Chapter 5
FIVE
Years ago, when I first started living in group foster care, there was a girl who had been forcibly removed from her home by child services because her stepbrother had been molesting her.
She was older than me, seventeen and on her way to aging out of the system, and her stepbrother was the same age.
He’d convinced her, as a fourteen-year-old, that they were married like their parents were and that she belonged to him.
She was forced to cater to his every whim, and he would get violent with her if she disobeyed him.
One night, we were woken up by the sound of him trying to kick in the door.
It was locked, bolted, and had a safety bar across it so it didn’t budge, but we had to sit and listen to the enraged asshole kick it and shove it with his body while we waited for the police to arrive.
I held my knife in my hand the entire time, ready to take him out if he made it into the room, but I wasn’t the only one.
Every girl in the room was calm, armed, and waiting to see if the door would hold until the cops made it.
No one ended up at that group home without being used to violence.
Three hours after we passed out from the party, I wake to the sound of a different but equally enraged asshole attempting to kick our door in.
I shoot out of bed, that same knife already in my hand. Avery slaps her bedside lamp on, eyes wide as she reaches for her phone as instinctively as I’d reached for my knife.
The biggest shock is Blaise’s reaction.
For a guy who couldn’t even stay conscious long enough to carry his own body back to our room, he’s pretty quick to leap to our defense. He’s up and charging for the door before I can even fully comprehend that he’s awake. Avery yells out to stop him, but he ignores her completely.
He rips open the door to find Joey, raving and deadly, with his leg raised to kick out again, and Blaise jumps on him, taking him to the ground.
Joey’s movements become even more frenzied as he bucks wildly to try to flip Blaise off, but the rocker is a better fighter, even when he’s drunk off his ass.
Blaise smashes his fists into Joey’s face over and over, and I scramble toward them both, ready to back Blaise up if he needs it.
When I find the hallway empty, I’m almost surprised Joey didn’t bring some of his flunkies along to do the dirty work for him.
Then again, he’s very clearly high, so he probably didn’t plan this little visit.
I hear Avery snarl orders down her phone, so backup must be on its way.
Joey’s arms finally fall down to his sides, and Blaise shuffles until his legs pin them to his body.
Doors have started opening down the hallway, and there are girls poking their heads out to see what’s going on.
I cross my arms and glare at them until the doors all shut again.
No one wants to deal with Joey when he’s high and destructive. I know I don’t.
Blaise stops hitting Joey and his chest heaves, his lungs probably screaming for air.
“Mounty, I’m gonna fucking puke,” he croaks, and I scramble to find him a bucket.
I shove a large bowl under his chin just in time to save Joey’s face from the whiskey bile.
Blaise retches into it again, and I take pity on him.
I find a washcloth and wet it to scrub over his sweaty face.
He looks pretty pathetic by the time Ash and Harley arrive.
“What the fuck, Morrison?” snaps Harley while I’m tentatively rubbing Blaise’s back. Avery is emptying the bowl down the toilet and gagging at the vile smell.
“This is what death must feel like,” Blaise moans, and I scoff at him. Oh joy. Here comes the signature Morrison dramatics.
Ash glares at us both as he grabs Blaise under the arms and pulls him off of Joey’s unconscious form.
Avery appears in the door frame; her robe tucked tight around her body and uses a clean washcloth to scrub over Blaise’s face again with the efficiency of a seasoned mother.
“If Blaise wasn’t here, Joey would have gotten in.
Lips would have had to stab the asshole. ”
I mutter under my breath at her, “I fucking would’ve, too.”
Harley’s glare hasn’t eased at all. He gives Avery a quick hug before grabbing Joey’s legs and starts dragging him down the hall.
He holds them with the same enthusiasm as you’d grab a pile of shit with bare hands.
I watch with satisfaction as Joey’s head slams into every bump and chair leg on the way.
I swear, Harley is picking the most damaging path. I like his style.
“I’ll stay here with you,” Ash mumbles into Avery’s hair as he hugs her tight. Blaise is now slumped on the ground, taking deep breaths that make me think he’s gearing up to empty his guts again.
“There’s no need. Go help Harley, and we’ll make sure Blaise doesn’t have liver poisoning.”
Blaise moans, “I do. I definitely feel poisoned. Someone put me out of my fucking misery.”
I roll my eyes and help him up, stumbling and lurching back into our room. I give him a gentle push toward the couch, but he stumbles over to the beds instead. I glance away quickly when he starts to strip right down to his boxers. Thank fuck he wasn’t commando. I might have died.
Our beautiful, ornate bay window is already showing signs of the sunrise, destroying any chance of me getting back to sleep. I turn the coffee machine on and start fussing with the cups. I need an IV of caffeine at this point. Today is going to suck.
“I’m too fucked up for this shit,” Blaise moans and crawls into Avery’s bed.
He pulls a pathetic-looking face, and she scoffs at him as she locks the door behind Ash.
I pour our drinks while Avery scrubs the bowl and her hands until I’m afraid she’s going to scour away her skin to the bone.
It’s becoming more obvious by the day that she doesn’t just have a preference for keeping things clean and tidy, but a real fear of germs.
Still, when I hand her a cup, she takes it with a murmured thank you and gulps it down like it’s breathing the same life into her that mine is giving me.
After a minute, we both sit on the couch, listening to Blaise snore as he sleeps away his hangover.
My mind wanders for a minute while I process the night we’ve had and where we go from here.
It’s stupid and reckless, but I can’t stop thinking about one thing until finally I break.
Jerking my head in Blaise’s direction, I ask, “What did you mean about him waking up an expectant father?”
Avery’s eyes flick over to him as well before they narrow, flashing dangerously, and she blows into her coffee while she seethes.
“Last year, she told Blaise and Ash that she was on the pill and that they didn’t have to use condoms anymore.
When neither of them took her up on it, she pushed them for it.
Hard. Not once did she mention it to Harley, though.
That makes it pretty obvious she’s lying and wants a rich baby daddy. ”
I grimace. That’s something I’ve heard loads of Mounty girls do to get out of foster care homes and away from abusive families. “They didn’t, did they?”
She shoots me an incredulous look. “Absolutely not! Those three don’t trust any girls they mess around with. Besides, they all talk to each other, and when they figured out she’d neglected to tell Harley, it was obvious what she was after.”
She glances at me again, smirking over her cup.
“He was the one she actually wanted. God, she set her eyes on him the second he got here and wouldn’t give up.
I think she only ever went after the other two to get his attention, so if she really did want to have more intimate sex, it would’ve been with him. ”
Right. So his reason for stopping their… arrangement last year had nothing to do with me. My stomach sinks and I get angry at myself over it. This little crush I’m stuck with needs to disappear already, because I can’t afford to get in my feelings about some guy. Or three. Fuck .
Blowing out a breath, I try to pull myself out of the little pity party that’s threatening to start in my head.
If anything, I should be feeling sorry for Harley.
The way he stood over her, the fiery rage in his eyes, he was pissed about her ‘taking orders’ from his cousins.
They’re all obviously close, but he was practically set aside by Annabelle for not having access to money like Ash.
There’s no way he’s not feeling some kind of way about it.
I try, and probably fail, at a casual tone. “What about Harley? Was he into her as well?”
Avery scoffs and then laughs as she shakes her head.
“The only thing he ever liked about Annabelle is that she was easy. The first time they hooked up, back at the end of freshman year, she tried to tie him down and he cut her off so fast I’m sure her head was spinning.
He avoided her like the plague for our entire sophomore year, but she refused to quit.
She started going after Ash and Blaise just to get near him again.
Eventually, she cornered him and told him she’d rather be a casual hookup with him than be iced out completely, and he told her if she tried to push it, he was finished with her.
She’s that stupid for him that she accepted it and, as far as I know, she’s never brought it up again. ”
It’s a lot more information than I thought she would have, clearly coming straight from the source, and I can’t help but wonder how long it took her to get it out of Harley.
Or how much came from Ash or even Blaise.
More than that, it’s her clipped tone that gets icier by the minute that burrows under my skin.
Her loyalty and affection for him, the way she’s giving me the nitty gritty of it without flinching, all of it has this indignant current running through it that burns a hole in my chest as I listen.