Fighting Shadows (On the Ropes #2)(8)

“What the f*cking hell are you talking about?” He laughed. “He was sixty-five and loaded. His grandkids hated him.”

“You don’t know that! It could have happened my way.” I crossed my arms over my chest, full-on pouting.

“Yes, I do. How the hell do you think you got a key to his house? His crooked son paid me to get that computer. There was quite a bit of information stored on that bad boy before you decorated it with puppy stickers.”

Whatever. I liked my version better.

I changed the subject back. “I’m not moving.”

“Debbie’s packing your shit as we speak.”

“No,” I gasped.

“We don’t have the money to stay. If you had actually brought me something of use, I could have squeaked us by a few more weeks, but business cards aren’t going to pay the rent.”

Tennessee seriously sucked. I had no friends and I slept on the couch in a one-bedroom apartment that had an ant problem. Yet I would’ve given absolutely anything to stay there. It was the first place my father had actually considered letting me attend school. I hated his wife, but thankfully, the feeling was mutual. She was so desperate to get rid of me that she’d actually convinced my father that school would be good for me. I wasn’t exactly bi-curious or anything, but when he’d finally said yes, I’d wanted to throw her down and hump her.

I’d been begging my father for as long as I could remember to let me go to school. But he’d always answered with a resounding no. He had given me a ton of bullshit excuses over the years, but I knew the truth. It all boiled down to the paper trail. Ray Mabie used a hundred different identities. Very rarely were they actually his own. However, if Ash Victoria Mabie enrolled in a public school, he would have to provide some sort of documentation. God, I would’ve killed to go to an actual school, with actual kids my age. I’d heard that teenage girls were bitches, but I was willing to take the chance. They couldn’t be all that bad. I was pretty freaking awesome. Surely there were others like me.

I sucked in a deep breath and reached into my pocket, palming the social security card that I knew would buy me more than just a few weeks. I began to pull it out, but I stilled as I remembered the soft smile of the man who’d offered me—a stranger in need—his coat. He hadn’t had to do that. He could have walked the other way, like so many others had that day.

Damn it. Why’d he have to be so nice?

“I hate you,” I mumbled as I rolled the window down and tossed the social security card to the side of the highway.

“What the hell was that?” my father asked.

“Gum wrapper. You want some?” I flipped the pack I had hidden in my hand.

He eyed me warily. “Gum, huh?”

“Yep,” I responded before blowing a bubble and popping it loudly.

“Don’t litter,” he scolded.

I couldn’t help but laugh. The man had sent me out on the streets alone with zero protection, but a gum wrapper on the side of a road bothered him. To hell with his daughter, but let’s not tamper with the fragile environment.

Fuck my life.





Eight months later . . .

“I HAVE TO GET OUT of here,” I declared as if I were being held prisoner in the pits of hell. And in my mind, I really was.

I prided myself on being logical and levelheaded. I was a planner who thought out every detail, sometimes to the point of obsession. But right then, as the words flew from my mouth, it was a completely rash decision made in haste when I caught my brother innocently kissing his wife while holding his child. He had every right to do it, and I had every right to leave so I didn’t have to witness it anymore.

Till and Eliza had gone to great lengths to make me comfortable in their new house. And by anyone’s standards, they had done an amazing job. It was a far cry from the shithole we had grown up in. By all means, I should have been ecstatic. But I was suffocating in that one-point-four-million-dollar mansion. Sure, I had a bedroom that had been built especially for me—complete with an adjoining gym that was a physical therapist’s wet dream and a bathroom that was fully handicap accessible. I had the freedom most people in my situation dreamed about.

I, however, felt like a caged animal.

“Okay,” Till said, surprised. “Where do you want to go?” He crossed his arms over his chest and studied me carefully.

Any place where you aren’t f*cking the woman I’m in love with.

“College,” I answered instead. “I’m feeling better, and I’m already a full semester behind. I’m ready to start.”

Eliza smiled tightly, shifting six-month-old baby Blakely to her other hip. “You can live here and go to college. It’s only a fifteen-minute commute.”

Fuck. That.

“They have wheelchair-accessible dorms,” I told her without making eye contact.

Yeah. And a yearlong wait list.

“I’m not sure that’s the best idea, Flint. I’m all for you starting school, but we just hired that new physical therapist.” Till lifted his eyebrows and tossed me a teasing, one-sided smirk. “I thought you liked Miranda?”

Oh, he knew I liked her, all right. He’d caught me f*cking her a few weeks earlier. But what he didn’t know was that she was a hard-core gold digger who had taken one look around that house and all but dropped to her knees the second I’d rolled into the room. She didn’t want me though. She wanted the money she assumed lined my pockets. Those weekly physical therapy sessions were usually only beneficial to my cock. Till had essentially hired me a hooker with a college degree.