“Thanks,” he said again, letting her go.
They stepped back and before she could figure out what to say next, she got sandwiched between two more bodies. The barking from the vicinity of her ankles informed her that one of them had brought along Sneakers held by his leash.
“What is this?” she protested, trying to squirm free.
“Remember what we said about sharing?” Bastion whispered into one of her ears.
“You’re taking advantage of the situation,” Tess said, twisting harder.
War had the grip of an athlete. He wasn’t going to fumble her. “We’re just following through on our convictions. When Kade’s girlfriend tried to paint a scarlet letter on him, we each swore off girls unless they accepted all of us.”
“You dumped your girlfriends?” Tess asked, confused.
“Not all of us were in a relationship, but yeah, I got an ultimatum to choose between standing with my best friend or dating a spoiled princess,” Bastion said.
“Let me go. I can’t breathe,” she complained.
“Just try to escape,” War whispered in her other ear.
“Sneakers, get his toes,” she ordered.
The dog barked excitedly.
“Hey, I fed you liver bites,” War said, finally giving her some space. He didn’t sound all that worried about his toes. She thought he was wearing boots.
Something hit her really hard against the back of her head. She squeaked in shocked pain.
“Slut,” someone screamed. “You gonna suck Cain while he-”
War moved and whoever was yelling at her cut off fast. She heard War swearing and pounding after someone, but Bastion wouldn’t let her see or turn around. He had pulled her head down to look at where she had been hit.
“She’s bleeding,” Bastion said, then added a few curses of his own.
“It was fucking Drake,” Kade said and he sounded pissed. It was the first time she felt intimidated by him. “They’re on bikes. No way War’s gonna catch ‘em.”
“Does she need to go to the hospital?” Keir asked. he sounded more worried, shuffling nearby but unable to get close enough with Bastion and now Kade crowding over her.
“I don’t need a hospital,” Tess declared. She couldn’t leave the twins at home alone. They were old enough, but with everything going on, she wasn’t about to take off unless this was a true emergency.
She hadn’t lost consciousness or anything serious. It was going to be fine.
“You’re bleeding,” Bastion reminded her.
“Scalp wounds are bloody. I’m fine,” she said. She shifted her head up, pulling Bastion’s hands off.
“Let me carry you,” Kade said.
“I can walk,” she told him.
He reached down and scooped her up, princess style.
“My kilt,” she complained.
“Keep your legs closed,” he advised. She was getting carried.
“What was it?” she asked.
“Bottle,” Bastion said. “Most people would ask why they were hit, not what were they hit with first.”
“Okay, why was I hit?”
She had never really been subject to random violence before. Although she had heard the vicious taunt, it seemed an over the top reaction for hugging, and she hadn’t even been in the arms of either of the twins at the moment she was struck.
“It’s my fault,” Kade said, his grip tightening.
“They got away. Drake Simons and Mike Fosters,” War said. She couldn’t see him but she could hear the frustration in his voice. “How hurt are you, Pumpkin?”
“I’m fine. Kade is trying to assuage some misplaced guilt by carrying me. He wasn’t the one to hit me but he still wants to take responsibility. I have the feeling it’s a bad habit of his, accepting blame that doesn’t belong to him.”
Keir softly swore while Kade said nothing. She dared to look up at his face. It was hard and he was staring up ahead. She swallowed thickly.
Bastion caught her eyes, reaching over with his fingers to lift her chin and gaze while Kade carried her.
She looked at Bastion, noting the way he clenched his jaw.
“Maybe don’t rub Kade’s face in it right now,” War said on her other side.
“Look, it’s not a big deal. Some prick took a cheap shot at me. I’m fine,” she said, feeling ungrateful because they were all so caring but this could turn into a bigger problem unless she did something fast. They were getting close to the house. “Jason and Ashley don’t need to see me hurt or getting worried. They have enough to deal with right now. Put me down and I’ll run upstairs to clean up. You guys can hang out in my room down in the basement and I’ll join you in a jiffy.”
“You might need stitches,” Kade said. “And don’t tell me you aren’t hurting.”
He looked down at her and she found the words of denial dried up in her mouth. He wasn’t going to let her get away with minimizing this.
“I got beaned with a bottle, of course, it hurts, but no more than accidentally whacking my head on the car getting into it or falling off the monkey bars—both of which I’ve done and survived,” she said. “Let me down here.”
They were across the road already. Kade sighed, big and loud. Yeah, he was put out, but he didn’t know her well enough to push it further.
“Fine. Clean up in the bathroom to get rid of the blood in your hair but don't put a bandage on it. I'm going to look when you come downstairs, and if it's still bleeding, I'm going to call the doctor to come to suture you up,” Bastion said.
Kade let her down.
“A house call? I didn't think doctors did that anymore,” she said, not sure how to respond.
The twins definitely would notice if a doctor came into the house and started sewing up her head wound. In fact, one of them might even call their mom out of habit. They were all her kids after all, although their mother really was in no shape to take care of anyone, even herself.
Worse, the kids might think someone else did it. They didn’t need to see the blood and wonder.
“Okay,” she agreed because Kade was still breathing down her neck and the rest of them crowded close to hear her answer. Refusal would not go over well, and she did not need them making a noisy stink about it all.
“Who has Sneakers?” she asked, looking around for him.
Calling his name was all it took. A couple of barks and a fluffy black tail wagging with excitement greeted her as she squatted down to give the dog a reassuring pat. “Some guard dog you turned out to be, toe-biter,” she muttered.
“Let me bring him inside for you. We’ll play with him while you clean up and then when you're done, Ashley can take him upstairs to bathe,” Bastion said. “You only have one full bathroom, right?”
He had remembered her sister's name and he had gotten a good enough look at their house to figure out the layout. It was a good idea. If they kept Sneakers busy with them while she cleaned up, her sister and brother wouldn’t be in the bathroom too and check out what happened to her.
“Go with Bastion, Sneaks,” she said, standing up. “Okay, operation ‘Bottle-Head’ is ready to commence. Set your watches to 18:35. I’ll head in first to check for any civilians.”
Everybody moved aside and gave her room, although they followed pretty close behind. The door was unlocked and when she walked in, the twins were sitting in the living room, watching tv.
“I’m going upstairs to grab a quick shower. Got a bit sweaty running around with Sneaks out there. The guys are just going to head downstairs. Give me ten minutes, then you can have the bathroom to get Sneaks washed up,” she told the twins, carefully keeping herself facing them and the wound on the back of her head hidden from their sight.
“Hi. I’m Warrick.”
“Kade.”
“Keir.”
“They’re Ashley and Jason. They go to our school,” Bastion said. “What grade?” he asked them.
“Nine,” Jason answered. “We’re fraternal twins.”
Not long after she started the shower up, she heard the squeaking of the basement stairs as the guys went down.
The wound on her scalp was tender, but she didn't feel a large laceration. There was considerable swelling and a goose egg. Gingerly using shampoo and gentle scrubbing, she was able to get the blood out until the water rinsed clear.
She towelled off and tried to get a look at it using a combination of her compact mirror and the bathroom mirror but all the steam made it difficult. It had to good enough now that Bastion would forget about calling his doctor friend. She quickly dressed in leggings and a long sweater, feeling more comfortable than her uniform kilt earlier.
“All done,” she called to the twins as she came downstairs. “Are you ready for Sneaks?”
“Sure,” Ashley said. She stood up and met Tess in the hallway. “Want me to get him? He went down with your friends”
“Students,” Tess automatically corrected, then backpedalled. “No, friends. You’re right. They have really helped me out.”
Her sister lowered her voice to a whisper. “You know who they are, right?”
“Yeah, they introduced themselves when they came in,” Tess said. “Didn’t you catch their names?”
Yeah, she was being deliberately obtuse but her sister had a scandalized tone Tess hadn’t expected from her.
“Whatever, it’s your reputation, not mine,” Ashley said, rolling her eyes.
Great. She must have done that a million times to their mother and now it was payback. Her sister meant well, likely wanted to be sure Tess wasn’t biting off more than she could chew with her new friends. In case Tess had been completely blind and deaf to all the warnings being shouted about them by everyone else today.
“Just send Sneakers up and we’ll take care of him,” Jason said, standing up and turning off the television. He didn’t even look at her, glancing at his twin instead.
The awkwardness between them was back. She should have known even bringing their dog home wasn’t going to cancel out the months of no phone calls, missed birthdays and pretty much ignoring that she had a family. This was her mistake coming home to roost.
Baby steps were needed.
“Thanks, Jase. Ash. Maybe we can talk about a schedule to take turns doing doggie care after my friends leave?” Tess proposed, using their childhood nicknames on purpose. It was an excuse, but she would shamelessly employ almost anything to get her siblings to talk to her.
They hadn’t seriously discussed the elephant in the room. Mad mommy was an even bigger presence in her absence from their lives. The kids had to know this wasn’t going to be a short-term stay. Things were going to have to change. They all had to adjust to their new reality.
Tess wasn’t going away. Would they believe it?
“Sure,” Ashley agreed. “Okay,” Jason added. It was a start.
She opened the door to the basement and called for Sneakers. He bounded up the stairs after about ten seconds, ears flopping. She stepped to the side and he kept on going past her to where Jason was whistling for him. One problem solved.
Preparing herself for four more problems waiting downstairs to fuss over her head wound, she stepped back through the door and closed it behind her. Bastion’s golden head popped out at her first, around the bottom of the staircase.
The stairs were narrow and ended at the back of the house, so she couldn’t see her bedroom at the other end from the top of the staircase. There wasn’t a door to her temporary room but the way the staircase was set up, she still had relative privacy. The twins knew to knock first and wait for her to answer before they opened the door at the top of the stairs.
“We organized,” Bastion said. “You weren’t even fully unpacked.”
Her heart skipped a few beats, quickly thinking over what she had left in suitcases. It wasn’t that she had a lot of belongings but they were all the more personal and important because of her relative lack.
She had also left out stuff regarding her mom, including her mom’s scheduler.
“You shouldn’t have,” Tess said, hurrying down the stairs. “You really, really shouldn’t have touched that stuff. It was organized.”
“You’re a slob,” War declared. She rounded the staircase landing and looked for him.
“Not everyone has time to colour code their notes,” she muttered, although it was Keir that dig aimed at better.
Bastion laughed, following close behind her.
The basement was carpeted and partly finished. The laundry room was walled off to the left and had a cement floor, but her room was meant to be a spillover recreation room, relatively comfortable. The windows were small and few, so the light was provided by lamps and a few pot lights. Her bed was a futon couch that was kitty corner to the dresser holding a small television she had brought from her dorm room that another student had handed down to her on graduation. Her laptop was set up on a tv dinner table. Papers were still spread out all over bed undisturbed.
All of her suitcases were neatly stacked by the wall. That was not the way she had left them, spread all over the floor and contents spilling out without care that anybody would see her hot pink panties next to a Guns and Roses shirt. Why hadn’t she remembered the mess she had left when she told the guys to wait for her down here?
“Where did you put my clothes?”
“Dresser,” Keir said. “We sorted them into tops, bottoms, underclothes and socks. The bottom drawer is empty.”
Great. They had all seen her panty drawer, having literally stocked it from the suitcases. She hoped they had been mature about it but she had her doubts. She couldn’t let them get away with it.
“Did you take any souvenirs?” she accused, handing Kade his borrowed gym sweater, then stepping back to cross her arms over her chest and give them all an accusing stare.
Kade put the sweater down on the foot of her futon bed and returned her glare with a chuckle. “Told you she would be mad,” he said to the others. “Pumpkin killed Rob’s test over a peek at her boxers.”
Keir’s eyes went over to the bed and he seemed to twitch in discomfort, like he was holding himself back from going over and organizing the mess she had left spread out there, too. “It was a fire hazard. Consider this an issue of safety,” he said, looking back at her.
“Oh, and are all those papers on my bed a fire hazard, too?” she asked.
War was the one to laugh this time. “Unless you smoke in bed, I think we can rule out any imminent combustion concerns. Keir just thought you might trip on all the luggage and your clothes would get wrinkled.”
In other words, he was being reasonable and sensible. Hard to stay mad.
“You don’t want to fall down and hurt your head any further,” Bastion said, coming up closer. He tried to peer around her, putting one hand on her shoulder to turn her. “How’s your head feeling?”
“Sore, but not broken,” she said, turning.
He prodded for the injury very softly, fingers shifting through her wet hair. “You smell good,” he commented.
She had used her favourite shampoo, a ginger-scented one that made her feel invigorated no matter how hard her day had been. It was a pick me up.
“Ow, ow,” she said as he found the right spot.
“Head down,” Bastion told her. “I can’t see it with the lighting down here.”
He was taller than her so he should have a good perspective already, but it wasn’t worth arguing about. She flexed her neck forward, looking at the green carpet. It was a really ugly colour. She hadn’t thought it through when she told the guys to wait for her down here. There were no chairs, just the futon bed to sit on and she had it covered with papers. Even the floor had been a navigational landmine
before they cleaned it up for her.
She was going to have to get some chairs if the guys planned on ever visiting again after this disastrous first time.
“Sorry it was such a mess,” she mumbled to the floor. “I didn’t think anyone else would be down here and there were so many things I had to get sorted through first that I left the unpacking for last.”
“Why are you in the basement, anyway?” Bastion asked, warm breath tickling the back of her neck. He was bent over so close to examine her.
“The twins are old enough to need their own rooms and I couldn’t bring myself to take over my mom’s room. There isn’t that much space in the townhouse and this room has more privacy than the television room at the front of the house.”
“Kade told us about your mom,” War said. “I’m sorry to hear she has been sick. Any time you want to visit her, just text one of us to come to pick you up.”
“Thanks,” Tess whispered, swallowing a sudden lump in her throat.
“Okay, there’s a lot of swelling still but the bleeding has stopped. I think you should let us ice it and take some ibuprofen,” Bastion declared. He finally pulled his hands out of her hair. She missed his warm touch but covered it up with a shrug.
“I’m fine. I don’t even know if we have ice.”
“You say that like I made a suggestion,” Bastion said, voice dropping to a deep, slightly threatening tone.
She turned on her heel and gave him her best glare, the one she normally reserved for people like Rob Balor from today. It said she wouldn’t be pushed, she bit and she could be fucking rabid if necessary. A girl on her own learned to project fearsome and fearless, even if it wasn’t entirely true and she preferred to hide away in a book and to forget about all the terrible things happening around her.
One of them had left the top dresser drawer slightly open. She closed it and decided now was the time to establish that she wasn’t a pushover. If she was going to do that right, she needed to start with the pushiest guy in their group.
“I know you wouldn’t order me around in my own house. That would earn you a one-way ticket home,” she challenged Bastion, turning from the dresser to give him a stubborn look.
Impetuous (Victory Lap Book 1) Page 15