The Bad Boy's Heart (Bad Boy Series #2)

Chapter Eighteen: They Respect My Privacy Like McDonald's Respects Arteries

Chapter Eighteen: They Respect My Privacy Like McDonald's Respects Arteries

When I was younger, there were a few moments of having adults teach you life lessons. My parents, even when they were blind to the wreck that was their marriage weren't the kind of people who sat their kids down after they'd done something wrong and explained to them why it was wrong in the first place. Travis and I got told off, Travis more so than me and we'd be treated like god awful people for quite a while that we eventually realised we weren't supposed to sneak into the neighbours kitchen and steal from their cookie jars.

My grandparents bless them, were the opposite. Whenever the O'Connell matriarch and patriarch visited they made sure to make up for our own parents lack of well, parenting. I remember a time when I'd been around six or seven and Cole had been unusually sullen to me at school. I'd come home and told everyone in the vicinity that I wish he were dead. At this point I was well acquainted with what death was and how people never came back once they were gone. Grandma heard me and had given me a look so filled with disappointment that I realised immediately that I'd said something horrible. She took me aside, sat me down in her lap and gave me a lesson I remembered till date.

"Sweetheart you do remember those guns you saw hanging in your grandpa's office back home?" I'd nodded, unsure of what that had to do with my punishment.

"Well do you know that once your fire a bullet from it you can't ever take it back? So if you're grandpa aims it wrong or regrets making the shot in the first place, there's nothing he can do about it?" She raised a brown and looked at me expectantly.

"That sounds bad...wishing you could take something back and you just can't." It sounded horrible.

"It is bad and you know what's worse? Words honey, words. You can hurt someone a lot with your words and once those words are out of your mouth you can't take them back, just like the bullet."

"But mom say's we can apologise and it makes everything okay."

She sighs, "Apologies don't fix everything sweet girl, I wish they could. Words that really hurt someone stay in their hearts for a long time. What's worse is that unlike the bullet these words find a way to come back and make you feel even worse. Say that Stone boy had heard you today, you know his Momma died? How would he feel? How would he continue to feel?"

I realised then that he'd feel bad, he would feel real bad and that I didn't want to ever make someone feel that way. Maybe somewhere along the way I forget my Grandma's lesson but there's something so spine chilling about knowing that your actions can't be undone, you can't press the reset button, you can't press pause or delete or any of that. It makes you cautious, it should make your cautious.

But what we should do and what we actually do in life are two completely different stories.

***

Christmas holidays are off to a good start, despite Cole's melancholic mood. He'd gone home and decided against telling his family his doubts about the future of his college football career but I know they could tell something that there's something off about him. Even Jay'd come up to me, concerned about how unusually quiet his step brother was being. I don't tell anyone anything, what happens in college should stay in college and here back home we're free, freer than we'd been in ages. We spent most of our time relaxing with our friends and families, catching up on some Christmas shopping and eating more food than is humanly possible.

Our dinner with Dad's new girlfriend, Danielle went really well-to everyone's surprise. Cole and were joined by Travis and Beth and all of us managed to have a civil evening together, with no barbs thrown. I'd nearly shed a tear at how my brother and father's relationship had transformed and then to see my dad happy with a genuinely nice, mature woman was the cherry on top. At least he'd refrained from posting updates about his wildly inappropriate relationship with a cabana boy on social media unlike one other parent of mine.