Best of Me

Chapter Eleven

Hello! Here's the next update! I finish my winter class this week and I'm beyond happy. But then I start Spring semester a week from today...so I really don't get much of a break. I'm hoping to finish this story before the Spring semester gets too insane for me to function cause I'm going to have a lot on my plate. I'm gonna try to crank out at least 3 chapters a week.

Anyway, here's some more of Theo, Quinn, and the whole Manos family. It's gonna get a bit angsty in the next couple chapters, so stay tuned.

Enjoy!

Chapter Eleven:

I spend a large part of the morning avoiding Quinn. She sleeps in pretty late, which makes it easier on me. I hide out in the kitchen with my parents chatting idly over coffee while the rest of our family sleeps in. We've always been the early risers in the family. My dad drives all over the place for his clients and my mom goes into the school early to prep for her classes. I can never seem to sleep peacefully. Once it's a decent hour in the morning to be awake, I am. Which is how I end up in the kitchen at eight in the morning hunched over the granite island nursing a large cup of coffee in my hands.

"How is Riley liking it here?" My mom takes a seat next to me.

"Yeah," my dad echoes. "Did she find the spider I hid in the bed, yet?" My mom throws a sugar packet at him.

"She loves it." I take a sip of my coffee. "She-well, she doesn't really have any family."

"Oh, the poor dear," My mom frowns.

"She has us now." My dad comes around the table to sit on the other side of me. "We'll be her family, so long as she makes you happy, that is. She breaks your heart and it's to the guillotine with that one."

"Clark," my mom scolds.

"What? The blade hasn't been sharpened in a while! I doubt it could decapitate, maybe seriously injure." He scratches his chin and scrunches his brow looking off into the distance, nods to himself, and says, "but, definitely not decapitate."

"You do not have a guillotine, dad," I groan.

"Yes, I do!" He protests. He goes over to a cabinet and pulls out a mini replica guillotine.

"Why on earth do you have that, Clark?" My mom asks tiredly.

"Sometimes I cut fruits and veggies with it," he shrugs. "Adds a little 18th century flair, you know?"

"Where did you even get that, dad?"

"You see...I watched Alice in Wonderland, the one with Anne Hathaway and Helena Bonham-Carter? And I was feeling the Red Queens rage because of a case I had. It was off with your head this, off with your head that, but I obviously couldn't actually decapitate anyone. That's murder, and that is illegal, you know that. Which led me to the idea of creating a miniature guillotine for the sole purpose of cutting fruit and veggies; gets out all the rage, and you can eat, too." My dad puffs his chest out proudly and grins at us like he is the smartest man for coming up with such a concept. My mom looks at me as if I can explain my dad's behavior.

"Don't look at me, you married him."

"I'm not sure why," she takes her coffee and walks out of the room. When she's out of hearing range I turn to my dad with a smirk.

"Wanna slice some bananas with it?" I pull a banana from the fruit bowl on the table.

"I knew you were my kid." He grins back at me and take the banana from my hand. After a few slices, I finally process his words.