Bad Girl Reputation by Elle Kennedy

He stares at the side of my face. “You okay?”

“Sure.”

Turns out I could’ve saved everyone all sorts of grief if I’d listened to both of them. Coop doesn’t know his head from his asshole where Gen is concerned, but as much as I hate his second-guessing, he does know me.

“I’m sorry,” he tells me.

“She’s not a bad girl.” People have always given her a hard time for the crime of trying to enjoy her life. Maybe it’s because her lust for it sparked envy, longing. Most people are too afraid to truly experience their lives. They’re passengers or passive observers to a world happening around them. But not Gen.

“I know,” Coop says.

When she left a year ago, it never really ended. Nothing was said. She was gone, but we remained frozen in place. Even after it’d been months and everyone told me to take the hint, I couldn’t let go of where we’d left off. It was only ever a matter of time before she came home and we picked up again. Except it didn’t happen that way. She changed. And though I hadn’t noticed, so did I. We tried to shove ourselves back together, fill in the same blank spaces, but we don’t fit the same way we used to.

“You love her?”

My throat closes up to the point of suffocation. “More than anything in the world.”

She’s the one. The only one. But it’s not enough.

Cooper lets out a breath. “I am sorry. Whatever my beef is with Gen, you’re my brother. I don’t like seeing you hurting.”

He and I have been through a lot with each other this past year. Finding one reason or another to be at odds. It’s exhausting, honestly. And lonely. Nights like this remind me that whatever else happens, it’s just the two of us.

“We’ve got to do a better job of being brothers,” I say quietly. “I know this thing with Mom gets you mad, but do we have to come to blows about it every time her name comes up? Man, I don’t want to keep this stuff from you. I don’t like lying about where I am or sneaking away to take phone calls so you can’t hear me. I feel like I’m tiptoeing around my own house.”

“Yeah, I get it.” Coop takes another swig of his beer, then turns the bottle between his palms while the breeze kicks up and blows in salt air from the beach. “I’ve spent so long being mad at her, I guess I wanted you to be upset at her with me. Kinda lonely out in the cold.”

“I’m not trying to leave you out in the cold. I knew you weren’t ready to let her back in. That’s cool. I told her not to expect anything. Hell, I warned her you’d tell the FBI she had Jimmy Hoffa buried in her backyard if she came around here.”

He coughs out a stiff laugh. “Not a bad idea. You know, if needed.”

“Anyway, I didn’t ask you to see her because I know how bad she messed you up last time. I’d wanted you to give her a chance and she’d betrayed you. Both of us. Yeah, I was worried she’d make me a sucker again. Still am. I’m not sure that feeling goes away when it comes to Shelley. This is just something I need to do. For me.”

“I was thinking.” His attention is drawn to his lap, where he picks at the melting label from the sweaty bottle. “Maybe I’d be willing to consider meeting up with her.”

“Seriously?”

“Oh, what the hell.” Cooper downs the last of his beer. “As long as you and Mac are there. What’s the worst that can happen?”

I wouldn’t have put money on such a dramatic change of heart. I doubt it was anything I said; more likely Mac worked on him. But it’s all the same to me either way. We don’t have much of a family left. It got even smaller today. I’m just here trying to cobble together as much as I can out of the bits and pieces. If we can stop fighting about this one thing, it’ll go a long way.

“I’ll set it up.”

“Telling you now, though,” he warns. “If she comes looking for a kidney, I’m giving her one of yours.”





CHAPTER 30

GENEVIEVE

I’ve been sitting on the floor in the same place I landed when Evan walked out. Staring at the patterns in the carpet, the scuffs on the wall, trying to understand what just happened. I crawl back into bed, turn the light out, and hug the blankets tight around my shoulders with the scene playing through my mind. His cold detachment. The way, even when our eyes met, he seemed to look through me. Untouchable.

Did he actually break up with me? Yesterday I would’ve said he wasn’t capable of such a cruel and sudden turn.

My memory of the conversation we just had is fragmented, as though I wasn’t entirely present for it. Now I’m sewing clips together and still can’t fathom how I ended up alone in the dark with an ache tearing at my chest.

It was one thing when I left last year. He was still here. The way we think of home as permanent. Safe in a memory. Unmovable.

Then I came back, and I thought I could keep him there. Perfect and preserved. Always the boy with more daring than sense. If I didn’t let myself take him seriously or see him as a whole complex person, I wouldn’t have to answer the hard questions about what these feelings were and what to do with them. What happens when the party girl and the bad boy grow up.

Now he’s stolen that possibility from me, made the hard choice for us both. Except I wasn’t ready. Time ran out and I’m left sitting here alone.