Chapter 8 #2
This is such a crazy response that for a moment, I forget that I need to come up with one of my own, and we’re struggling in silence when I hear a loud clearing of someone’s throat coming from the doorway.
I drop Sammy so fast she stumbles and turn toward the sound, mind spinning. I thought we were alone in here, and the sudden incursion of someone else...
Someone seeing Sammy and I wrestling like we’re little kids rather than near-adults.
Near-adults who are also step-siblings.
Sammy and I have been best friends, soul ties, since we were eight, and everyone in town has known it. Hell, they’re all surprised if they see one of us without the other. But lately I’ve noticed longer looks from the people in town, and I don’t like it.
Lately, I’ve started trying harder not to touch her at all when we’re in public, because I’m afraid I know exactly what sits underneath those long looks.
But the look coming from the man standing in the doorway of the garage is worse than anything I’ve seen from the people in town.
Because that man is my father, and he’s been gunning for me and Sammy since the moment he came back to town.
“What the fuck is going on in here?” Bear asks sharply.
His eyes dart from me to Sammy and then around the room, taking in the car, the boxes, and no doubt the fact that Sammy and I are both flushed and breathless. Smeared with the same grime and wrestling like a couple of people who can’t keep away from each other.
Can’t keep their hands off each other.
Except that emotion only goes in one direction.
I suddenly worry that my face is telling him exactly what I’m thinking and wipe it clear, trying to do the same with my brain.
I watch as his gaze narrows on the car and then flicks to the pile of equipment waiting by the door.
My welder and the start of the welding booth.
The hammer and forge–old-fashioned and beautiful–and the counter I use for my work.
His head tips at that and when his eyes come back to me, I can tell he’s already jumped to conclusions about everything.
Because of course he has. The man never bothers to ask any questions. Just decides what he wants to believe and jumps in with both feet, like there are no other options but the one he’s decided on.
God, I hate him.
“What are you doing back here?” he asks quickly. “And whose car is that? Who does any of this belong to? Whose equipment is that?”
I don’t know whose car this is or who owns anything in this garage, so I skip right to the part I do know.
“The equipment is mine,” I say bluntly. “We moved it from the other house now that you decided we have to live here.”
His scowl deepens like he didn’t expect me to have a real answer, and when his eyes turn to Sammy, hot and holding something I don’t understand, I step in front of her.
“It’s got nothing to do with her.”
He has the nerve to smirk at that. “Of course it does. Everything that happens in this town has something to do with her.” He steps to the side and looks around me like I’m not even here—typical—and says, “What about it, girl? I’ve watched you over the last three months.
Sticky fingers and sideways morals. Into everything all the time and you’ve got half this town wrapped around your little finger.
So tell me, where did this equipment come from?
Steal it from Byron? Does he even realize it’s missing? ”
That’s it.
I reach out, grab his arm, and push him to the side. “The equipment,” I say, my voice low and dangerous, “is mine. I bought it three years ago.”
His eyes finally come back to me, but I see immediately that he still doesn’t believe me.
“And what the fuck do you need with equipment like this?”
Now Sammy finally joins the fray, and I’m not sure if I’m relieved or horrified at that. She shoves around me and comes to a stop right in front of him, her hot, flushed face turned up and her fists clenched into balls at her side.
“He has that equipment because he needs it,” she hisses. “And he’s been working with Byron for three years. He’d ever steal anything from the man.”
Bear stares at her for a moment, his face hard and cold and still, like he doesn’t quite know what to make of her. “Why the fuck does he need equipment like that, Sammy?”
She somehow inflates, growing taller, and for a moment I think she’s going to hit him. I tense, ready to step in if she does.
Not to save him, but to protect her from what he might do in response.
“It’s for his artwork, you piece of shit,” she snaps.
Her open hand flies up so quickly I don’t see it coming, and I’m shocked that Bear is able to stop the slap before it meets his face.
But he doesn’t react the way I expect, with anger and frustration.
Instead, something in his face changes. His gaze softens as he looks at her, turning from angry to confused, and then thoughtful.
Then hot, like he’s looking at something he doesn’t understand…
But wants very, very badly.
When he looks up at me, though, his eyes are cold and blank again. “Art?”
The question is soft and hesitant, belonging to a completely different man, and it confuses me enough that I don’t answer for many long moments.
And before I’m able to gather my wits, Sammy is yanking out of his grasp and sprinting out of the garage, leaving Bear looking after her… and me wondering what the hell just happened between the two of them.
Because that fight might have been about me and my equipment.
But it ended because Sammy got involved and Bear had a reaction to her he wasn’t expecting. And though my instincts aren’t always the best, even I can tell there’s something going on between the father we barely knew, who abandoned us both, and the girl I know I can’t live without.