Page 7 of Freak Show

She shrugged. “Well, I do run. Sure. But I can’t run nearly as fast or as far. So when I’m done running—my dad feels very highly about young kids being active—I sit on the bleachers or something and wait for him to get done. Me staying home means that he got to go run where he wanted, not at a track so he can keep an eye on me.”

That was actually kind of sweet.

The man, Slone, I’d learned was a professional football player for the Longview Liners, one of the newest teams in the NFL. Though, they weren’t so new anymore. It’d been about a decade since they’d formed, from what I’d overheard my brother say yesterday upon meeting him and his teammate, Titus.

Titus and Slone couldn’t be more opposite.

Slone was big. And when I say “big” I mean, holy hell, he’s massive when you even look at him from ten feet away, big. I imagined standing next to him would feel like standing next to a tower.

He wasn’t fat, though.

Far from it.

I could tell by just looking at him that he was in shape. Really good shape.

When everything had gone down with my sister, he’d been off like a bullet from a gun. Something I hadn’t expected from such a large man.

Then there was the tanned skin and his dark brown hair that was in one of those Viking style braids down the back of his head—something I found extremely sexy. I had a thing for the show Vikings, and other than the missing blonde hair, Slone could totally pull off the whole medieval lettering tattoo on his forearm that said “Briley” in cursive letters.

Meanwhile, Slone’s best friend, Titus, was the exact opposite of everything Slone was.

Tall, dark, muscular and trim everywhere. The man looked like a walking, talking muscle, yes. But he also looked like more of a bullet to Slone’s battering ram.

He was loud and boisterous and doted on his daughter.

But it wasn’t a quiet kind of love like Slone doted on his daughter with.

In the hours that I’d known them, I’d been unable to look away from Slone and his daughter all night.

The girl sitting in front of me now, looking up at me with brown eyes the color of melted chocolate, with her same-colored hair falling into her face and partially covering her eyes, looked nothing like her father.

In fact, she had more of a paleness to her that signified some sort of Irish or Slavish descent.

Then there was Slone. He had a perfectly tanned skin tone that denoted him of Italian descent. That forever tanned look that I usually had, too.

Though, I couldn’t be any further away from blonde if I tried.

I had curly black hair, pale green eyes that I was told on a daily basis was creepy by my family, and a body like a dump truck. At least, that was what my first boyfriend, who just so happened to still work for the circus, told me.

“You have very green eyes,” Briley noted.

I smiled. “I do.”

“She has creepy green eyes,” Hades corrected. “Our mother has those creepy eyes, too. I’m just glad that we don’t share the same eyes.”

“You have creepy blue eyes, dirtbag,” I called out.

“You do,” Briley agreed. “And they look a little odd on you, too. I didn’t know Native Americans had blue or green eyes. I thought they had brown or black eyes.”

“We’re actually only a quarter Navajo,” I admitted. “And my mom looks nothing like us. She was very surprised that we took up so much of her Navajo genes. She likes to joke that she passed all of hers to us. That’s why people always wondered if we were related at all when we were growing up.”

“And your dad?” Briley asked. “I look nothing like my dad. I’m all my mom, or so everyone tells me.”

I sensed a story there. One that she tried really hard to act like didn’t matter, but actually did.

“Our dad was Irish. He came here from Ireland when he was seventeen with a hope and a dream,” I explained. “He was blonde-haired. But he had brown eyes and the only one of us sisters that looks like him is Zip.”

“Ah.” Briley nodded. “Are we leaving soon? Dad said that he would be back before then, but if y’all are ready, I can call him and tell him to hurry up.”

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