Page 81 of Stay Toxic

“If they know where I live, they won’t come looking for y’all,” I pointed out. “He’ll just assume that we’re all together.”

“We’ll be on the same block soon,” Milena pointed out. “I mean, that is the point of all the stupidly secure houses you are building, correct?”

“Maybe I need to rethink having you so close,” I grumbled.

“Just put an electric fence around everything,” Dima drawled. “That’s how the Air Force keeps us in and everyone else out.”

Dima had joined the Air Force after he’d graduated from college with his bachelor’s degree in criminology and psychology. He’d been away at boot camp and then advanced training after that, for the last year and a half. We’d gone up to see him, but this was the first time he’d been home in all that time.

And he had gotten big, Milena was right.

He’d put on a lot of muscle, finally growing out of his young man body into his actual body that put him in ‘full grown man’ territory.

“You can’t put a fence around the lake.” I snorted. “But we will eventually have a gated subdivision type thing going on once all of the construction is finished.”

“What are you going to do about this man?” Nastya asked. “Catya is so happy with Cassius and Faina.”

Faina and Cassius had named their new charge Catya, after Polina’s mother.

“They’ll continue to be happy with her,” I said as I stood up. “As for the rest…I don’t know. But I’ll figure it out.”

“And the girl that you’re hiding?” Dima asked, eyes alight. “What are you going to do about her?”

I thought about that for a long moment before saying, “I’ll bring her to dinner Sunday night. Try not to ruin it for me, though. Maybe learn some manners between now and Sunday.”

There was snickering as I left, my destination a certain someone’s school.

It was time to bring Brecken into my life, bad decision or not.

Because no other path was going to work anymore. Not after learning that she’d been targeted by a madman.

Be his peace. You already can’t cook.

—Brecken’s secret thoughts

BRECKEN

Movement outside my classroom door had me glancing through the small safety glass window and grimacing.

Rupert.

He was glancing into my classroom—like he always did—and pissing me off.

“What’s the fact of the day?” a student asked as we were packing up.

I grinned, happy that they’d asked. Because today’s fact of the day was a doozie.

“So, you know what monarch butterflies look like?” I asked the group.

“Yes,” several of them answered in the affirmative.

“No, what do they look like?” one asked.

I pulled up a picture of my Zinnias that I’d planted this year and said, “This orange beauty is what is known as a monarch butterfly.”

“I haven’t seen very many of those this year,” Javier, the captain of the soccer team, admitted. “My grandfather owns Webber’s Landscaping, you know?”

I nodded. I did know. Javier’s grandfather was so awesome at what he did that he was contracted to landscape the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium as well as the Dallas Mavericks’.

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