1
Trace
Another one bites the dust. Figuratively and literally.
Smirking, I watch one of my best buddies, who swore up and down he’d never let a girl sink her claws into him, wrestle a tall, hulking kid to the ground for staring too hard at his girl, Rue Lee, with hunger in his eyes.
I have to give it to Rue. She is looking mighty fine in a pair of loose blue jeans that hang low on her hips, and those tube tops girls love to wear, revving us guys’ engines. Vroom, vroom.
Rue catches me eyeing her and tips her chin. What a bad move on her part. It only draws my attention to her dainty bare shoulders and slender arms.
Why isn’t she wearing a jacket or more layers? It’s the dead of fucking winter, and not even the bonfires we’re huddled around, or the whiskey shots we’re slamming that go down smooth but sow fire in our bellies, will warm her. I stand to offer her my hoodie, then change my mind.
Malice will rip me a new one for encroaching on his territory and doing what’s his to do—keep his girl safe, including keeping her warm.
With the kid in a headlock, Malice locks his gaze on Rue. A look I know well passes between them. I’ve seen it on Seven’s and his girl’s faces when he asks her to do something, she refuses, and now they’re facing the fallout of her defiance. Malice and his girl are in a similar situation.
He must’ve asked her to dress for the weather, and she refused. I’m glad I’m not dealing with shit like a girl’s disobedience and defiance. My attention wanders to the quiet, timid girl sitting in a camping chair across from me.
Sorrow Sophia. My lips curl. The girl with two first names who lost her mother to an overdose and her father in a fire. The same coward who’d claimed Sorrow ran away when she was fifteen but had kept her prisoner in their house, away from the world. What Kyle Sophia hadn’t counted on was Leigh Kim, the new girl in town, burglarizing his place.
Sipping my beer, my attention cuts to said girl sitting sideways on Seven’s lap with her arms around his neck. She’s not interested in the wrestling match. Leigh’s mouth is near her guy’s ear, and her fingers are in his hair.
What she’s saying to Seven must be NSFW. Seven’s eyes widen before his fingers fan over and dig into her hip. I cluck my tongue. Had someone told me a year ago that my boys would be led by their dicks by girls I never thought they’d look at once, much less twice, I would’ve told them to eat a bag of dicks.
Now look where we’re at. Seven is with the new girl, and boy, does she keep him on his toes. Leigh is a head case with a habit of borrowing things that aren’t hers. Malice, the moody punk, finally stopped fighting his attraction to his babysitter, Rue Lee, and made it official with her.
Their fates won’t be mine.
Resting my elbows on my knees, grasping the beer bottle’s neck, I stare straight ahead. I placed my chair across from Sorrow for a reason. Someone has to keep an eye on the little mouse, or else a hungry predator will swoop in and snatch her away.
There’s also my father’s threat. If anything happens to her, he’ll kick me out of the house, stop paying me my weekly allowance, and take away my brand spanking new gun-metal-gray truck.
The fire left Sorrow without a place to stay. Having turned eighteen with half the school year left, she had nowhere to turn to, so my parents offered her the guest house. Sorrow lasted a night before asking to move into the main house without giving a reason. She didn’t need one.
My parents would do anything for her. My mother has a bleeding heart, and my father feels guilty about Sorrow’s father’s spiral from business partner to a level of crazy no one could understand except her.
Before I could mentally prepare for having a girl my age in the house, bam, Sorrow moved in.
Her bedroom is on the opposite end of the house from mine. We rarely run into one another in my parents’ four-thousand-square-foot house. She stays in the bedroom. I keep to my room or the home gym. Out of sight, out of mind.
Except, no matter the time of day, whether we’re alone in the house with my parents, or it’s just me while she’s at her therapy appointment, I can feel Sorrow’s quiet, nervous presence in the walls, on the furniture, and on every surface. I understand the reason she’s that way. It’s part of her trauma of having to walk on pins and needles around a mean drunk.
She sees me in a similar vein as her father. Except I’m not a monster. I’m a predator, she’s the prey, and I haven’t decided whether to gobble her whole or toy with my food when I catch her in my clutches.
Shelving the dark thought to revisit later, I turn my attention to Malice and the dude who made the colossal mistake of eye-fucking Rue.
Malice has the guy pinned on his stomach—it’s the reason he’s a great offensive lineman—and the guy’s arm yanked back in a position that looks ungodly unnatural.
I cup my hand over my mouth. “End it already!”
This lesson of Malice’s is getting long-winded. I take another sip of my beer when I’d rather down the bottle and grab another, but I’m driving.
Smirking, Seven lifts his beer bottle and echoes my sentiments. “Yeah, bruh. End it. You’ve made your point.”
And then some. Malice could’ve ended this shit show with a sock to the kid’s face and a knee to the gut, but he’s extending the fight for one of two reasons, or both—he’s showing off for his girl, and he’s making the guy suffer. A gut punch and a sock to the face are too quick and easy a punishment for the kid’s transgressions.
Malice eases up on his death grip on the kid’s arm, gives him a good shove, and stumbles to his feet. In one smooth execution, he whisks his hooded sweatshirt over his head and wraps his girl in it. She’s so small she is swimming in it, but hey, she’ll be warm.
