stepped in to protect her. He’d gotten his ass kicked. The following day, Dylan and I went together and took care of the bully, explaining, very gently of course, that picking on little girls was a pussy move and that we didn’t appreciate it. Okay, seriously, we beat the shit out of him, payback for seven year olds, and sometimes thirty-two year olds too.
My dad had left us three years before, no trace, no support. My mom worked her ass off to keep the house, but eventually it was just too much and she sold it before she lost it. No doubt, she was a smart woman. Mom had found us a much smaller house in a more run down area, but in the same school district. Instead of upper-middle class families, the new place was filled with single moms and younger couples. The few retired couples who’d been there since the neighborhood was new, kept an eye on all the kids left at home by working parents.
It hadn’t been the safest, but it wasn’t too bad. From that young age, I’d taken the job of protecting my sisters from anyone who would do them harm, including the strange guy who lived on the street behind us. For whatever reason, he’d always given me the creeps. I caught him trying to talk to Stephanie once, she was only one year younger than me, the middle child in our family. Thankfully, I’d been a teenager then. I’d come into my height, but was still rail thin. Stephanie wasn’t gullible though, whatever that guy would try to snow her with, wouldn’t work. I was more worried that he’d convince Melissa, the baby, to come over and search for his missing candy stash. We kept a close eye on her.
After a few hours, Trent and I walked out together. Once inside my truck, getting ready to turn toward home, I angled off in the opposite direction, toward Hope’s.
Chapter 5
Hope
The relentless pounding on my door wouldn’t stop. Whoever was here, really wanted to get my attention. I looked out the peephole and saw Jake, illuminated in the overly bright security light, he’d installed just a couple of days before. Strangely, he wasn’t looking at the door, his head was turned and his gaze was clearly trained on something down the street.
I really wanted to ignore him, I’d fallen asleep – finally. The pounding started again just after I’d stepped back from the door and walked to the alarm panel.
“Just a minute,” I called and thankfully he stopped. The last thing I needed was for my neighbors to wake up. They were generally nice people, but all families, no one that I knew of kept late hours.
Pulling the door open, I braced myself for Jake’s mood. I’d witnessed it enough times to know that when he was angry, he’d explode. His fuse seemed to be rather short but burned out quickly.
His volatility frightened me, with my past, any dominantly aggressive man would. I was sure that he wouldn’t hurt me, but didn’t fully trust my instincts since I’d trusted Tim once too.
“We need to talk,” he said, pushing into the house. I raised my eyebrows in question and preceded him as he motioned to the couch. I didn’t want to sit, whatever this was, I wanted to get it over with. The last thing I needed was Jake in my house, late at night. I had self-control, but seriously, resisting that man was too much to ask. This, however, didn’t seem like a social call.
“Why didn’t you tell me about your ex?” Oh shoot, oh shoot, oh shoot, this was not good, not good at all. I just knew that Luke wouldn’t keep his mouth shut.
“There’s not much to tell,” I said, breezily. That was a lie, but really, why did he think he had the right to know?
Jake’s face went stony; his look was ice cold. “Really? So, when I asked you Monday morning if you had any idea who could have left that shit on your porch, you didn’t think that maybe telling me was a good idea?” He was furious. I could understand, but it wasn’t like we were dating or something, he didn’t owe me anything, and I didn’t owe him