Being Bad

Chapter 49: I'm Not Gonna Give All My Secrets Away

Andrew Price

My fucking goodness this girl gets me all worked up in a matter of seconds.

Here I am, standing in front of the bathroom mirror, looking at my idiotic reflection as Lia stands outside waiting for me. I just needed time to clear my head, and take a deep breath. I mean we've been all lovey dovey these past couple of days, and I've really been struggling to live up to what she expects me to be.

I don't know if I can be who she wants me to be, to be completely honest.

I have a fucked up personality, as you can probably already tell, my anger can go through the roof, I've done a lot of things that I sometimes regret, but sometimes don't, and the pain that I've inflicted on people is overwhelming. How can I become a good guy after everything that I've been through? It's just not in my nature.

I just don't have the guts to tell her that just yet.

For now, I just wanted us to see how things go and maybe, just maybe, if I feel myself seeing this 'thing' we have going on go just a bit further, then we could make it exclusive. But right now, I'm not sure if I want us to be in a relationship together.

There...I said it.

Truth is, Lia has become more and more significant in my life, and to see her become involved with me, it scares me. She knows about me and The Leathers and she knows that it's dangerous. But, if I'm with her, I could put her life on the line, and I don't want to do that.

She means too much to do that.

Plus, I'm pretty much the definition of a fuck up. So, if I'm with her I'm guaranteed to screw up in some way, shape, or form. No matter what it is, I will find a way to screw our relationship up and leave Lia heartbroken. And I don't want to do that.

I take a second glance at my horrid reflection in the mirror, wondering how life could've gotten here. How Lia waltzed her way into my life and cling to me like a person on their last breath of air. How Mason hates my guts and practically wants to kill me in a shootout.

It was only twelve years ago, where my mother was taking me into work almost everyday, and she would give me money for the vending machines. I would just love to click all the numbers and letters hoping that it would drop something good for me to eat. Or how I would fiddle around with some of the recordings in the booth, and make the singers voice sound like they were from a Mickey Mouse cartoon on steroids.

My father would take me to work about two or three times a week, bringing me in his Price Sports car that he designed with the company. He would give me lessons on the way on how to learn stick shift, or some tips when I would eventually learn how to drive. My father found those little bonding moments some of the best times of his life with his son.

Then, I would greet all the engineers who were under the cars, or taking parts from one place to another, until we eventually reached my Dad's office. He would take all the toy cars that he had designed and sold as real cars, and put them in my lap so I could play with them while he took calls or arranged meetings with his team. I usually lasted the whole work day playing and pretending on the wooden floors of his office.

At the end of the day, I would come home running up to mother for a hug. She would pick me up, and then proceed to complain that I was getting too big or that I needed to stop growing. We would then all have dinner as a family, Celina would be playing games on her DS while Nick and I threw food at each other. Our parents eventually gave up on scolding us for food fights.

On the weekends, now those days were my favorite. I would invite the neighbors to come swim in our pool, maybe even have some friends from elementary school over. My Mom would make us some lemonade and then bring out some popsicles for us to eat after we were done at the pool. Sometimes she would yell at me to put more sunscreen on, to then which I would yell back that I didn't need it. I wasn't fair skinned at all, my skin was tan enough, and even had a bit of olive in it. What can I say? I was a full-blown European rich kid.