Page 52 of The Skeikh's Games

He nodded excitedly.

“So, what’s it going to be? No recess or baseball, or candy?”

“Candy,” he said quickly.

“All right,” she said, putting strain in her voice. “You’re going to have to work for it though. Can you do the work?”

He nodded quickly. “I’ll be real nice, you’ll see.”

“Okay. And if you have any more trouble with Jonathan?”

His mouth pulled into a frustrated grimace and she could see that she’d stumped him. He was trying so hard to come up with the answer he thought she wanted, but even though she’d just said it inside, he couldn’t think of it. This was the trouble. When a child was raised in a home of violence, it was the only way they could think to solve any issue.

“Come and…” she said slowly, encouragingly.

“Come and tell you,” he finished.

“Right, good. Can you do that?”

Clark nodded, though this time it was far less enthusiastically.

Saundra opened the classroom door and ushered him back inside.

After finishing up at school, she just tried to breathe and brace herself for coming home. She was hoping Miles was in a good mood. It’d been a trying enough day, and she could use a nice quiet night at home that day.

She loved Miles, without a doubt. No one knew him as well as she did. He’d had a hard life, and like Clark, didn’t know the proper way to react in current situations.

She knew it sounded like any other abusive relationship, but that was just it: Miles wasn’t abusive. He never yelled at her, never called her names, never touched her with anything but affection. He was just a troubled young man with a horrible past.

His father had been a semi-famous criminal. Not exactly the pride of the town. All through his childhood, he was pegged as the son of The Butcher. No matter what Miles did, that was how people viewed him. Without a proper way to test how behavior altered people’s perception of him, along with a childhood of violence, it left Miles woefully incapable of life out in the real world.

That did not mean, however, that Miles was an inherently violent person. If anything, he was one of the sweetest, most genuine people she’d ever met. In everything, he was so earnest to improve himself, to do better. To be better. He just didn’t know how. It was this need to always improve himself, to fix what he knew was broken inside that she had fallen in love with.

Over the years, she’d helped him where she could and had seen some real progress. He was getting there, but there were still days where it seemed like trouble followed him wherever he went.

When she arrived home, she found him sitting on the couch with the TV on, but his eyes locked on the corner of the room. It’d been a bad day. Saundra sucked in a breath through her nose and prepared herself mentally for what would come.

“Hi sweetie,” she said when he didn’t respond to her closing the door and setting her things down.

“This is such crap,” he said.

First thing first, a time out. He needed to calm down before he would talk to her. She went to the kitchen, got him a fresh beer and brought it out to him. He thanked her quietly, and she left him there to sit and think while she went and changed into more comfy clothes.

When she came back out, he seemed more relaxed. It was flattering to know that her presence always seemed to calm him down, even if he never said it outright. She wasn’t even sure he knew it himself, but she could see it in him. He could be upset all day, but the moment they started hanging around one another, he would just relax.

“So what’s going on?” she asked him and sat on the couch beside him.

“I’m gonna get fired. I just know I am.”

“Why’s that?”

“This guy, Blake, big guy, he keeps coming at me at work. I know what you’re going to ask, and no, I’m not doing anything to provoke the guy. I’m trying to just get through my day, but he comes at me. You know I don’t handle bullies well.”

“I know, sweetie,” she said and played with some stray bits of his hair.

“We get busy, and he suddenly things all the jobs are his. I’m not going to sit there and not work, ya know? We need the money too.”

“Well if there’s enough to go around, can you just wait for him to take what he wants and then do whatever is left?”

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