“Eric hasn’t stayed the night for as long as I can remember. If he’s getting more comfortable being in town, he needs to know who to watch out for. He won’t recognize her anymore, but I bet she’d recognize him.”
“You’re afraid he’s going to run into her and she’ll flip out or something?”
He shrugged. “Something like that, I guess. Or that she’d trick him into going out with her and then cry rape or something.”
I grimaced.
I didn’t want to admit that it sounded like the kind of thing she would do—but it did. Very much so. She was the kind who gave women everywhere a bad name.
I finished getting dressed and we went downstairs for the coffee and breakfast we’d missed during the morning’s drama. Not that there was a whole lot to work with, but we made a halfway decent brunch out of half a box of Poptarts and a couple of eggs.
My skin prickled when the doorbell rang. I froze in my seat with a bite halfway to my mouth and stared at Rudy. I knew it was only Eric, I really did, but my body couldn’t accept it.
Rudy moved across my vision, heading for the door, and I breathed a sigh of relief. He could handle it no matter who was at the door.
Of course it was Eric. Who else would it have been? I heard him talking to Rudy at the door and shook off the prickling panic, feeling like an idiot. At least I hadn’t screamed or anything.
“Hey, Kennedy. How you doing?” Eric was dripping with sympathy as he stepped into the kitchen.
I shot a questioning look at Rudy, who shrugged uneasily.
“Sorry, babe. I should have asked you before I told him about the garden. Is it okay?”
I pasted a smile on my face. I had no idea if I was okay with it or not, but it seemed unavoidable at this point. Rudy had his brothers on guard duty or something, and anything bad that happened to me would make it to their ears at some point. It was comforting to a degree, but it also made me feel like a bug under a microscope.
“It’s fine,” I said. “You want some coffee or soda or anything, Eric?”
“Coke if you have it, please,” he said, reeling in the sympathy and tucking it neatly behind a thick veneer of politeness. That grated my nerves even more for some reason.
I jerked my head at the fridge. “Help yourself,” I said.
Rudy and Eric were having a silent conversation over my head, but I ignored them. I figured they were wondering what crawled up my ass, but I couldn’t even tell them if I wanted to.
Everything was irritating me.
Eric being sympathetic irritated me.
His politeness irritated me.
Him being in my house irritated me, but I would have been even more irritated if he’d left without bringing me the information.
A headache was starting at the base of my skull, radiating up to my temples, and that irritated me too.
“So,” Eric said tentatively as he settled into a chair and popped open his drink, “I talked to Fitz this morning and sort of sketched the situation for him. I didn’t give him any names, but if you decide to go to him all you have to do is drop my name and he’ll know what’s up.”
I blinked at him. “What did you tell him, exactly?”
Eric shifted a little uneasily. I couldn’t believe it. This was a family full of suspects and petty criminals, and they couldn’t seem to keep their mouths shut about any damn thing. I snapped my Poptart in half and took a vicious bite.
Eric cleared his throat. “I told him that a girl I knew was being targeted by people of influence.” He shot me an apologetic look. “He assumed it was the Birds, or one of them. I didn’t confirm it, but I didn’t deny it either. I told him that the police had already brushed it off, but that the perpetrators had already crossed some pretty felonious lines.”
“And what did he say?” I asked flatly.
Eric shrugged. “He said without more information or proof of some kind, there wasn’t much he could do. But he also said if anything else happened, you should call him and that he’d pull some strings in the proper departments.”
I snorted.
Somehow I doubted that even the detective could make that piggy cop go after Julianne. The police presence in Starline wasn’t exactly overwhelming—if he couldn’t get Julianne’s relatives and family friends on board, that took out at least half the force.
Eric winced slightly, following that same train of thought.
“I’m worried,” he said. “At this point, I think you’re going to need solid proof that she’s breaking the law before anybody is going to cooperate with any kind of investigation. A restraining order is a long shot, and it would be hell finding anyone to enforce it anyway.”
I nodded slowly. “Of course it would, because then she would have to switch classes. She’s got that whole ‘bright future’ thing going for her. They wouldn’t want to screw up her college applications or anything.”
Eric gave me a grim little smile. “It’s the way of the world,” he said. He hesitated for a long moment, then ran a hand through his tight curls. “Honestly, this whole situation makes me uneasy. A Bird kid in this town is basically untouchable. With what I’ve heard about your family situation—”
At that, I shot a full glare in Rudy’s direction. He looked out the back door, avoiding my eyes. Eric didn’t seem to notice.
“—I’m worried that you and my little brothers are going to get in over your heads, and quickly. That family has a whole lot of influence and if things go bad, they could easily ruin your chances—all of your chances—at a good, solid future in this town.”
This time, Rudy snorted. “Wasn’t much chance of that in the first place, was there?”
Eric leveled a look at him that was equal parts anger and sadness. “More than you think, Rudy. Look at Julio. You have potential, you all do—but this family can pull that out from under you before you know what’s happening. You need to be careful. You need-” Eric cut himself off with a sharp sigh and clenched his fists on the table.
“Look,” he said. “I have a bunch of time off saved up. A few weeks at least, I can call on Monday and find out exactly how much I have. I would rather not leave you to navigate the Bird situation alone.”
“We aren’t alone,” Rudy said quickly. “There’s the four of us, plus Jason—”
“Who’s busy rehabilitating a couple trauma cases,” Eric interrupted.
“Whatever. Me and the boys have been through some shit. We can get through this. You should go home. You and I both know this town is hostile territory for you.”
Eric’s jaw jumped, his eyes turning into narrow, steely slivers. I held my breath. Rudy held his gaze evenly for several seconds before Eric looked away. I watched him deliberately unwind his tension and finally let my breath out.
“Okay, kid. Here’s the deal. I’m staying at Dad’s place for a few weeks because this is my home and I fucking can. What are they going to do, Karen stare me to death?”
“If they call the right cops and make the right noises, yeah,” Rudy shot back.
Eric was silent for a long time, staring at a spot on the table, his jaw and throat working. When he spoke again, his voice was hoarse. “Fuck ‘em,” he whispered. “I’m done running from lies. I’m done letting them win.” He raised his head and looked Rudy in the eye again. “And so are you. I don’t know the kid well, but I do know her parents well enough. I know how they work. If she took after them, you’re going to need my help.”
Rudy looked like he was going to argue, so I lifted my uneaten half a Poptart and waved it like a flag between them. “Hold on, Rudy. I think he’s right.”
A flash of disgust crossed Rudy’s face. Whatever.
We could just sit here and stew in our mutual disappointment of each other, that was fine, right? Perfectly normal. Might as well get married and start bickering in the supermarket.
“Think about it,” I said, not even acknowledging the look he was giving me. “Julianne or one of her flunkies trashed my place two nights in a row
. She didn’t show up after the first night or the second—she waited until you were here. Not just here, but naked.”
Eric’s face contorted in a rush of surprised expressions, eventually settling on a wry little smile. Rudy’s ears turned red and he carefully avoided his brother’s eyes.
“How did she know to come when she did? Either she’s stalking us, or she’s a really lucky opportunist, or she planned the whole thing. Maybe some combination of the three. No matter which it is, it’s scary. I don’t know about you, but I can’t guess what kind of fucked up scheme she’s planning next. Trust me, I’ve tried. She’s always five steps ahead and slightly to the left of where you think she is. You can’t pin her down.”
A dark look crossed Rudy’s face, violence tinged with anticipation. It scared me, which made me angry. I was sick of being scared and I sure as shit wasn’t going to sit there quietly and let him sever my last tie to sanity.
“Knock it off,” I snapped.
His head snapped toward me, eyes wide with shock. I’d never spoken to him like that, but I was at the end of my rope with all of this shit.
“Knock what off?”
“Whatever testosterone-fueled bloodthirsty daydream that’s making your eyes look like that,” I said, riding the momentum. “Brute force and stupidity aren’t going to help us.”
His eyebrows rose in slow motion, higher and higher until they disappeared under his untamed hair. “Stupidity?”
I set my jaw and crossed my arms on the table, silently daring him to argue with me. It was probably dumb, now thinking about it. I don’t think Rudy’s ever lost a game of truth or dare.
“Guess only a stupid person would have been able to find you in the trunk of some random car,” he said acidly.
“Rudy,” Eric chastised.
“No, no, let me process this. So it was stupid to bail you out of there? Stupid to come over when you called? Wow, I must have been a whole idiot to bring you home to my place where you could be safe, huh? Damn stupid to get my brothers and their connections on board. Here, let me rectify that. Eric, give me the detective’s number.” He gestured at his brother with one hand and pulled a lighter out of his pocket with the other.
I was on my feet before I knew it, the chair clattering to the floor behind me. “Don’t you fucking dare!”
“What’s the matter, Kennedy? Am I being stupid again?”
“Yes!” My voice cracked as I shrieked at him, and my last fragment of control cracked with it. Hot, angry tears streamed down my face as I shook.
“Well shit, what do you want from me then? You better tell me, Kennedy, I’m too fucking stupid to figure it out for myself!”
I screamed my frustration through my teeth and fled, tense and shaking, out of the kitchen. I didn’t know where I was going and didn’t care, I just needed to move. I prowled through the house, aching to smash something, before finally shutting myself in the bathroom to cry.
Chapter Twenty-Two
RUDY
Kennedy’s tears were the last straw for my rage. I saw red.
Violence flashed through my body with no clear target, and before I could get ahold of myself I’d thrown my chair as hard as I could across the kitchen.
The thing about expensive furniture is that it tends to bounce where a cheaper model would have shattered.
Kennedy’s parents had clearly spared no expense. The sturdy chair leaped off the floor, still full of momentum, and crashed right through the sliding glass door. The sound pierced through my violent haze.
Frozen in shock, I watched the broken chair tumble down the patio steps and land in the sticky mud below.
The house was completely silent for a long moment while my brain slowly rebooted. Eric walked softly over to me and looked out the shattered pane.
After several seconds of silence, he blew out a heavy breath. “Dude.”
“I know.”
“You broke her door.”
“I know.”
“And her chair.”
“I know.”
“Rudy. What—and I mean this in the kindest possible way—the fuck?”
I ground my teeth but didn’t answer. There was nothing I could say that would excuse this, and the only explanation I had made me sound psycho. Maybe I was psycho. If I was, would I even know?
I flicked the lock on the back door and slid it open as far as it could go before getting caught on some larger, leaning shards of glass.
I slid out the narrow opening and strode into the yard, my body still tense—though now my anger was directed at myself.
I went into the garage through the small back door and found a sturdy broom which, while it looked barely used, was clearly intended for outside work.
Good enough.
I cleaned up the glass and tossed it in the large garbage bin in the narrow side yard. The bin was just about empty. Excellent.
I moved methodically, keeping every stray thought at bay as I took out my fury and frustration on the shattered remains of Kennedy’s garden. I’d smashed her door. The thing she’d been afraid that someone else would do to her, I’d done. Shove it down, grab some trash. I’d frightened her. She’d never want to speak to me again. Haul the trash. Smash it into teeny tiny pieces. Dump it.
I was vaguely aware of Eric watching me from the kitchen, but I ignored him.
For some reason—and I don’t think I’ll ever figure out why—Kennedy’s parents had three big trash barrels. One per person, I guess. Seemed like a waste of money to me, but the excess came in handy.
It wasn’t until I’d filled the second barrel to the brim that I was calm enough to think.
Eric must have sensed the switch, because when I marched back to the last remaining third of the yard, he was out there, dragging pieces of Kennedy’s garden out of the sticky, silty mud.
He met my eyes and gave me a slight nod, but didn’t say anything.
I worked beside him in silence, waiting for the inevitable barrage of questions.
Why did I do that?
What was I going to do now?
What set me off so hard?
But he didn’t ask. He just kept on dragging bits of things into a pile. The only indication he gave of wanting to hear what I had to say was that he was never out of speaking range and he managed to always keep an ear pointed in my direction.
I recognized it as Jason’s tactic. Curious to see if Eric had the patience that Jason did, I held my tongue and kept on working.
Minutes passed in silence. Eric shifted closer to me. More silence. Eric made eye contact with me. More silence. I thought I was winning—but the pressure to say something was building. I hurried to haul the trash across the yard to ease the tension.
Eric grabbed an armful and followed.
“We should take this one back over there with us,” he said, gesturing to the last empty trash bin. “Way easier to roll a full one than it is to run back and forth.”
I groaned, rolling my stiff shoulders.
“I should have thought of that,” I muttered.
Eric gave me a bland look. “You would have had to be thinking first.”
I flushed hotly and pushed past him to grab the handle to wheel the bin across the yard. After plopping it where it would be most useful, I scowled at the remaining mess.
“Okay,” I said. “Maybe I wasn’t thinking.”
“Maybe?”
I ground my teeth. “I definitely wasn’t thinking.”
“Well that’s a relief.”
I frowned my confusion at him aggressively.
He shrugged. “If you’d thought through what you were doing to your girl before you did it, you’d be beyond help. Losing your temper on accident is one thing. Wrecking a girl on purpose—especially when her spirit’s already so broken—is a whole different thing.”
All of the tension left my body in a rush.
“Wrecked?”
I shot a worried glance at the house, vainly hoping to see her face in the window glaring
at me. I could deal with it if she was pissed off at me—but I couldn’t live with myself if I’d destroyed her.
Eric turned away to work on the yard some more.
“Are you surprised? You lost your whole shit on her, and all because she made a perfectly accurate observation about the way you like to handle things.”
My first impulse was to punch him in the mouth for saying that her observation was perfectly accurate. I realized in the nick of time that doing so would only serve to prove them both right.
I nearly argued that I’d at least taken the time to rescue her before beating the hell out of her captors, that I’d stopped before anybody died, but I closed my teeth over it before it could leave my mouth.
It didn’t exactly help my case much.
“Fine,” I growled. “So I like to take a hands-on approach. So what?”
Eric gave me a flat, disappointed look. “So, you’ve been told by everybody who ever gave a shit about you that most situations require a little more finesse, a little less fighting. She gives a shit about you. She told you the same damn thing you already know, and you took out all of your pent-up frustration on her poor innocent kitchen set.”
Prickles of shame skittered down my spine, compounded by years and multiplied by faces. She wasn’t the first person I’d gone off on for telling me that particular truth. Hell, she wasn’t even the fifth.
Ticking back through every person who had ever tried to rein me in, every person I’d ever fought back against, usually stoked my fury.
This time, I saw those memories from a new perspective. The pleading, the shouting, the punishing—I’d felt they were attacks against me, my core person, my honor, my manhood. I missed the fear in their eyes. They hadn’t been afraid of me (well—maybe a little), but afraid for me.
That shame grew until it developed a voice of its own, which told me I should just go home before I did any more damage and remove myself from her life entirely. I’d do what she had told me to do in the first place, just give her space. I wasn’t exactly helping anymore. If anything, I was just helping everybody else ruin her life.
Something Wicked: An Enemies to Lovers Bully Romance (The Seymore Brothers Book 2) Page 12