Face full of ire, she spun on her heel to gaze up at him with venom. "It's Detective Hill."
All he could do was laugh. "Congrats,Detective."
"Do you want me to call my entire back up team in here, or do you want to let me pass?"
Chuckling at her impudent rage, he stepped aside. Sometimes, it was a damn shame to be right. He would have enjoyed fucking her, and she him.
Spending the night alone was a much better alternative to getting in bed with the authorities. Even if his tiny apartment was lonely and boring, it was the evening he'd planned anyway. Scraping together a can of chili and a piece of bread, Flynn sat and contemplated the next day. He was off work, and he had plans with his little brother, Fischer. The twelve-year-old had seen more shit than most grown men, and Flynn hated that he couldn't take him from the group home they'd once shared. Fischer was just nine when Flynn aged out, and it tore him up inside to watch the little guy break down crying in the foyer when he walked out. A large part of him wanted to forget about Mercy House and every crappy day he'd lived there, but he couldn't forget his five brothers. Though they weren't related by blood, they'd each learned the hard way what constituted real family.
Chapter Two
Fischer was only twelve, but Flynn felt he was more mature than most men he knew. A large part of that was because of the things the child had been exposed to at home before CPS took him from his parents. Undoubtedly, it was best for him to be removed from his home life and taken into foster care. Though Barb and Mitch weren't parents of the year, at least they tried their best to raise the boys right, to keep them out of trouble, and to help them mend. Unfortunately, they worked for a broken system. Fear of going back to parents who’d treated them abominably kept the boys awake at night, causing recurring nightmares. All mom and dad had to do was pretend to have changed for the court to ship the boys back, only to have the same trouble return to haunt them. More often than not, the kids lashed out, getting into trouble for various reasons. To gain attention, to fall in with a certain crowd and win their approval, to escape reality for a short time with illegal substances; the list was endless. Most of the time, the boys were deeper into certain activities than Barb or Mitch knew about.
"Hey, Flynn!"
"Hey, kid," he greeted Fischer as he walked through the front door. "What are we doing today?"
"I just ate lunch, so can we play pool?"
"Aw, you know Sully said he can't let you in there anymore. You're underage."
"Please?" As young as he still was, he had the uncanny ability to form an expression like a puppy who'd been kicked.
"Dammit, kid." Flynn sighed, pushing back hair in desperate need of a trim.
Fischer stuck his tongue out. "Barb told you to stop swearing around me."
Scrubbing his fist in a noogie over the top of Fischer’s head, Flynn said, "Yeah, well, Mitch has already introduced you to more swears than I could." The other boys were splayed around the common room, some stupid cartoon blaring on the television. “What’s going on?”
Ace barely glanced up. “Nothin’, bruh.”
Attempting not to roll his eyes, Flynn edged one hip onto the arm of the ratty brown couch. He tried to spend one-on-one time with each of them, though the older boys didn’t need his attention as much anymore. Lock was about to turn eighteen, and Flynn was concerned about where he would live. Most likely, Flynn would offer to let Lock live with him, but Lock’s brother Sterling would have to stay in foster care for another few years unless Lock could prove he was a better option. That would mean getting a job and a place of his own to live, proving a stable home life was a possibility. He could always work construction with Flynn, though it was often thankless and back-breaking work. It was a steady job, it paid the bills, and it offered enough money to rent a tiny, crappy apartment.
One of the boys laughed at the antics of the cartoon character, and Flynn shifted his gaze over to him. At fifteen, Brooks thought he had his entire life figured out. He knew what he wanted to do once he aged out of the system, but the idea of actually becoming a professional video game tester was more fantasy than reality. Though Flynn understood completely; he’d never been happier than when he hit eighteen. That meant freedom; that meant never getting sent back. He couldn't be forced to return to drug dealing parents who were too deep in their own product to care much about the child they created. And Flynn was one of the few whose parents had stayed together. For the other boys, it was more like single junkie mothers serial dating, moving from place to place, always looking to score no matter the cost.
That was how Fischer had ended up in foster care. His dealer stepfather wanted payment out of the boy’s hide when his mother ran out of money. How a grown woman could voluntarily marry someone of that low caliber was beyond Flynn’s comprehension. From the first night at Mercy House, Fischer had climbed in bed with Flynn after recurring nightmares. He’d felt the need to protect the little guy as much as he could, through all the hard days and harder nights, the supervised visitations, and the court appearances where his mother begged to have him back. Thankfully, it looked as though that would never happen. The state officially had custody of Fischer Rodgers, and he was available for adoption soon after that.
