Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 90564 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 453(@200wpm)___ 362(@250wpm)___ 302(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90564 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 453(@200wpm)___ 362(@250wpm)___ 302(@300wpm)
His blue eyes met mine, all trace of humor vanishing. “Fate.”
Maybe he was right. Of all the shit things that had happened to me in the last two years, coming back to him didn’t feel like one of them. Seeing him with Gracie reminded me just how much I had always loved that boy.
Time might have changed some things, scarred us, and pulled us apart, but if I left this town tomorrow and never saw him again, married someone else, and lived an entire life… When I was old and gray, Hendrix Hunt would still be my one. Even if the very fate that brought us here also kept us from being together. He would always be my person.
Chapter 17
HENDRIX
Fate.
Fucking Medusa-laden fate.
I watched Lola disappear into the house before I pushed off the stairs and cranked the mower again.
That blond sack-of-ball-droppings Barrington dickface in his shiny, shitass car. I saw the way he looked at Lola, the way she looked at him when he called Gracie monkey. She hated Barrington almost as much as I did, but one thing that would get Lola more than anything else was a guy having a soft spot for her sister.
He brought her home!
In his truck. All cozied up like a happy little family.
Chadwick Needs-his-ass-beat was on the top of my shit list. Blond, all clean-cut and pristine. Not a tattoo on his gold-plated ass. I was night. He was day. And he could go fuck himself for all I cared.
I felt my eye twitch as I started across the lawn.
As much as I wanted to find his address and show up at his house, smash the windows on his car, then pop him in his stupid, Colgate-smile teeth, I couldn’t.
He was Gracie’s foster brother, and the only female I cared about outside of Lola was that little girl. She’d had my heart since the day she was born. So, I would have to be a little sad panda bitch and sit here while Daddy Warbucks tried to take away both my girls. Evidently, Kyle wasn’t the one I should have been worried about. It was Mr. Small Dick, Big Bank Account.
I let out a heavy breath, dust and grass clippings spraying into the air as I whipped the mower around.
I had one strip of weeds left to cut when Bellamy’s demolition Honda pulled into the drive. Arlo had his face plastered to the back window, and the second Bell came to a complete stop, the kid kicked the door open and shot out like a Slushie-fueled bullet.
I cut the mower just before he skidded to a stop. “Uncle Hendrix, do you have any water balloons?”
They weren’t water balloons. They were expired condoms. But we made do with what we could around here. “All out, kid.”
“Man.” He kicked the dirt. “All out of rubbers?” Probably shouldn't have taught him that that was what they were called. “That stinks big dookie balls,” he said, then launched himself at me like a spider monkey.
Bell’s car door closed. I glanced around Arlo’s flailing arms as I flipped the kid over my shoulder and dangled him upside down by his ankles.
“Just wanted to come by before I headed out.” Bell stopped a few feet in front of me and shoved his hands into his jean’s pockets.
“You heading out tonight?”
“Yeah. Just taking him to get a Slushie. Then grabbing the last of my stuff and following Drew up to Piketown.”
Arlo asked if he could play the PlayStation. I nodded, then dropped him to the freshly cut dirt. He took off up the steps. As soon as the front door banged closed behind him, Bellamy’s stressed gaze met mine.
After everything that had happened over the past year between his mom and his abusive dick of a dad, I could understand why.
I clapped him on the shoulder, jutting my chin toward the porch. “Don’t worry, man. I’ll check on your mom. And Arlo.”
Bell scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck on his way up the sidewalk. “It’s gonna be weird as hell not being here.”
“You should be glad to get out of this hellhole.”
“I am.” He took a seat on one of the worn stairs. “But this hellhole is still home.”
We’d always had to pretend to be grown, had responsibilities, but there was something really sad about actually growing up. Because people left. Lives split apart. Things changed, and I hated change.
I took a seat beside him, waving a hand around the crappy neighborhood we’d terrorized as kids. “This place isn’t home, man. The people maybe, but not the place.”
He glanced back toward the house. “So, how’re things going with Lo--demort?”
Things with “Lodemort” shouldn’t be going anywhere, but fate was a sick bitch, and she was riding my balls hard. “We’re just roommates.”
“I want to give you so much crap for this…” He rubbed his hands over his thighs. “But we’ve been best friends since we were kids. I know you haven’t gotten over her.”