by Evie Monroe
Dr. Grace Andrews, the vet, smiled at me. “You have such a way with those shelter animals. That one wouldn’t let anyone pick him up. He was so skittish.”
I laughed. “This sweet baby? I can’t believe it! He’s nothing but a great big sweetheart.”
She went back to her desk piled high with work. “That’s what you say about all of our patients. I don’t know what we would ever do without you, Charlotte.”
I looked into the bunny’s black button eye. What could I say? The rescues were my favorite of all the animals brought into the Aveline Bay Veterinary practice. I understood lost-and-lonely better than anyone. This particular one was all black with a little white spot on his nose. “He’s so adorable.”
“He’s up for adoption!” Dr. Andrews reminded me.
I set him back in the cage with a reluctant sigh and started to scuff away in my comfy work shoes and scrubs. “Don’t tempt me.”
I was so on the verge, as I was at least once a day, at this job. The problem was, my tiny apartment was a two-pet establishment. And I was already testing that to the limit. I had two . . . dogs. But also, one practically hairless cat, a bunny, a blind turtle, and a gerbil with three legs. And my stupid brother.
I lived in constant worry that my landlord would find out and boot my ass. But I couldn’t help it. I loved all the abandoned and sad creatures of the world.
Speaking of abandoned and sad . . .
I walked to the reception area and reached into my purse for my phone. I stared at the display with a rush of disappointment.
No messages.
Dejected, I pocketed the phone, then grabbed my jacket and hoisted my purse onto my shoulder. I said goodbye to the rest of the techs in the reception area of the veterinary hospital and walked out to the parking lot, cursing the name of my little brother.
We’d talked about this Jojo knew better. Knew how I worried. And yet he just seemed to get worse and worse. At nineteen, now, I thought after he graduated from high school, he’d get a job, start taking on more responsibility and help out around the house. I didn’t know he’d turn into a big old party-loving loser who hardly ever came home.
When I slid into the driver’s seat of my car, I checked his Instagram to see if he’d posted anything. He loved posting himself doing keg-stands or getting high.
But nope. He hadn’t updated his status in a week.
I tried to tell myself that it was all normal teen behavior, and I should be happy he was having a normal teen life, since I’d been all about working at the grocery store at night, and college during the day when I was his age. No time for fun. He had it easy.
He could have at least sent me a text to let me know he was alive. Was that asking too much?
I turned the key in the ignition and tried not to worry. But he was still just a kid in so many ways. And he hadn’t come home last night, or the night before.
Usually, when he stayed out drinking with his friends, he’d let me know he was okay. Send a quick text so I’d know where he was. So I wouldn’t worry.
Not this time.
Of course, he was notoriously bad about remembering to charge his phone. Maybe his battery just died.
Or maybe . . .
I swallowed, once again thinking the thoughts that had consumed my mind during my entire shift. He’s getting worse, Charlotte, and you know it. It’s got to be those loser friends of his. Maybe he’s gone from pot to something worse.
Pulling out of the parking lot, I tried to rein in my brain to stop it from imagining the worst—Jojo dead of an overdose in someone’s basement, or in a ditch from a drunk driving accident. Considering the pictures I’d seen on his Instagram lately, neither of those scenarios was much of a stretch.
I turned up the music loud as I drove across the town of Aveline Bay, to the apartment we shared. I was twenty-five, now, six years older than my baby brother, but in my head, I’d always be his mom.
His dad, too.
Pretty much his everything.
Growing up, we’d never had much in the way of parental figures. I was seven when our parents drove away and left us at the Circle K, too strung out on heroin to realize we weren’t in the car with them. Joel could barely walk at the time, a little over a year old and an adorable little bouncing boy.
I still remember sitting in the police headquarters that night, thinking they’d arrested me for being a bad girl and afraid I’d spend the rest of my life in jail. They’d taken Jojo away from me, and I sat on one of those hard plastic chairs in the waiting room, in my pink unicorn shirt and pigtails, while everyone buzzed around, ignoring me.
Eventually, a social worker named Ms. Nettles came in and told me that my parents had gone away for a while, and that I’d be living in a home with other children while they tried to find a more permanent place for me.
I screamed my head off. Not for my mom. Not for my dad. They’d always been transient in my life, floating in and out, often absent when I needed them.
I screamed for Jojo.
Whatever I did must have worked, because two days later, we were placed with a foster family, but together. I still remember holding his sweaty hand in mine. He looked up at me and said, “La-la?” his name for me, his dark coffee-colored eyes full of sadness and confusion.
That placement didn’t last, though.
After that, we bounced around from foster family to foster family. Sometimes we’d be placed together, sometimes not.
Whenever not, I was miserable. I acted out. I screamed. I cried. I made them know that I was not happy with the arrangement until I went back into the “foster kid shuffle,” as I’d come to call it.
So the second I turned eighteen and went out on my own, I applied to be Jojo’s legal guardian.
Forever, it’d been just the two of us, against the world.
I struggled a lot figuring out when I should be a parent and when I should just be his sister. Especially when he technically became an adult. We’d been fighting more and more about that. He kept saying he didn’t need me telling him what to do anymore. Kept threatening to move out.
Maybe I should have let him. Allow him to make his own mistakes.
But yet, I couldn’t.
I was everything to him—and he was pretty much all I had, as well.
So for the past few weeks, I’d been bending over backward for him. I didn’t hound him about getting a new job after Jack in the Box fired him. I’d let him get that awful, death trap of a used motorcycle with most of his savings, instead of insisting he help me make rent. I hadn’t said a word when I saw him hanging out with these tough leather-bound guys in front of the liquor store. I’d let a lot of bad stuff slide.
Maybe I shouldn’t have.
God, if this was the way parents felt about their decisions—all this regret and self-doubt—I never wanted to be a mother.
I pulled into our shitty apartment complex and looked up at number 313, our little slum on the third floor.
Our one large, picture window looked into the living room. Seeing it dark, my stomach sank.
I sat there, my hands on the steering wheel, wondering where he’d be if not here. Oh, I could think of thousands of places in Aveline Bay, all of them bad.
I’d gotten sick of him last night. I’d found ants in our living room from the dirty dishes he left all over the place, so I’d had it. I stormed through the apartment on a cleaning binge, the animals all staring at me, a woman possessed. He usually locked his door, but I could smell the stench of his body odor and old food from the hallway, so I found a hammer and broke in.
That’s when I found it.
He had a gun.
Just lying there on his dresser, innocent as a hairbrush.
I had no idea where he’d gotten it from, or that he even knew how to use one. I’d plucked it up from his dresser like it was a live, dangerous thing and held it out in front of me like a grenade that was about to go off.
When he’d gotten back, I’d started to lay into him abou
t it, but he took one look at his open door and screamed at me, “What the fuck? What gives you the right to go through my things?”
I’d never seen him so angry.
Then he called me a fucking bitch.
Sure, he’d used those words before. What teenage kid didn’t? But he’d never, ever used them on me. As much as we argued, I always felt like he knew I was his best ally. His “La-La.” We had a certain respect for each other because of our shared history. Our relationship was sacred. Or so I’d thought.
I’d just stared at him, stunned, as all the air left my lungs. Whatever complaints I’d had in my throat died instantly.
He’d grabbed the gun easily, like he’d been handling one his entire life. He shoved it into the pocket of his jacket, and stormed out, his dark hair in his face, black eyes never meeting mine. Maybe he was strung out. A second later, I heard him speeding away on that stupid motorcycle.
That was the last time I saw him. Almost twenty-four hours ago.
Bracing myself for disappointment, I cut the engine and climbed the two flights of stairs to my place. Sometimes, when he’d hear my key in the lock, Jojo’d run to greet me, open the door for me before I could twist the key. I’d go into a warm apartment and a macaroni and cheese dinner he’d cooked for me.
He hadn’t done that for me in a while.
This time, I opened the door to a dark apartment.
When I went inside, all the animals raced to see me—Burt and Ernie, Opie, and the little bunny. But other than that, sure enough, everything was just as when I’d left for work.
Jojo hadn’t been home.
Chapter Three
Hart
On the way back to my apartment, I would’ve stopped at one of the 24-hour fast food places that lined the main drag near my place, especially since I didn’t have much in my fridge, but I didn’t want anyone—especially the Fury—to see me with the kid. I’d had him turn his prospect kutte inside out before he got on the back of my bike, just in case.
I parked outside my apartment and we went upstairs, opened the door, and I threw my shit down in the hallway. The kid looked around at all the extra computer parts and peripherals I had scattered all over the place in cardboard boxes. He squinted at my coffee table, where I’d been building a robotic arm. I expected him to make a smart remark about it being a shithole, but he didn’t. He just yawned.
I’d been thinking about where I’d keep him on the drive over. If I let him sleep on the couch, I couldn’t trust him not to escape the second I went into the bedroom. The only option was letting him have my bed. And that thought pissed me off, but I muttered, “You can have the bed,” before going into the kitchen and grabbing a couple of beers. I peered inside the fridge.
“You hungry? I got grilled cheese and . . . cheese. And bread.”
He shrugged and made himself comfortable on a kitchen island stool. “Whatever.”
I pulled out enough bread and cheese for two. I started the grill, popped the top on the beer, and slid one over to him. “So . . . you said your friends got you interested in the Fury?”
He crossed his arms, the tough guy again. “That ain’t none of your bees wax.”
“Look, kid. We can sit here in absolute fucking silence and look at each other while we eat, but I think it’d be better if we got to know each other,” I said, getting the sandwiches ready for the grill. “Me? I joined the Cobras when I was fourteen. Unofficially, of course. Couldn’t really join until I got my motorcycle license. So, I was a prospect at sixteen. How old are you?”
He stared at me, then reached over, grabbed the beer, and took a swig, like Fuck you, you just gave an underage kid beer. Not that it mattered to me; my dad had given me my first beer at six. “Nineteen.”
I raised an eyebrow. He looked younger to me. “Why you want to join a club?”
He just stared at me. I kept talking. “My dad ran the garage where all the Cobras went.” I flipped the sandwiches and shrugged. “I was the nerd, the fat kid with the brains who always had his head in a computer. Head of the robotics club at school. I was bullied like crazy at school. My father didn’t like me hanging around the garage, but when I did, I would talk with the guys from the club and they were all so badass. No one ever fucked with them. I wanted to be one of them.”
He didn’t say anything for a long time. He just sat there, flipping the cap from the beer bottle. Then, he let out an incredulous laugh and said, “You were a nerd?”
That was a good sign, from a kid who’d called the Cobras a bunch of pussies and fags. “Yeah. Big-time. Still kind of am. I like to tinker on shit like my father.” I held up my hands, which were covered in cuts and calluses. “See?”
He motioned over to the robotic arm on the coffee table. “What’s that?”
“That? I’m always building shit to help at the Leaf. That’s a robotic arm that’s going to be part of a drone for oil changes. My dad hated anything tech. But when I was sixteen, I gave him a diagnostic probe that could scan a car and give you a diagnosis in thirty seconds. Now, he’s always having me make all this shit for him.”
I left out the part about my father being a lifetime alcoholic, which was the real reason I’d made all that shit for him. Most of the time, the tremors were so bad he could barely hold a wrench anymore. And why I preferred tinkering up in my room instead of at the garage. My dad usually beat the shit out of me whenever I was in his path, so I tried to stay out of it.
The kid kept squinting at me. “Shit. Why are you not working for Microsoft or Apple or some shit like that?”
I shrugged. “Big corporations suck. And I like my life. The Cobras are my brothers. I got everything I need right here.”
He gave me a doubtful look. He watched me in silence as I plated the grilled cheeses and slid one over to him. I turned off the stove and sat across from him. “So . . . what about you? You got parents?”
He shook his head.
I raised an eyebrow as I chewed my sandwich. “You on your own? Who do you live with?”
“My sister,” he mumbled as he swallowed loudly. “But she don’t want me around. I fucked her over too much. She got sick of me after I got fired from my job at Jack in the Box.”
This was progress. He was actually saying more to me than half-form sentences and grunts. “She kicked you out?”
“Not really, but she probably will now, after what I did. But I’m not sure I want to go back.”
“She’s pissed at you just ‘cause you got fired?”
He stuffed the rest of his sandwich in his mouth and chewed slowly, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “No. Not just that. That was just the start of it. I got high in the bathroom so they canned me. I needed to make money because she’s always short on rent and I’d been helping. I started dealing drugs around the high school. No big deal.”
He was talking low, trying to be all tough, assert himself. I could still see the shadow of the scared boy underneath. The kid didn’t have anywhere to go. He needed a friend. And if he really chose the Fury as his friends, he’d be fucked. I only hoped it wasn’t too late.
“You use?”
He shrugged. “Little pot and stuff mostly. Other stuff sometimes.”
“Don’t know how the Fury is, but Cobras don’t tolerate our guys doing drugs.”
He gave me a defiant look. “They never said nothin’ about that to me.”
“So…what? Your sister found out about you dealing drugs?”
He shook his head. “No. Not Char. She works too much to notice much of anything I do. I was doing pretty well …” He mumbled into his lap. “Then one of the Fury guys saw me on the street and told me I should join the club. That way, if the police came after me, I wouldn’t be alone. He said it was like an extra level of protection ‘cause no one fucks with them. I met with the guys and liked them. I never really had . . . anything like that, you know?”
“Yeah. I get it.” As the bullied kid, I knew what having an MC on your side could do. But the F
ury? I’d heard stories about them. They used their prospects as human shields. As far as I’d seen, and from what I’d heard from Zain, it wasn’t a brotherhood. Not like the Cobras. “But how much do you know about the Fury?”
He let out a snort and gave me a sly look. “More than you.”
I didn’t know if that was true. In my years, I’d heard a lot. Yes, it was a lot of second-hand information, but I had first-hand information, too. In addition to Zain’s horror stories, they’d kidnapped Nix’s girl, nearly killed our president and his family, and the former president of the Fury had almost murdered his own daughter. And if that wasn’t enough, the Fury had also bombed our first clubhouse and was fond of taking pot shots at us whenever they saw us around town.
I figured we had a pretty good reason to despise the hell out of them. But the Fury scum had probably filled this kid’s head with a lot of lies about us. So telling him what I knew probably wouldn’t have done a hell of a lot of good. It was their word against ours.
I backtracked. “So you ain’t planning on going back to your sister?”
“Nah. She broke into my room though and found a gun I had, and who-knows-what else. She started yelling at me and telling me I needed to shape up. I’ve had it with her. I got on my bike and tore out of there. That was last night.”
He’d cleaned his plate, so I took it from him and put both of ours in the sink. In my head, I wondered how hard it would be to get this sister to chain him up. Because right now, she was about the only friend he had.
“So where were you going to stay then?”
He shrugged.
“You new to Aveline Bay?” I asked him.
He shook his head.
That surprised me. “Because when you were out there, you were driving like you had no fucking clue where you were going.”
He crossed his arms over a t-shirt for a band I’d never heard of. He had skinny arms with a little bit of muscle, like he’d recently been picking up the free weights. “I was supposed to meet someone from the Fury somewhere. But when I got there, nobody showed.”