Page 30 of Homecoming Heartbreaker

Mack hoped Molly’s mom was okay. Vivi wasn’t a great mom but she was the only one Molly had.

Mack spread his feet apart, kept his arms loose and ready—the Haskell brothers were volatile, threw punches without thinking and the blood between them had always been bad—and watched as the two men left their vehicle.

“Holloway,” Vince said, folding beefy arms over his chest. “I’m looking for my sister.”

Mack kept his expression bland. “You’re trespassing,” he stated. “Leave now and I won’t press charges.”

Grant’s chin jutted out, his blue eyes cold as ice. Mack could cope with Vinny, he had an impetuous temper, but Grant worried him. Even as a kid, he showed no remorse and worse, no empathy. Grant’s favorite hobby was tormenting Molly. He loved, and lived for, seeing her cry.

Mack was quite sure nothing had changed.

“Molly isn’t taking our calls and we need to talk to her.” Grant looked at him, smiled and shrugged. “Our mom’s sick and Molly needs to know.”

Bullshit. In triplicate. He wasn’t buying that, not for a minute, but before he could give them another chance to leave, he heard the front door open behind him. Turning, he watched Molly fly down the steps, her eyes full of fear.

Still.

The Haskell boys had gone back to hassling Molly after he’d left town; that much was obvious. In his quest to put distance between him and the accident, he’d left her to fend for herself. Mack tasted remorse at the back of his throat and glared at the two men. Brothers were supposed to protect their sisters, not tease or torment them. A part of Mack wanted to taunt them, to force them into throwing a punch, purely so that he could beat the snot out of them. With his Krav Maga training, he no longer needed his brothers for backup and could take them with one hand tied behind his back.

For every insult they tossed at her face, every demand they made on Molly, he’d make them pay.

Molly skidded to a stop beside him and slapped her hands on her hips, undiluted fury replacing fear. “Why are you here and why did you park here? We have guests arriving, you idiots!”

Grant shrugged. “Saw Holloway, wanted to say hello.”

Mack called BS. Again.

“You are not allowed here, you know that! You’ve been banned from the property!” Molly reminded them. “Get in your truck and go before someone calls the cops.”

“I’d be happy to do that,” Mack growled.

“Not helping, Holloway,” Molly snapped. She pointed to the truck. “Go! Now!”

“Need to talk to you,” Grant said, hooking his thumbs into the pockets of his grimy jeans. “You’re not answering our calls so we came out here.”

“I’m busy, dammit!” Molly snapped.

“Still need to talk,” Grant stated, his eyes growing colder. Mack felt the hair on the back of his neck rising and searched for some sort of emotion in his eyes and found nothing. He knew that Grant wouldn’t move until he was damn well ready to.

Molly, obvioulsy coming to the same conclusion, hauled in a deep breath. “Okay, I’ll hear what you have to say but not here.” She gnawed at her bottom lip. “I’ll meet you at the old barn near the entrance in ten minutes and we can talk.”

Grant stared at her before nodding. A smile, if one could call it that, lifted the edges of his lips up. “Fine. But if you don’t arrive, you know what’s going to happen, right?”

Mack didn’t need to see the color draining from her face to know Grant had just threatened her. He stepped forward, his hands bunched. Before he could speak, Molly lifted her arm to slap her hand against his chest, halting his progress. “I’ve got this, Mack. Please don’t make it worse.” Molly looked at her brother. “Ten minutes. I’ll see you there.”

Grant sneered. “Make it five. And you know what we need so bring that, too,” Grant said before catching Vinny’s eye. “Let’s go, dude.”

Mack watched them until the rust bucket disappeared from view. When he thought his temper was vaguely under control, he turned to talk to Molly, wanting to know why she was still interacting with her waste-of-oxygen brothers.

But Molly was gone.

Damn, the girl could move fast.

Molly, standing next to Vincent’s truck, darted a look toward Mack, who watched from his seat on a dirt bike he’d commandeered from Moonlight Ridge.

He’d pulled up behind her golf cart a few minutes after she approached her brothers, who were still sitting in their vehicle, and she was glad that she had some sort of backup. Her brothers had never physically hurt her, but from a young age, she knew that Grant wanted to. He’d bullied her mercilessly as a kid, but he’d never quite crossed the line into violence.

But the urge was there.

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