For Keeps. For Always. by HALEY JENNER (top novels to read txt) 📕

I know I’m taking my frustration out on my mother, a sin I’ll pay for later with a confiscated phone and grounding, but it'll be worth it.

To find Henley. . . it’ll be worth it.

“Take me to her house,” I demand. “Please,” I add as an afterthought when she raises her eyebrow in my direction.

“Brooks.” She sighs.

“I’m worried, okay?” I’m glad she can’t hear the pounding of my heart.

Henley told me something like this would happen. We sat on our rock only days ago, and she told me all of this would end badly. She saw this coming, and I didn’t believe her.

“Okay.” She gives in without further argument.

“Thank you,” I offer quietly, too afraid to speak as a lump in my throat forms.

Her house looks like it always does as Mom maneuvers down the extensive driveway. Sterile. Monstrous in size. Ominous in the way it lacks any form of warmth.

“Stay here,” I tell her.

I try her bedroom window first, knocking when it won’t open at my insistence. Hands cupped over my eyes, I squint through the sheer curtains, praying I’ll see her. Nothing looks out of the ordinary. Everything is in its place, but no Henley.

Stalking toward the front door, I bang on it over and over again. Each knock more forceful than the one before it.

“What do you want?” Derrick Wright snaps as he pulls open the door.

“Henley. Where is she?” I move to push into the house, but he stops me with a hand to my chest.

“She’s not here.”

My fists clench of their own accord. I’m shaking, but with anger or panic, I don’t even know anymore. All I know is that this asshole is standing between Henley and me, and that’s unacceptable.

“Where is she?”

He doesn’t answer.

“Where is she?” I scream in his face so loud my throat feels ready to tear on the inside. Spit hits his face, but he doesn’t move to wipe it off. He just continues to stand there, watching me blankly.

“Brooks,” my mom chides, moving from the car to stand behind me. “Mr. Wright. My son is worried. He just wants to know if Henley is okay.”

“I don’t know where she is,” he finally speaks, his voice a hollow void. “I don’t know where Jacinta took her.”

With that, the door closes in our faces.

I bang again.

“Brooks.” Mom pulls me back. “Let’s go, honey.”

“What does he mean he doesn’t know where Jacinta took her?” My eyes water unexpectedly. “Why isn’t he looking for her?”

Pulling me to her chest, Mom hugs me. “I’m sure he is.”

I wipe my face against her shirt, depositing my tears to the material. I can’t recall the last time I cried.

“Don’t be sad, babyface. We’ll find her.”

“I’m not sad,” I stutter. “I’m frustrated and angry and worried and. . . and—”

“And you don’t know what to do with it all,” she says what I can’t seem to vocalize.

“You’re allowed to feel all those things. Jacinta loves her daughter, Brooks. Wherever she is, we know she’s safe.”

I let that settle inside me, but I don’t quite believe it. Jacinta thinks she loves her daughter. But causing Derrick pain would be of a higher priority, as it’s always been, Henley’s welfare be damned.

7

HENLEY

“Please, Mom,” I cry.

“Stop being so emotional, Henley.”

I shift forward on my seat. “You haven’t told me anything. Where are we going? You cannot just uproot me in the middle of my school year. Where is Dad? Does he know?”

She ignores me, her thumb flicking across the screen of her phone.

I turn to face her completely, bending my leg to rest it on the back seat of the Town Car. “You’re kidnapping me.”

She pauses then, lifting her head to laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous, sweetheart. I love you. You don’t want to be in that house as much as I don’t.”

“With both of you. If you’d separate, I’d be happy to stay with you on and off.”

“I will not lose out on seeing my only child grow up by shipping you back and forth. Your place is with me, with your mother.”

My throat tightens in panic. “I want to go home.”

“Your home is with me.”

“I need to call Brooks.”

Straightening her spine, she refuses to look at me. “I left your cell at home. It was attached to Derrick’s account.”

Clenching my teeth together, I fight the shake in my jaw. “I know his number by heart. Give me your phone.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No,” she confirms.

“Give me your phone!” I scream.

Her hand whips out to grab my arm. “Control your temper, Henley. Do not speak to me like that.”

“He’ll be worried,” I whisper, thrown off by her uncharacteristic show of anger toward me.

“And he’ll survive. You can email him when we arrive.”

“Where? Arrive where?”

She waits a beat, straightening her skirt. “London.”

I cough. “London?”

“Yes, I have an old friend there who will help us get established and settled.”

“Dad would not have agreed to this.”

“He doesn’t have to, Henley.”

I stare at her profile, confusion knotting at my brows. “I’m pretty sure that’s how it works, Mother. You need his approval to uproot me like this.”

I watch the line of her throat swallow, her legs crossing only to uncross and settle flat against the floor once again.

“I won’t bore you with the details, but I can assure you,” she speaks, staring out the window, “everything happening right now is one-hundred-percent legal.”

“What did you do?” I accuse.

She clears her throat in discomfort.

“He’s my dad—”

“He stepped up to the role as we needed him to,” she snaps.

I stare at her reflection in the window, her face still turned purposely away from me.

“I didn’t want you to find out like this,” she murmurs eventually.

“Find out what?” I demand, uncertainty settling in my stomach.

Pushing her shoulders back in a faux show of confidence, she turns toward me, but she won’t meet my eyes. She rests them over my shoulder, too afraid to meet my stare head-on.

“Derrick isn’t exactly your father.”

My chin tips back. “What are you talking about?” I scoff at the ridiculousness of her accusation.

“Biologically, he has no link to you.”

I stare at her blankly, my eyes refusing to blink.

“I had an affair.”