Page 49 of Truck Stop Tempest

“And what?”

She sucked in a breath. “You know.”

Yeah. I knew. She liked me. She had stayed because of me. Fucking little bunny.

Too bad I couldn’t stand the sight of her. Although, those damn pink toenails peeking out from under my shirt were distracting as hell and sending blood to places it had no right going. When had I developed a foot fetish?

“Tell me something.”

Her head lolled to the side, her cheek taking the place of her chin against her knees. Her swollen eyelids lifted, then closed, then lifted again. “Hmm?” she sighed.

“Why’d you make me believe you lived in that nice house?”

“I was embarrassed.” Her red-rimmed eyes fell closed again.

I watched her chest rise and fall, listened to the soft, raspy breaths expelling from her lungs. Jesus, she was small.

So breakable.

I watched, nauseous from the emotions battering my insides.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, halfway to dreamland.

She was sorry? I was sorry. For letting her in. For letting the goddamn little bunny burrow her way under my skin.

I stared at her slight frame. Watched her body loosen. Her lips part. Her breaths deepen. Fuck, she smelled good. Fuck. I was pathetic.

Before long, she started to whimper, her face twisting in fear.

Fuck.

I pushed off the couch and scooped her up. She was so damn light, and damn me to hell, I liked that she smelled like my soap.

I carried her back into the guest room, stood bedside, holding my little obsession, wondering when I’d become such a sap. I’d never been soft with a woman. Never once had I let a girl stay the night in my private space. I sure as hell had never wanted to curl around another human being and protect them with everything I had.

For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why I wanted the girl in my arms. The fraud. The broken creature.

As I laid her down and she curled into a tight ball, it hit me.

She was damaged. I was damaged.

She was alone. I was alone.

I was so damn angry about her deception. But when we were together, something in my icy interior thawed. The dark abyss didn’t feel so hopeless. The voices kept their fucking mouths shut.

“Keep your fucking mouth shut.”

Jonas clamped a sweaty hand over my lips, squeezing so hard my jaw popped. “If he sees us, we’re dead,” he whisper-growled in my ear.

I wanted to ask why he was in my hiding spot—the small alcove above my father’s office. I wanted to ask why his camera was pointed through the hole in the ceiling. Instead, I shivered violently against him and watched the scene unfurl below me.

The boy’s face was red and wet, and snot bubbles swelled in and out of his nose. He could no longer scream, his voice having lost all steam, releasing nothing but a wheezy cry.

I knew the kid—Riley. I’d seen him around school. He’d started coming to church three months ago. He had spiky black hair, pale skin, and never-fading dark circles under his eyes. He never smiled. He didn’t have any friends as far as I could tell. He started fights all the time.

He wasn’t fighting my father, though.

He couldn’t. He was stretched across my dad’s heavy oak desk, bare butt hanging over one edge, his hands pinned to the other in handcuffs that were secured with metal chains to the legs of the antique. His pants pooled on the floor at his ankles.

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