2. Yeeted Off A Bridge
2
Yeeted Off A Bridge
LEIGHTON
October
“I got yeeted off a bridge and you’re firing me?!”
Just to emphasize my point, I wielded my sling-bound arm at my pissed-off manager.
Four weeks ago, Alice, Tillie, and I were on our way home from my brother’s first game quarterbacking for the Emerald Bay Bombers , when our vehicle was shot at by gun-toting psychopaths.
All because—allegedly—my sister was worth a pretty penny on the ransom market, and they trusted the wrong guy: a sweaty ball goblin by the name of Royce. But that was a whole other story.
According to the detective I’d been annoying on a weekly basis, law enforcement still hadn’t made any new arrests—gotta love Southern California—and I’d done my best to forget the whole thing in the weeks since. Which wasn’t hard, because nobody seemed to want to talk about it except story-starved reporters.
But that wasn’t the important thing.
The important thing was Chad —a six-foot dickweasel with the beginnings of a beer belly, either the world’s worst hairpiece or a terrible combover, and a smile that fought to compensate for it—standing in front of me when I walked in for my shift Friday night.
“You’ve been out for four weeks, Leighton,” he supplied condescendingly.
Like I hadn’t fought off death itself in a mad scramble to escape that sinking SUV, after breaking three ribs and my collarbone in the impact.
But Chad wasn’t done.
“And you show up for your first shift back with a horde of reporters as an entourage.”
“You have got to be kidding me,” I drawled. “Like I invited the stalkarazzi?!”
“Apron,” was his grunted response, waving me forward. “And your order book, please.”
If I cracked a molar because my boss was a sniveling idiot, would that be covered by workers’ comp?
I certainly hoped so as Chad jerked his chin toward the window behind me.
I didn’t have to look to know he was right.
The problem with my beautiful, brainy sister falling in love with her equally beautiful bulldog of a boss, was that the Hart name came with a colossal mountain of baggage. The least of which was America’s obsession with everything that came in contact with their lives.
Their newest fascination? The no-name ‘stripper’ that hauled the empire’s heiress to shore.
I.e., me .
I.e., not a stripper.
Never in my life had I stripped off clothing in my place of employment... Well, except for right now, as I unlaced my apron with gritted teeth. Fuck .
Chad took a nice, long glance at my cleavage as I did.
Not going to lie, I have good cleavage, but it wasn’t proudly on display for this aspiring jerk-off.
It was for the cutie in a Bombers jersey sitting at table six, smiling at me the instant I walked in the door.
He had ‘tips well’ written all over his eager face.
And I was wearing my brother Paxton’s number thirteen tank. Kismet .
Or it would’ve been, if Chad wasn’t a limp-dick shitwaffle.
“May both sides of your pillow be eternally warm,” I gritted under my breath, slamming the wadded-up apron into his waiting hand.
“What?” Chad mumbled, blinking pointedly.
Pulling my cash out of the order booklet, I slapped the branded black folder into his hand next, scowling when I found his gaze still firmly planted in my chestal region.
“Eyes are up here, asshole.”
He furrowed his brow, setting my apron on the bar counter beside us.
It appeared to take great effort to drag his gaze to my face as he said, “Look, it’s nothing personal. We just don’t need this heat on the restaurant. Wrong kind of attention. Our patrons value discretion.”
“It’s a sports bar , Chad,” I deadpanned, bypassing him.
“The only thing you’re discreet about is how much MSG is on the menu.”
He puffed up his chest, cheeks reddening like a petty little beet as his beady eyes darted around.
I just wished it wasn’t an opening shift and there were more people around to witness my five seconds of glory.
“What a ridiculous thing to say.”
“What’s ridiculous is that toupee,” I countered with a wink before shouldering him aside with my good arm.
Didn’t stop the twinge of pain on the opposite side, but it was worth it as I stormed outside, holding back the scream of frustration boiling in my chest.
Fuck. My. Life.
I spent the drive home thinking through my options.
My arm and ribs would heal, and serving burgers and booze to lusty middle-aged men was never the long game.
It just fell into my lap—an easy gig since chaos was my second language. Nobody could serve a big top of rowdy bikers like one of twelve, let me tell you. And they tipped exceptionally well when I flipped them shit as quickly as they dished it out.
My older sisters were all firmly established in the careers of their dreams.
Alice found her calling crafting PR stories, and my twin sister Kaia was a goddess behind a cosmetics table.
Everyone expected me to follow suit when she started making money with her makeup brush.
That’s the thing about being pretty.
People assume beautiful people all somehow work in beauty.
They never ask what your interests are, or what sport earned you a scholarship, or what kind of obsolete diploma you have framed and hanging on your office wall— business and journalism, by the way.
They just assume you’re destined to make other people feel pretty, or be pretty for the satisfaction of those around you.
From the first creep that tells you what a beautiful woman you are before your tits even bud, to the guidance counselor at your high school, there’s an unspoken rule about career potential that eventually sounds a lot like: congratulations about your face .
Me?
With motherhood off the table and my soccer career unceremoniously amputated by the cruel hand of fate, I’d always wanted to write.
To get my hands dirty digging for truth in the stories that set my soul on fire.
But with papers all but extinct, and every Jenny with a semi-functional laptop running a blog these days, it seemed like a lost art.
The Harts had newspapers, but writing for one felt too much like a handout I wasn’t willing to ask for—and working for a competitor felt sleazy, since I spent at least three days a week in one of their living rooms.
If I had an ounce of experience, I’d love to help small businesses refine their processes. But that felt like something that would take decades of experience to justify.
Which left me...sitting in my parking garage, tears in my eyes, with absolutely no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up.
I had less than a grand in the bank, plus a few hundred in my pocket from the last of my on-hand cash.
Alice’s condo was paid off—no rent, thank God.
My new Jeep was a different—very expensive—story.
Shit, I loved that car.
I barely had enough to cover this month’s payment and a week of groceries.
Maybe I could donate plasma or sell some stuff from the loft and cover my phone bill next Monday.
Oh God, what if my Jeep got repo’d and?—
No .
It was fine.
I was fine.
I always landed on my feet, and this would be no different.
I wouldn’t let it be.
But that didn’t mean I wasn’t gonna freak out a little first. This was a full pot of coffee on the back porch with my mom kind of conversation.
Maybe a phone call would do.
Problem being, Tampa was three hours ahead of us, and my early-bird mother was likely snoozing.
Still, I snatched my phone and fired off a message.
Leighton
Mama, you awake?
Long minutes passed without a ‘read’ notification.
The longer I stared at the screen like a pot refusing to boil, the harder my heartbeat drummed in my ears.
Juniper Rhodes might’ve been certifiable for having twelve kids, but the woman bent over backward to be there for us.
If she was awake, she would’ve gotten back to me already.
Before I’d really thought it through, I palmed at my cheeks and backed out of my parking spot, instinctively heading toward the boujee part of the city where Alice and Greyson lived across from Ollie and his kids.
The brilliant nepotistic real estate hoarders had bought up the whole neighborhood—their Nona, uncle, and cousins all owned plots in one ridiculously ostentatious subdivision that Home and Garden would drool over.
But it was the row of meticulously manicured drives that somehow soothed my heart when I finally pulled onto their oceanfront road.
One glance at Greyson and Alice’s dark windows, and I winced internally.
It was eight o’clock, and Alice had been passing out early ever since the event-that-shall-not-be-discussed.
She’d sustained a concussion in addition to broken bones, and needed her rest.
Greyson would scold me if I accidentally woke her.
If you still think mama bears are terrifying, you clearly haven’t seen Greyson fuss over my sister.
With a sigh, I turned into Ollie’s driveway and parked in front of his massive garage.
The kids fought bedtime like Americans fought the last draft.
But it was a school night.
And I was... I was spiraling .
The lights finally automatically turned off by the time I lifted my head to look at the house.
Dimly lit. A soft blue flicker made me think someone was watching TV in the living room past the foyer.
I’d been here every day for the last two weeks.
At some point, before school or after, I’d managed to sneak in a visit to check on Tillie, and give Ollie shit.
But if I told him what happened, he’d scramble to fix it.
He’d try to offer me cash or some equally insulting billionaire gesture, and I was a bad bitch who absolutely did not need saving.
I’d figure it out.
I always figured it out.
Even if I had no idea what that looked like this time.
Even if that was utterly terrifying.
It could be worse.
I could still be in a hospital bed.
It was the vibration of my cell in the cup holder that finally snapped me out of my shell-shocked state.
Oliver Hart
You coming in, Trouble?
When tears burned my eyes, I blinked them away.
Stupid .
His little nickname was not a reason to be emotional, but it was oddly comforting.
Like I had someone in this damn city who actually gave a shit.
My phone buzzed again.
Oliver Hart
I’m past my daily caloric allowance and have a large deep dish, Chicago-style pepperoni pizza with your name on it. Stop casing the joint and come inside, you weirdo.
With a watery laugh, I glanced in the mirror, wiped the mascara from beneath my eyes, pinched my cheeks so I would resemble a zombie slightly less, and opened the door.
Oliver
Normally, I’d leave Leighton to let herself in, watching her approach the doorbell camera on my phone.
Normally , I’d keep scrolling through Halloween costumes with Mattie and Beau as they argued over what they wanted to be in a few weeks.
We always picked themed outfits. Cheesy, I know. But if I only got eighteen of these with my kids in the best-case scenario, I was damn sure gonna make them count.
But... she’d sat out in her Jeep for nearly forty minutes.
Just... parked, in my driveway.
No kicked-open door with armfuls of food.
No new vinyl dropped from one of Mattie’s favorite artists.
No pissed-off declarations vowing to end a reporter’s career over the bullshit they spewed in a gossip magazine.
I might not have known a whole lot in this life, but I knew this: ‘silence’ did not belong in the same sentence as ‘Leighton Rhodes.’
The woman was hell on wheels. Or heels, occasionally, though she was more prone to Converse.
Powerful curves packed on a compact little frame gave her the air of an athlete, but fuck me if that muscled body wasn’t exactly what I looked for in any crowd.
There were beautiful women, and then there were the Rhodes sisters.
While I’d always thought my brother’s wife was stunning, Leighton was... out-of-this-world beautiful. With a temper to match, much to my amusement.
Temptation, personified.
Even if lusting after Greyson’s new sister-in-law wasn’t just poor form to begin with, being nine years her senior drove a nail through the coffin of that thought the moment I’d had it.
But, friend? That I could do.
And my friend looked nothing if not downtrodden.
So I told the kids to keep looking, handed the iPad to Mattie—who wasn’t phased for a second—and headed for the front door.
It should be a crime to make a woman’s shoulders slump like that.
Leighton was futilely trying to lift her chin, curling in on herself in an oversized Bombers hoodie.
Those gray-blue eyes were red-rimmed like she’d been crying, and my heart sank.
Suddenly, I was back on the bank of the bay they’d miraculously made it out of after hurdling off the bridge—holding her and Mattie in my arms as we all fucking cried in relief and terror and grief.
Nothing prepares you for that kind of horror.
Before I’d even processed closing the gap, I had, and she crumpled into my open arms.
“Hey, Trouble,” I breathed against her hair, trying very hard not to catalog every note of citrus, or the way her warmth collapsed against my body in a kind of surrender. “What’s going on?”
“Shitty day,” she squeaked into my shirt.
“I see that,” I said, snorting when she jabbed a finger between my ribs.
That was about as long as I could hang onto her before my dick would demand to make his feelings known, so rather than risking being that creep, I unspooled us and motioned her toward the house.
Twenty-three.
She was twenty-three and fucking crying .
There was no universe where this woman wanted to be saluted by an erection right now. Certainly not mine.
“Come eat.”
“I’m past my calorie count, too.”
“Bullshit,” I scoffed. “Get your ass inside and eat some pizza. Mattie and Beau are picking Halloween costumes.”
“Halloween,” she repeated vacantly.
“Ghosts, goblins, and ghouls. Trick-or-treat. Devil’s Night. You know .”
Finally, she snapped her eyes to mine in an accusatory glare.
“Yes, I know what Halloween is, thank you very much,” she said before marching inside, leaving me to follow.
There she is.
I smiled to myself.
This clearly wasn’t ‘I damaged my spinal column in the accident’ bad.
It was just regular bad.
Everyday issues I could work with.
Hell, spinning them was kind of my thing.
I pretended I didn’t hear her work to clear her throat as she kicked off her shoes, then hollered, “I hear there are two ghouls in this house?”
Smirking as she hustled around the corner to the thunderous rumble of two pairs of tiny feet, I bent down and snatched her shoes off the ground, placing them neatly beside mine on the shoe rack by the door.
My ears strained but could only catch snippets of the kids’ elated chatter as they filled her in on what I was sure was every single moment of their day.
Whether or not she knew it, Leighton filled a hole in their lives.
A gaping chasm left behind by their narcissistic mother.
And while nothing could replace an actual mother raising them, at least Alice, Leighton, and my cousin Emmaline showed them what it was to be nurtured.
I probably didn’t thank any of them enough for that.
For being that for them.
For us.
“ No way. Halloween is my favorite too,” Leighton proclaimed as Beau did a little dance in his Mickey Mouse pajamas.
My little man was the spitting image of my late brother—ironically, his namesake—with his dark, tousled curls over light blue eyes.
His chubby little hands were just at that stage where I knew he’d stop looking like my baby soon.
Before long, he’d trade that tubby toddler tummy for a lanky, never-still Hart frame, and stop needing interpretation on every third sentence.
I wasn’t fucking ready.
“Mine as well,” I said from the entryway, not entirely sure why I was interjecting myself into her moment.
“Really?!” she squeaked, danger flashing in her eyes.
Oh boy.
“Always liked the masks.”
Before I could explain, she waggled her eyebrows, and I glared skyward.
This woman would be the death of me.
Clearing my throat, I continued, “All the anonymity—nobody’s better than anybody else. Just a bunch of kids running around like hellions getting free candy from strangers.”
“Wholesome,” she teased, following the kids toward the sectional.
“But it is,” I laughed.
At least compared to what Beaumont and I used to get into. Greyson was too busy pleasing—or pissing off—our father to keep his focus away from us. Not that he thought I knew.
But we knew.
Or at least, suspected.
Not sure when he stopped prioritizing protecting family in favor of throwing us all on the chopping block.
“Look, look, look!” Beau squeaked animatedly as he clambered onto his sister’s lap, pointing at the screen.
Mattie was holding the iPad in her cast arm—covered in band stickers and signatures from the ‘non-douchey’ kids at school—and while she’d made the most of it, I couldn’t wait to get the damn thing off my baby girl.
He was already too big to sit with her, but she didn’t shove him off this time.
Small mercies.
She’d been uncharacteristically affectionate the last few weeks, and while that was sweet, it also had me concerned about what she wasn’t saying.
Curious, I wandered into our expansive living room and around the back of the leather couch they were piled on.
“ I’m looking, I’m looking! Ooooooh, very nice. Your Aunt Alice would approve, little man,” Leighton said.
I bent over the couch to see the Captain America costume he was excitedly showing her. He tapped on the image to swipe through the carousel.
Quirking a brow, I asked, “But Auntie Leighton doesn’t?”
She wrinkled her nose before her voice came out rapid-fire, “My sailor’s-daughter vocabulary alone would make me and Steve incompatible. I was always more of a Bucky girl.”
“ Winter Soldier? !” Mattie gasped in disbelief.
Poor kids had watched the entire Marvel catalog on a loop.
Side effect of having a single dad who wasn’t sure what the hell else to do with them.
“I have a feeling Leigh read the comics, baby,” I speculated, watching her for a reaction.
Sure enough, she shot me a playful smirk-glare combination that made me burst out laughing.
“Bucky was a lot cooler in the comics.”
“ Yeah ,” Leighton emphasized. “And he and Black Widow were in love.”
“What?!” Mattie barked at the same time Beau said, “ Eww !”
A comic book girl.
That was deeply satisfying.
Why didn’t comic book girls look like that when I was in high school?
Not that I should fucking care.
Not that I did .
Because that would be wildly inappropriate.
Only once Leighton had gone on to explain the Black Widow relationship did Mattie finally sigh and say, “Okay, so a Marvel theme would let the whole family join in. Uncle Grey and Aunt Alice and Auntie Emmaline.”
I ground my teeth, finding my feet.
Over my dead body was this about to become a whole family affair.
Not after... well... everything.
“We’ll order tomorrow,” I said, forcing a smile as I held out my hand for the iPad.
With an irritated huff, Mattie flipped the tablet into my palm and slid Beau off her lap.
“But I think that was a good start.”
Like a backpack full of stones, I shouldered the weight of Leighton’s eyes on me as I turned to leave the room.
She didn’t know everything about that damn ‘car accident.’
Just what Greyson had decided they could tell her.
Her mind had filled in the gaps, and nobody had corrected her.
The reality was, it was my brother— who had always been my go-to, my ride-or-die, the one person I could trust—who placed that bullseye on our family.