LIB

Chapter 26

            Luckily, Blake wasn’t interested in the least. “Why the hell would I come live with you? I’ve found the one person in this world who loves me unconditionally and there is no way I’m leaving her. And since I turn eighteen in two weeks, you can’t make me go.”

            I exhaled slowly as relief filled me. But his father’s next words made me almost stop breathing.

            “If you don’t want to come live with us, we’ll cut off your trust fund.”

            “Robert! We will do no such thing!” Susan exclaimed. Obviously he hadn’t told her this plan.

            “Yes we will. He is refusing to have any part of the company and if he won’t even live with us, then I refuse to keep supporting him.”

            “You know what? Go ahead,” Blake said. “I don’t need your money. You may not have noticed, but I haven’t touched any of the money you’ve been giving me anyways. You seem to have forgotten that Grandpa left me a large amount of money when he passed away, plus I have some of his shares in the company. I don’t need you.”

            Robert’s jaw tensed. “You will come and live with us!” he shouted.

            I knew Blake was about to snap completely, so I put a hand on his knee. “Blake, could you go get me a drink?”

            He turned to me with an incredulous expression on his face. “You want me to get you a drink right now?”

            “Yeah, because I think you need to cool off for a minute, before you do something you’ll regret.”

            He let out a frustrated breath, but nodded and stood up. “You’re probably right. I’m about done talking to them anyways.” He ran a hand lightly over my hair and then left the room.

            Susan was looking at me thoughtfully when I turned back to her. “You seem to know him very well,” she said.

            “I do. It took me a couple of months to get through to him, but once he opened up, we got close pretty quickly.”

            “And why exactly are you with him?” Robert asked.

            I looked at him in confusion. “Huh?”

            “Why are you with him? Is it because you’re hoping to get money out of him somehow?”

            My jaw dropped. “Are you serious?”

            “Robert, it’s clear that she loves him. Why would you think that she only wants money from him?” Susan asked.

            “Because no one wants to willingly be with someone who is defective,” Robert replied easily.

            Anger coursed through me and I stood up. “Defective? If anyone around here is defective, it’s you!” I said. “Blake is an amazing person and I love him with everything I have.”

            “And the fact that he’s loaded has nothing to do with your feelings?” Robert asked sarcastically.

            I had to restrain myself from hitting that man. I normally was not a violent person, but right now, I wanted to punch him square in the jaw. “Money means nothing to me,” I hissed. “But just to put your mind at ease, I’ll let you know something. Do you by any chance know who Liam Graham is?”