Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 107118 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 536(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107118 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 536(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
“They ran away.” I lifted a strand of Sia’s hair and ran it between my fingers. “They eloped and got married. Mamma was only eighteen. My papa was twenty.”
“They did it.” A huge smile pulled on her mouth. “They ignored everyone else and did it.”
I nodded. “We stayed in the bayou—we couldn’t afford to move much farther away.” I sighed. “In hindsight, I think the real reason was that my mamma just couldn’t bring herself to move too far away from her mamma. I think she always hoped that, one day, they’d find her and accept her—us—back into the family. And of course, my papa would have done anything for her, even though, really, we should have moved to New Orleans for his music.” I had to smile a little at that. “My papa got work where he could. He looked after us. Even though we were dirt poor, we made it work. I loved my life. Money meant fuck all to us.” A ball of lead formed in my stomach. “When I was sixteen, word got to my mamma that her mother had had a stroke.” I remembered my mamma’s face that day, and the phone slipping from her hand.
“Then we go back,” my papa said as my mamma cried in his arms.
So we did.
Sia pressed a kiss on my cheek, and I knew she understood that this was where the story no longer spoke of love conquering all. “I’d been having seizures since I was eleven. Just started one day, and never went away. I knew it played heavily on my mamma’s heart, my diagnosis of epilepsy, and she wanted the support of her mother. But when we went back, my grandfather wouldn’t let my mamma see her own mother.” I shook my head and gritted my teeth. “The town was rich, and we weren’t. My papa tried to get a job, but no one would hire him. My grandfather had made that fucking clear. So he had to travel miles every week just to play in dive bars and places that weren’t worth a single note of his talent.”
I breathed, focusing on calming down some. “Our house was a joke, but it was ours. All the way out of town, but close enough that we had to use the town for things like food. Mamma homeschooled me. But there was a group of kids, kids of the richest, most fascist bastards that ever lived . . .”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cowboy shift and grip Sia tighter. He met my eyes, and I could see the fucking pain and regret staring back at me. Sia was breathing fast, and I knew she could tell this was where Cowboy made an appearance.
“Rodeo riders.” I pictured Jase, Stan, Davide, and Pierre in my mind. “Those fuckers had it in for me since the moment we moved to town. ‘Half-breed,’ ‘mongrel,’ and whatever else they could dig up would be thrown my way whenever they saw me.” I felt a hand on my thigh and knew without looking that it was Cowboy. I heard the edge in my voice. Felt the searing-hot blood surging through my veins. I knew he was trying to stop me from losing my shit and working myself up into a seizure.
But I didn’t fucking care.
“They would regularly find me walking to my home from town—”
Sia looked at Cowboy. “Were you there too?”
“Yeah.” Cowboy met her eyes. “Almost all the time.”
“You . . .” She swallowed, then managed to ask, “You called him those names?”
“Sometimes,” he rasped, and I saw the shock on Sia’s face.
“Not as much as the rest,” I said, coming to his defense. And it was true. He hadn’t.
“But I did.” Cowboy ducked his head. “It ain’t an excuse, I know it, but I knew no better. I’d been told my entire life that white was the only color of worth. I’d never been around people of color. My parents . . .” He blew out a quick breath. “I know now they aren’t good people. Not evil. But ignorant and only care about their own, and money. They weren’t the best parents, but they were all I had. I listened to them. Trusted them.” He lifted his head, apology in his stare that I’d seen a million times. “I believed their bullshit. Made friends with their friends’ kids who had the same values. I didn’t realize until later that what I was doing was wrong.” He sighed. “I’d always just gone with the flow. But with Jase and the others, it was way out in the fucking wrong direction.”
Cowboy stopped speaking, so I picked up where I’d left off. “I got a part-time job at a farm out of town, and every night those fuckers taunted me for four miles as I walked home, shouting at me from their fancy-ass trucks. And every night I would have a seizure. They never knew, of course.