Read Online Everything is Everything Book 2 by Pepper Pace - Free Book Online Page B

perhaps the reason she hadn’t stood up for her cousin is because in some ways Jalissa had felt vindicated that not everything came easier to her pretty cousin. But it was unconscious. Jalissa’s love for Vanessa was rock solid—even if it was tinged with some dislike.
    She was learning a lesson at a very young age that some never learned. That love was sometimes shadowed by hate.
    It took Vanessa to hang up the phone in her ear to cause the young mother to realize that fact.
    Jalissa wiped her eyes free of tears. She vowed that she wouldn’t be like her mother. She had surely headed down a path that would have lead her in that direction. But it was Vanessa’s influence that had taught her to want for more. She had made mistakes in the past but she was trying to want more for herself and for her son.

Chapter Three

     
    “We have to think of some way to make ends meet,” Vanessa said worriedly.
    She had her legs crossed and was jiggling her foot anxiously. Scotty looked up from his seat on the couch where he was studying his ledger. The ledger contained all of his transactions from the drugs that their crew sold, the money that came in, the division of profits and how Miss Gloria used the funds that he deposited into her account.
    There wasn’t a penny that Scotty didn’t know about. When it came to finances he was probably obsessive compulsive. And it wasn’t that he was cheap or stingy but he needed to have a breakdown to the penny of every cent he managed.
    Vanessa was now in that breakdown, but she was as frugal as he was. And that made Scotty very happy.
    Vanessa was sitting at the dinette watching him as he sat on the couch working on his finances.
    “We are making ends meet. We’re nowhere near the poor house, babe.” He replied.
    “Money is going out but it’s not coming in.” Vanessa said.
    Scotty drew in a long breath. “True, and we can’t stay this way forever. But there is no rush. You need to trust me on this. There is money.”
    “I’m going to get a job. It’s about time that I did.”
    He put down his pencil. “What kind of job?”
    “Singing. Performing.”
    He smiled. “That sounds good. I’d like to see you perform. I wish I had caught one of your shows. I bet you were amazing.”
    She smiled and some of the tension that had been on her face for the last few days seemed to fade a bit. “I did pretty good. But since I knew that I didn’t want to go on to college I turned down a lot of offers to attend schools for performing arts.” She shrugged. “I don’t care about that. I wanted to dive in and work and I need to get off my butt and do it.”
    She eyed him carefully before continuing. “And plus, I don’t want you going back to selling.”
    He shook his head and opened his ledger again. “I told you that was over.” He looked at her. “That sixty thousand was never a factor for me. We can make this work, Vanessa and we don’t need anything from your grandmother to do that.”
    Vanessa was silent for a while. “She was never going to give me that money, was she?”
    He didn’t want to answer but she waited for so long that he finally did. “Probably not, at least not all of it. If I was your grandmother I wouldn’t have given it all to you either,” he said.
    She rocked her head to the side in shock. “Why, because you think I’m too young and dumb?” She bit out.
    “No. Because you are too giving and loving.”
    She mulled that over. “I might help people but not to the point that I would blow all my money.”
    He turned his attention back to his ledger and tapped his lip with the pencil eraser. “When you have more than someone else people begin to think you owe them. You don’t owe anybody shit.”
    Vanessa chuckled. “Well I suppose that’s right Scotty. But you help people not because you have to, but because you care.”
    He looked at her again. “Well one thing is for sure, I would have never promised you something only to snatch it from you when it