted you away from that whore’s daughter? Her mother brought enough disgrace to this town. I didn’t want you to fall into her clutches. Don’t you see? She is just like her mother, trying to take a man away from the woman and their child.” Her voice was filled with venom. This woman could not be believed. Did she not hear what George had just said?

“You knew. You knew this whole time that Lizzy was Courtney’s sister, that their dad wanted them to grow up as sisters with the woman he truly loved as their mother. You knew all this and yet you did nothing but look down on Lizzy and her mother, did nothing but make life miserable for them, spread rumors, fabricate lies, lock me up in the basement so I couldn’t go see her. Lizzy was a child, mother! How could you do that to an innocent child?”

“Ha! Your
Lizzy
was never innocent. She probably doesn’t even know what that word means or how to spell it. Those low-life white trash women are all the same. It’s in their blood. Thank God that filth left town and took her foulness with her. Ashford has been a much better place since.”

And there they go again, throwing me for yet another loop. Was she referring to my mother? Was she gone? “My mother left?” I asked in astonishment at the same time Cole asked, “You made her leave, didn’t you? Both of you, or all three of you. You did something to make her leave.” The glee in his mother’s eyes was unmistakable. She had done something to my mother. She had made her disappear.

“I bought her a bus ticket myself,” she said triumphantly.

A red haze settled over my eyes at that knowledge. My mother wasn’t my favorite person in the world, not even close. She had made my life a living hell, but now that I had all this information, now that I knew what exactly had happened, I could somehow understand how and why she had changed into that god awful person she had been all my life. It didn’t excuse her treatment of me, didn’t excuse the blame and guilt she put on my shoulders, but it did explain why and how she had sunk so deep. She had been lost in her grief. And all those bitches in town with their noses up their asses had done everything in their power to make her sink even further into the abyss of hell. All because she had fallen in love with a married man. They shouldn’t have had an affair. My father should have gotten divorced before he started anything with my mom, but the extent these women went to for revenge was unfathomable. I saw now why my mother took delight in the fact that she was sleeping with their husbands. It was her own type of revenge. The only revenge she had been capable of meting out.

Absolute fury controlled my body as I tore away from Cole, the complete disregard for another human being these people lived and breathed on a daily basis boggling my mind and making me livid. “How dare you? How dare you people treat another human being that way? What the fuck is wrong with you? Where is she? Where did you send her?” Without realizing it, I had taken a few steps towards Cole’s mother and was now only a couple of feet away from the chair she was sitting in with no intention to stop. I was going to kick her ass and not regret one single second of it. Strong arms wrapped around me from behind, holding me back. I knew they were Cole’s so I didn’t struggle.

His voice was low in my ear, soothing. “Calm down, baby. She’s not worth it.”

Cole’s mother hadn’t moved an inch, had stayed in her chair while calmly and malevolently scrutinizing me. “That’s right, son. Keep your whore in check. She wouldn’t want to be charged with assault.”

At the word “whore” being directed at me, I struggled to get free of Cole’s hold, but he only tightened his arms around me and pulled me back a few feet. Then he kissed the top of my head and murmured, “Calm, baby. She’s just looking for a reason to get you in trouble. She won’t hesitate to have you arrested if you so much as touch her. Don’t let her get to you. Think about what I said in the car.” His calm and soothing tone did wonders in helping me breathe through my fury. When I opened my eyes again, I saw that Cole’s father was standing now, though he hadn’t moved closer to his wife, which was surprising since I had almost attacked her. George was also still standing, but he had moved closer to me. Almost protectively. Courtney and her mother were missing from the room. I didn’t give a rat’s ass where they had disappeared to, I was just glad that there was now only one hateful woman to deal with.

“Richard, I think it’s time you control your wife before something happens.” Richard, Cole’s dad, was standing a few feet away from the table, a little off to the side, as he took in the scene. His head started to shake when his eyes landed on his wife. “Jesus Christ, Claire. I knew you always had it out for that woman and her daughter, but don’t you think this is a little ridiculous?”

“Ridiculous? Did you just call me ridiculous?” Cole’s mother hissed at her husband at the same time Cole asked him, “So you didn’t know?”

Cole’s father looked at his son. “Yes, I knew. Everyone in our social circle knows the connection between George and Walter and what preceded George’s and Ann’s marriage. Everyone knew about the woman Walter cheated on her with and the daughter who resulted from that affair. But I stayed out of it. You know me, I try to not be around your mother too much if I can help it.”

God, these people were unbelievable!

“Yeah, dad, how could I forget? Staying out and staying away has always been your solution to everything that had to do with mother and me,” Cole replied disdainfully. Cole’s father just stared at him and shrugged his shoulders, seemingly not giving a shit about what his son thought about him, not caring about anything really. I felt pity for him. He had lost out on getting to know his son, his amazing and wonderful son. I looked back at Cole’s mother, thinking the same. She had no idea who her son was, never tried to get to know him, never supported him and his dreams, never encouraged him to be a good person, never showed him any love. It clicked for me then. These people really didn’t matter. What they thought about me didn’t matter. They were pitiful and sad. Miserable. They were rich in money and possessions, but poor in love and meaning relationships. I pitied them, all of them: Cole’s parents, Courtney, her mother. The jury was still out on George, since he at least regretted his mistakes and was trying to redeem himself in some way.

I turned in Cole’s arms and rested my hands on both his cheeks, cupping his face. “You know how much I love you?” I whispered. This man, this caring and loving and protective and kind man, had grown up exposed to nothing but viciousness, bitterness, and indifference, and had come out the other end the man he is today. No, he had always been that man, even when he was a little boy. Yes, he could be brutally honest and should not be proud of how he had treated women before he claimed me as his, but he was not evil, or hateful, or bitter. And I loved him all the more now that I realized the enormity of that fact.

“I do. You know I love you just as much? Probably more?” he asked, his confused but happy eyes studying me. I nodded, then placed my lips on his and kissed him softly and lovingly. When I ended the kiss I could see George standing close, his eyes sad.