Cole in My Stocking by Jessi Gage

Author:Jessi Gage [Gage, Jessi]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Microsoft
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Something was wrong.

I kept my eyes glued to Cole as he watched Newburgh’s police chief, Morris Glenmore, open Dad’s safe. Nothing about Cole’s expression or posture had physically changed, but the level of his intensity skyrocketed. That was saying something, since he’d been practically vibrating with intensity after the confrontation I’d just witnessed between him and one of the cops on the scene. I didn’t know what it was about, but I could tell something the other cop said had made Cole angry. Very angry.

He was even angrier now.

Why? Were Dad’s guns damaged? Please, no. I couldn’t handle that on top of knowing everything else in the trailer had been burned to a crisp.

Mom’s clothes. The flag I’d gotten at Dad’s funeral. All the stuff I’d packed for this trip. All Dad’s clothes and boots and coats and clutter. A thousand useless pieces of manly bric-a-brac, the refuse of a life lived and lost. Proof my dad had been a hunter, a veteran, a weapons fanatic, an addict of cheesy action flicks, an alcoholic, a recluse, a cancer patient, a widower. All week, I’d been dreading sorting through it all. Now I felt robbed of the chance to do just that.

I couldn’t believe someone had burned it all down to spite me. The message spray painted across the garage doors made my stomach turn every time I looked at it. I kept looking anyway, the same way I could never resist picking at a scab.

How embarrassing Cole had to see those words. I was his girlfriend now. After the conversation we’d just had, I knew better than to think he’d regret being with me because of something stupid like hateful graffiti, but I couldn’t help wondering what he thought of the accusation. Trash.

He’d told me Tooley had spread rumors that Cole and I were boinking back when I was in high school. Hideous, untrue rumors. Yet I could tell they were a sore spot for Cole. Like being called trash was a sore spot for me.

Accusations hurt the worst when there was a kernel of truth in them. For Cole, that kernel had been his attraction to me. For me, the kernel was that ever since the assault, I’d been longing for someone to tell me I wasn’t trash, I was worthy of love, clean enough to be cherished. Though no one had expressly told me those things, in Philly I’d made friends who treated me that way. In Philly I felt strong and capable and worthy. Empowered. Emotionally healthy, except for the minor fact I couldn’t seem to trust anyone with access to my body. The point was, in Philly I didn’t feel remotely like trash. But seeing the word there in black and white gave those old memories teeth. The pain was as fresh tonight as it had been when I’d heard that word whispered about me in the halls of my high school.

Who had written that message? Who cared enough to do this to me after

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.