Page 186 of Finding Hope

“Nota Kincaid! She’smyblood.Myfamily.” Spittle flies in the space between us. “But I don’t want her. Her mother’s nothing but a two-bit whore who seduced my brother and broke up a happy marriage. Her mother’s the reason my brother is dead. No.” He exchanges weight from foot to foot nervously. “I want Lindsi. I want Benny. I want Livi. I’m going to find those kids, I’ll take them back, then I’ll make that bitch swallow my revolver.”

Fire races beneath my skin as I cup my aching jaw. I don’t know who the fuck Ben and Olivia are, but Brad sure as shit won’t be getting answers from this terrified little girl.

She’s my responsibility, not only because I’m a teacher and we’re at school, but because I genuinely love her. I love both of these girls as though we’re real family.

I look toward the open door, wide open and our way to freedom, then I look back to Brad as he stalks us.

“I’m not sure how Lucy can help you…” Angling my body, I work the girls toward the door. “…but maybe if we talk to Izzy we can get you some answers.”

“Don’t say that fucking whore’s name in front of me!”

“I’m sorry.” Taking another step, I keep my body between Brad’s and the girls’. “I’m sorry. I just meant, we could get answers from someone who actually knows. Lucy doesn’t know, Brad. She’s just a little girl.” I continue to take teeny tiny steps toward the door as the girls clutch at my belt. “I’m sorry.”

Bean and Evie sniffle, crying behind me, so, pretending like I’m going to hold their shoulders in comfort, I blindly unlock my phone and hope to God I’m dialing my ‘in case of emergency’ contact.

Please, Alex, answer the fucking phone.

“I’ve been asking you, Little Bean. I’ve been patient. I’ve been nice. Now I’m done waiting.”

“You…” I frown as his words sink in. “You’ve been asking her?” The times she’s been sad at school. The time we built a skate ramp. The quiet moments. The sad eyes. “You’ve been harassing a child? You’re the reason she’s been having a shit year?” I take a step forward in anger, but the girls grasping at my belt stop me. “What the hell is wrong with you, Brad? She’s a child. A student.Ourstudent!”

Stepping forward and meeting my anger with his own, he swings his arm back and slams a fist into the side of my face.

Men like Jack and Bobby and all the other Kincaids take a hit to the face a hundred times a day. They take it, then they step forward and keep going.

One single tap on my jaw sends me hurtling to the floor, and because the girls clutch to me so tightly, they fall, too.

“You don’t speak to me that way!”

Diving onto me exactly the way I saw Jack straddle his opponent a few weeks ago, Brad’s angry face hovers over mine.

“Go!” I throw my arm out to shove Evie away. “Run!”

Brad’s fist slams down on my chin and snaps my head to the side. Pain screams through my skull, a pain I’ve never felt in my entire life. Not when I broke my arm. Not when I broke my leg a year later.

Not even when Jack unintentionally broke my heart.

This hurts like nothing I’ve ever felt before.

Brad screams in my face, but all I see in my mind is Jack’s fight and how I thought I preferred the‘hugging on the floor’because it seemed less mean.

I was so wrong.

Bringing my arms up to cover my face, my vision dims and stars float behind my eyelids. My thin arms are nothing on his heavy fists, and with a fire that burns through my veins, bones snap as noisily as dry branches from a dead tree.

41

JACK

FINDING FOREVER… ?

Iclimb out of the Mustang and fix my shirt.

More nervous now than I’ve ever been in my life, I literally shake. I literally want to vomit. I wasn’t this nervous walking into the octagon last month.

I wasn’t this nervous approaching Steph at school the first time. I wasn’t even this nervous approaching Bambie at the restaurant that first time – and while I waited in that hall for the beautiful woman to reappear, my heart raced and left my hands sweating.

Finger combing my hair, I barely stop short of spitting in my hand to smooth my too long hair back. Wearing nothing fancier than jeans and a gray shirt, and wishing for my hat as a kind of shield, I clasp a bouquet of stolen daisies in my casted hand and pocket my keys with the other.

---