by Lexi Lewis
His mother was flipping through the stack of mail, or at least she had been. Something in the pile seemed to have rendered her speechless. “Mom?” he asked.
“What is this?” she demanded, waving a piece of paper around angrily.
“Uh…I don’t know? I can’t see it from here.”
She looked up at him, anger and fear in her eyes, and the sight of it made Reese’s stomach twist. He moved as quickly as he could over to the table and took the paper from her to see what the issue was.
When he read it, his heart nearly stopped.
There, on plain, unlined paper, was a note. It had been typed, so there was no handwriting or anything to go by, and the fact that it had been put in the mailbox and there were no addresses anywhere, meant that they knew where he lived and he knew nothing about them.
Reese Abbot:
You got lucky.
Good thing luck always seems to run out, huh? I’d give this up if I were you. Otherwise someone less resilient might end up in a cast. Or worse. Just something to think about.
And that was it. No signature, no indication at all of where or who it had come from.
When Reese looked up, his mother was staring at him, open horror on her face. “What are you going to do about this?” she demanded.
“I…try to…”
“Try to what, Reese? This person is obviously very serious. They know where we live. They are making threats that they seemingly can back up. Why don’t you see how dangerous this is?”
“I do! Mom, they’re just trying to scare me. They’re trying to make me afraid to keep competing.”
She scowled at him. “So you don’t think the threats are serious? You don’t think they would stoop to hurting someone you care about just to see you out of the running for some silly bike riding trophy or whatever it is?”
He didn’t know how to answer that. It was absurd to think that anyone would do something like that just to keep him out of the games, but… They’d already put him in the hospital. If his injuries had been just a bit worse, then he might not have bounced back at all. Now they were threatening the people around him, the people he cared for. As one of those people, he could see why his mom was worried.
“What’s going on out here?” Anthony asked as he came out of his office, frowning. “Are you two at each other’s throats again?” He frowned harder when he saw the look on his wife’s face and the way Reese was avoiding his eyes. “What’s happened?”
“Ask your son,” Carolyn replied, voice acidic.
Reese hadn’t heard her sound that mad at him since the old days. “Dad, I…” He sighed. “Here.” Clearly there was no point in trying to keep anything from them anymore. This could very well start involving them now, and no matter how hard Reese was trying to keep it from affecting them, something told him that he was failing at that.
Which meant…
Eve.
If they knew where he lived, then they might be having him watched. This note wasn’t delivered to his apartment, hundreds of miles away. No, it was sent here, which meant they knew more about him than he knew about them. Which meant that they might very well know about Eve and how they had been getting closer.
Reese didn’t think he could handle it if something happened to her or Devin. She had more than enough to worry about already, but there was no way he could just let her uninformed about this anymore.
“Where are you going?” his father asked as Reese started to head back to his room. “We have to do something about this.”
“I’m going to call Paul,” Reese lied. Well, it wasn’t really a lie. He was going to call Paul, too. His agent was another person who was possibly in danger now, and he was the one who was handling all this. But first he had to talk to Eve.
He left before anyone could say anything else, closing the door to his room and pulling out his phone.
It was definitely late enough for Eve to be home, and she was probably expecting a call from him anyway, so he let out a breath and called.
“Hello?”
“…Hey.”
“Reese? Why do you sound like you just got kicked or something? Is everything alright?”
Oh, god. She sounded like she was in a good mood, and he hated ruining that. He had learned to hear the smile in her voice, and he swallowed hard, picturing it in his head as he forced himself to keep talking.
“No. Not really. There’s something I have to tell you, and I’m not really sure how to do it.”
There was a silence from the other end of the line. “I guess you just…do it. Do I need to be sitting down for this?”
“Probably.”
“Great.” Her voice was flat, and he could hear her moving around before she spoke again. “Alright, go on.”
Reese sucked in a deep breath and then let it out messily. “I probably should have told you this weeks ago, but…Paul and I found out the reason why I got hurt. It wasn’t because I messed up the trick. It wasn’t my fault at all, really. We watched the footage, and there was…a rock or something that hit the bottom of my board. It was thrown or shot or something like that. That’s why I went down.”
He could hear her sharp intake of breath, and he waited to see if she was going to say anything. When she didn’t, he pressed on.
“Paul’s been looking into it, and we thought it was just some loser who wanted someone else to win or to put me out of commission for a while. But then…today this note came, basically threatening that if I didn’t stop thinking about going back into the games, someone else would get hurt. It wasn’t explicit, but I’m pretty sure that they meant someone close to me. The note was in my mailbox, Eve. No address or anything.”
“So they know where you’re staying.”
“Yeah.”
She was quiet for a bit, and then she let out a shaky laugh. “Sorry, I’m not laughing at you, I swear. I’m just a little relieved. I thought you might have been calling to say you’d changed your mind about…us. And…that sounds stupid and selfish now that I think about it. Sorry. This is actually worse.”
Reese rubbed a hand over his face. “Yeah, it is. Anyway, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I wasn’t really telling anyone for a while, but then Paul opened his mouth and blabbed when my parents were around. Now that this has happened… I just want you to be safe.”
“You think they’d come after me?” she asked, sounding surprised.
“I dunno. Probably not. But…if they know where my parents live, then it’s possibly they’re watching me. So just…please be careful. I know you already have a million and one things you have to worry about, but…”
“Yeah,” Eve said. “Yeah, I’ll be careful. I promise. You be careful, too, okay? It’s you they’re trying to stop.”
Huh. Reese had half been waiting for her to give him the same lecture his mother had tried to start, to tell him that this was dangerous and that continuing on was not only stupid, but selfish to boot. His mother hadn’t said all of that yet, but Reese knew her. It would only be a matter of time before she got around to it.
“Reese?”
He was startled back out of his thoughts and realized that she had probably been trying to talk to him. “Sorry, what? My brain is just all over the place right now.”
“That’s alright. I think I would be concerned if you were taking something like this well. I was asking what you think you’re going to do. I know how important your sports are to you.”
If only he knew the answer to that question. The easiest thing to do would be to just give in, he knew that. The interview he had was coming up in the next couple of days, and it would be so easy to just say that he was retiring or something. He had enough money saved up that he could live comfortably while he looked for some kind of job that he could do. Hell, he could even go back to school. Try to find something that interested him somehow. His mother would be all for that. It would solve a lot of problems. Pretty much every problem, except for the fact that he would be miserable.
That was not the ki
nd of life he wanted. It wouldn’t even suit him. Reese was a thrill seeker, and there was nothing about school or an office job that would give him the thrills he wanted.
“I don’t want to give it up,” he found himself saying. “I really don’t. I know that it would keep everyone safe, but more than hating the fact that I would have to give up what I love, I hate that it would be because someone else made me, you know? I’d always know that I gave up on my dreams because I was scared, and I don’t think I could live with that.”
Saying it out loud to Eve made him realize just how true it was. There was no way he could settle like that. They were just going to have to find out who this person was and put them down before they could hurt anyone. That’s all there was to it.
Eve chuckled softly. “You know, I thought you were going to say that. I support you, you know? With whatever you decide to do. You deserve to be happy, and it’s not fair for someone to try and take that from you just because you’re better than they are.”
He grinned at the conviction in her voice. It was really, really nice to have someone who supported him, Reese decided, and it almost made him wish he had told her earlier.
“Are you going to call the police or anything?” Eve was asking.
“I dunno. I need to call Paul as soon as I’m done talking to you. He’s been handling all this pretty much. I don’t think either of us expected that it would escalate like this, though, so I’m not sure what the plan is.” He heaved a sigh. “I really don’t want anyone to get hurt because of me.”
“I know you don’t, Reese. Just…tell everyone to be careful. It helps that you’re the only one with the thrill seeking addiction. So it’s not like anyone else is going to get knocked off a snowboard or a bike or something.”
He smiled at that. “Yeah, that’s a good point. Just look both ways before you cross the street and don’t open the door for strangers.”
“And I do that anyway. I’m sure it’ll all be fine.”
The soothing tone of her voice was so reassuring, and Reese felt himself calming down. They made plans to try and see each other again the coming weekend, and then he hung up and let out a sigh. Having Eve be so relaxed about the whole thing definitely helped calm him down from the near frenzy his mother had whipped his nerves into. Still, by the time he had told Paul everything and secured his promise that he would show up the next morning to take a look at the note and come up with some sort of game plan, Reese was worn out.
His nerves were shot, and he was tired, so he flopped back on the bed and closed his eyes.
Why him?
That was the question that kept springing to mind. Sure, he was one of the up and comers on the scene, but there were so many others who were better than him and higher ranked. Why was this person (or people, because it could have been more than one) specifically going after him? What had he ever done to make someone want to hurt him that much?
To his knowledge, nothing. Reese was generally a well-liked person since he was easy going and laid back, but this proved that there was some animosity towards him somewhere out there.
It was still early to be considering just going to bed, but there was no way he was going back out there to deal with his parents again. Not before he came up with some kind of plan. But that could wait until morning.
CHAPTER 6: HITTING HARDER
Eve’s head was a mess at work the next day. Between thinking about her brother and everything that was going on with him plus all the things that Reese had told her the night before, there wasn’t much room for anything else, and she still had a job to do.
It continued to be positively slammed at the hospital, and she was asked to help out in the clinic since they were short staffed down there.
The clinic was one of her least favorite parts of the job.
It was mostly people who didn’t have anything wrong with them, coming to take up valuable time, although there were also the people who had serious things wrong with them who had waited to come in and needed to be referred upstairs to be admitted.
When she made it to the waiting room, it was already full, and she groaned, not really looking forward to dealing with this.
Dr. Adamson was on duty, and she already looked frazzled, which led Eve to believe that this was not going to be a relaxing day at work.
“Can you go to room seven and talk to the patient in there?” the doctor asked, pausing to brush a strand of curly red hair out of her face. “He doesn’t seem to have anything wrong with him, but you know we’re obligated to check anyway. I’ll be in there after I’m finished following up with room twelve.”
Eve held in her sigh. “Of course,” she said, taking the clipboard she was offered and heading down to the room.
She pushed the door open and walked in, eyes on the chart. There was no name on it yet, which meant she had to fill in all the information herself before Dr. Adamson arrived. “Good morning, sir,” she said in her best ‘I’m a nurse, and I’m here to help’ voice. “What seems to be the problem today…”
Eve trailed off when she looked up, eyes going wide in horror.
Her father.
It had been so many years since she’d seen him like this, but she knew it was him. There were enough familiar features that she and Devin shared with him, and his face was probably burned into her brain by now.
Jason Hunter was the same as he had been the last time she’d seen him. Tall with a lanky build, dark skin, close cut hair. His brown eyes still looked hard, even though there were more lines around them now than there had been before.
It was a surprise that she didn’t drop her clipboard in shock and disgust, but she managed to hang onto it, fingers tightening around the wooden edges until it was digging into her skin. She had no idea where he’d been or how he knew that she worked there, but she wanted him gone. She wanted him as far away from her and her brother as he could possibly get. And then a little bit further for good measure.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, voice icy.
“I’m sick,” he said, coughing into his hand. “Isn’t this where people come when they want to get better?”
Just the sound of his voice sent her back to being a child, curled up in her bedroom trying not to listen to the sound of him hitting her mother. She had to forcibly remind herself that she was an adult now. She was an adult with a job and her own life, and she didn’t have to be afraid of this man anymore. There was no way she was letting him into her life or Devin’s life after all the things he had done.
“We all know you’re sick,” she practically spat at him. “But you’re not interested in getting better.”
“That hurts, Evelyn. You don’t know what I’m interested in.”
“And I don’t care,” she hissed. “I really don’t. This is my job. You can’t just come here and try to play whatever intimidation game you’ve got going on.” The door to the room was still open, and she planned on leaving it that way so she wouldn’t have to be closed in with him, so she kept her voice down, not wanting to make a scene.
Her father sighed. “I know that I’ve done some bad things in the past, Eve, but can’t you for once just consider the fact that I might have changed?”
She snorted. “You? Please. You fed mom that same line when you came crawling back the last time, and she took you back. And then what happened? You got her pregnant and you left her like the scum you are. Don’t expect me to just suddenly believe you’re reformed now.”
“I regret the things that went down between your mother and me,” he said. “I was going to try and apologize to her, but then I found out that she was…”
“Dead?” Eve supplied. “She’d dead. So it’s really too late for your apologies. She didn’t need them anyway.”
“I could apologize to you, if you’d like.”
Eve hated the little hint of a smile that was playing around his lips, and she wanted to hit him with the clipboard. Instead she let out a controlled breath through her nose. “I don’t want
to hear anything you’ve got to say. So if you just came here to try and get me to forgive you so you can worm your way into what’s left of this family, you’re barking up the wrong tree. I’m never going to forgive you. Ever. What you did to my mother…there’s no excuse for that. No way to make that right. You hurt her so many times, I can’t even…it all just blurs together in my mind. Her crying, you yelling, me hiding. Over and over again. So if you think you’ve got the right to show up now trying to…I don’t even know, trying to make things right like you suddenly give a crap, then you can go right back to whatever hole you crawled out of.”
“Is it so hard to believe that I might be telling the truth?” Jason snapped. “That I might want to be with the little bit of family I have left? You don’t know me, Eve. You know the things I’ve done, yeah, but you can’t say that I don’t regret them.”
Was he for real? Was he seriously expecting her to just have forgotten all the crappy things he did and be willing to welcome him back into the family with open arms? After everything that had happened?
Suddenly Eve was too tired for this. She had not had enough sleep the night before to prepare her for dealing with her father.
“You listen to me,” she said, and her voice was hard and acidic. “I don’t care if you have changed. I don’t care if you’ve suddenly found God or seen the light, or whatever change you claim to have made. I really don’t. Nothing, nothing can erase what you did. You can talk all you want, but I don’t want you anywhere near me or my brother. He’s ten. Ten years old, and he’s lost his mother and never known his father, and if you think for one second that I’m going to let you walk into his life and then mess him up before you leave again, then you’ve got another thing coming, because that’s not happening. I will go to the police. I will get a restraining order. I will do whatever it takes to keep you away from us. Now, if you’re serious about regretting being the worst father in the world, then you’ll walk out right now and never show your face again.”