Curious, I tiptoed down to the last step and peered around the wall. I saw my daddy standing in the center of the room, arms folded across his chest. Then I saw a boy several years older than me, sitting on the edge of the couch.
I placed a hand over my mouth when I saw his face. There was a gash on his forehead and a horrible cut under his lip, one that looked angry and raw. An eye was swollen and black.
He looked like one of the men Daddy sometimes fought at work, except Daddy would never fight a kid. Never.
“Is that why you tried to rob me?” Daddy asked, and my eyes widened.
The boy shrugged a shoulder.
“I’m a patient man. I can stand here all night. I can also call the police and have you thrown into jail. Would you like that? Or, you can get to talking and I can get to feeding you. It’s your choice.”
Pressing against the wall, I watched the boy glare up at my daddy mutinously. He was crazy! I would never look at my daddy like that. Several moments passed and he demanded, “Why would you not call the police?”
“I’ve seen you around, hanging outside the Academy for a while. You didn’t look like this last time. You also never tried to rob me before, so I’m figuring something about your situation has changed. That you’re not a bad kid about to embark on a life of crime.”
The boy was quiet again.
“I was once in your position,” my daddy said after a moment. “Having to fight and steal food just to survive. I know what it’s like to try to survive on the streets.”
The boy’s wary eyes closed and he seemed to shudder. “I left home a couple of nights ago. Couldn’t deal with it any longer. My father . . .”
“He do that to your face?”
He didn’t answer, but my daddy seemed to know what that meant, because he barked a bad word I was never supposed to use. Then he knelt in front of the boy, speaking too low for me to hear. I had no idea what he was saying, but then my father spoke louder, “Come on. Let’s see what we have in the kitchen.”
As my father turned, the boy with the bruised face looked up, looked right at the stairway, and saw me. I didn’t understand how, because in a house often filled with voices and people and even when it was silent and nearly empty, no one really saw me.
But this boy did.
I dragged myself out of the memory, shaking the image of the scared and lost boy he’d been, because he wasn’t that boy anymore, just like I wasn’t that girl.
As much as I tried not to learn anything about Brock, it was hard not to know what was going on with him. I could resist the urge to internet stalk him all I wanted, but whenever I visited my family, at some point, someone would inevitably bring him up.
I knew Brock owned a home outside of Philadelphia, not too far from Plymouth Meeting. According to my uncle Julio, he had it built to his specifications, and included a home gym. I assumed his fiancée lived with him there, and I tried not to think about his fiancée.
Mainly because I sort of knew her.
Kristen Morgan.
And she had been there the night he broke my heart and everything changed.
Sucking in a sharp breath that did nothing to ease the burn now traveling up my throat, I pressed my lips together as I stared at the slowly churning ceiling fan.
“I’m not doing this,” I spoke out loud, causing Rhage to squirm on my legs. “I don’t care why he was here last night. It doesn’t affect me anymore. He doesn’t affect me anymore.”
Sounded like a plan.
Deciding it was far past the time to get my butt out of bed, I sat up and reached for Rhage. Just before the tips of my fingers brushed his soft fur, he flew off my legs and darted across my bedroom, running like a pack of wild dogs was chasing him.
I shook my head. “Ass.”
Wondering why the cat even bothered sleeping next to me, I reached for my cellphone. Hitting the screen, I saw I had a missed call from my friend Abby. “Shoot,” I murmured, remembering I’d turned the phone on silent after I’d gotten done talking to Avery last night.
Weeks had passed since I’d last spoken to Abby, and it had been almost a year since I’d seen her. When I headed back home for Thanksgiving, we were going to have to get coffee and catch up. Since she and Colton married a few years back, they’d been in the process of renovating an old, nineteenth -home they’d bought.
There was also a missed call and message from a local number I didn’t recognize. Curious, I hit the message button and waited.
“Hey, Jillian, this is—um—this is Grady. We met last night?” There was an awkward laugh. “Well, of course you probably remember that. Anyway, I hope you don’t get mad, but I finagled your phone number from Avery, because I wanted to know if you’d like to check out that art exhibit I was telling you about. I’m going to be out of town this weekend, but I would love to show it to you when I get back.”
Eyes wide, I stared at my phone in disbelief as Grady rattled off his phone number and then laughed again when he realized I’d have his number because of caller ID. His constant laughing at himself was . . . it was cute.
Grady wanted to see me again after I insinuated I had an uncontrollable bowel or something? For real?
A shocked laugh burst out of me. I didn’t even know what to think of that, and I felt like I needed a gallon of coffee to truly process it.
I threw the covers off my legs and rose from the comfy bed, padded across the plush carpet, and made my way down the narrow hallway, into the sunlit kitchen and living area. The hardwood floors in the main part of the apartment were cool under my bare feet.