Page 10 of Redeeming Rabbit

I had no intention of calling him, but I reached for it all the same. I could do plenty of other things with his direct phone number. Perhaps I’d use it to request information about erectile dysfunction and register him on sites that tracked STDs. This baby was absolutely going on men’s room bathroom stalls directly under the words ‘Free blowjobs.’

Matt turned and left.

“Elenore?”

My name was a hesitant question coming from the counter. I followed the voice to see my coffee waiting. The barista eyed me like she had one finger on a panic button. One sudden move from me, she’d press it. That was… insulting. I’d been coming to this shop for years and never once displayed aggressive behavior. One brief outburst, and suddenly, half of our audience was looking at me like I was a serial killer. The other half looked like they weren’t sure. Only one woman glared at the door Matt had retreated through. At least someone other than me knew a lying bastard when she saw one.

The still-stunned crowd parted like the Red Sea for Moses as I made my way to the front, keeping my chin up and avoiding eye contact.

Matt Parker had just outplayed me, and now a lawsuit might be in my future. Plucking my coffee from the counter, I turned and walked out the door, irritated.

On top of it all, now I’d have to find a new coffee shop.

5

Rabbit

Rolling my bike to a stop, I killed the engine and scanned the two-bedroom trailer before me. Mom hated the term ‘trailer’ and corrected me every time I used it, but what else would I call it? Manufactured home? It sure as shit had never been a home to me. ‘Home’ implied security and affection, two things utterly absent from this shithole. Instead, it oozed tension and foreboding, like something was about to happen that I wanted nothing to do with. I fucking hated drama, and Mom’s trailer reeked of it.

Manufactured home, my ass.

The old fire station the club used as its headquarters was the only home I’d ever known. I’d give my left nut to be back there now, rolling out of bed and getting ready for work without this task looming over my head. Hopefully, I wouldn’t be here long.

Lowering the bike’s jiffy stand, I ignored how my hands shook and yanked my phone from my pocket. The sooner I could notify Rose of my arrival, the sooner we could get out of Dodge. The roar of my bike should have done the trick, but the way my little sister blasted music in her earbuds ensured she rarely heard anything in the world around her. I didn’t know how she did it. I’d be paranoid that someone would sneak up on me.

My cell phone was dead. I mashed the button again, hoping the universe would gift me with enough juice to make one last text, but nothing happened. My fault entirely since I hadn’t plugged it in last night. It had been sitting on top of my nightstand—not my dresser where my cord waited—because I’d stayed up way too late on social media, jerking off to pictures of Elenore. Like a goddamn creep.

I didn’t know what the fuck was wrong with me. They hadn’t even been bikini shots since she was too classy to post those. I’d searched. No, I’d choked my chicken to images of her in business attire. In my favorite picture, she wore a navy blue blazer over a silky white blouse and a tight-ass navy skirt. Her hair had been done up, showing off her long, slender neck, and she’d been wearing dark-framed glasses as she stood in front of a whiteboard with a dry-erase marker in one hand.

I never had a thing for teachers, but I also had never seen one who looked like that. Hot damn. You better believe I saved the picture on my phone along with a half dozen others. My newest obsession made me feel a little like a pervert, but I’d come to terms with it.

I glared at the door, cussing out Rose for putting me up to this. As a grown-ass adult, she should clean up her own shit. I’d already done more for her than anyone had ever done for me when I was her age. I’d found her a dependable little Hyundai Accent at the auto auction and fixed it up so she’d have a safe ride to work. That car should have run for years, but she’d fucked up and totaled it.

I loved my sister and would do anything for her, but she was a shitty-ass driver who wouldn’t stop texting while she was behind the goddamn wheel. A fact I’d discovered when—after her third fender bender—I hid a camera on the dashboard. Armed with video evidence of her crime, I called her out for lying to me only to have my head bitten off for “invading her privacy,” insisting I could have caught her in a compromising position with a man.

That was when I lost my shit.

No man wants to hear about his little sister having sex, especially not in the car I fixed up for her. Where was the goddamn respect? And what the fuck would she want with a loser who didn’t even have his own place to take her to? Her dates should, at the very least, be able to afford a hotel room.

But, of course, I couldn’t make my pigheaded baby sister understand any of that. She’d flat-out refused to talk to me until I removed the camera and promised never to spy on her again. In return, she’d vowed to quit texting and driving. I’d made good on my end of the bargain, but apparently, Rose hadn’t done the same.

Last week, she’d slammed into the ass end of a Dodge Ram on the freeway, turning her Hyundai into an accordion. If her attention hadn’t been on her phone, what the hell had it been on? Sure as fuck, not the road. They’d had to pry her ass out of that vehicle. I was no stranger to fear, but nothing in my life had terrified me as much as the phone call that she’d been in an accident and was on her way to the hospital.

Hell, I’d had nightmares about that phone call.

But in the end, Rose had limped away with nothing more than a sprained ankle and a concussion. I was waiting until she fully recovered to lay into her, but that conversation was coming.

I was still pissed at her, but not enough to say no when she called yesterday and asked me to take her to work this morning. I should have told her to take the bus, but I’d given in since the closest stop was about a quarter of a mile away. She couldn’t walk that far on a sprained ankle. So, here I was, up at the ass crack of dawn, trying to muster up the courage to approach a motherfucking door.

Don’t be a coward, dumbass. It’s just a door. Rose needs you. She asked you for help.

I’d rather let a Ford F450 drive over my left foot, but I’d made a promise to my sister and was determined to keep it. Squaring my shoulders, I dismounted the bike and followed the crumbling cement pathway to the front porch. Anxiety tightened my chest. My heart thrummed in my ears, louder and faster with each step.

Weathered boards creaked under my weight as I climbed the steps and paused before the door. My anxiety kicked up another notch, skittering up my spine like dozens of tiny spider legs. I lifted my hand to knock, but before I could, the knob turned, and the door swung inward.

Mom stood in the doorway. I’d seen her at the hospital after Rose’s accident, but it had been almost ten years since I’d really looked at my mom. She’d aged. The lines around her eyes and lips had deepened, and her steely, grey eyes were dull and watery. She wore faded pink pajamas she’d owned for as long as I could remember.

She studied me like I was a defective fuel pump she couldn’t fix, an expression I was well accustomed to since it was the only one she wore when she looked at me. After a beat, she shook her head and gave me a derisive snort. “Hm. You actually showed up.”

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