Hunting Isla (Black Mountain Mates #1)

Prologue

ISLA

My stomach bulged from all the pizza I’d eaten, but I resisted the urge to pop the top button of my jeans. The guys laughed as the comedian on TV made another dick joke, and I rolled my eyes. Teenage boys all had the same sense of humor. I checked my phone again, hoping Kara had messaged.

I looked over at Axel, who wasn’t outright laughing, though his lips curled in a rare smile. He was too cool to laugh at dick jokes. “She still isn’t answering her calls. You think I should go over to her place and check she’s okay?”

His eyes shot to my face, and he shook his head.

“Don’t go to her place, ever. Her parents aren’t nice people.

” He frowned, a solitary wrinkle creasing his smooth forehead.

That wrinkle was the reason I knew he’d had a hard life, maybe as difficult as mine.

That, and the fact that he was the legal guardian of Archer and Wyatt, his younger cousins.

They all lived in this tiny apartment together, not an adult in sight.

How they escaped the notice of Child Protective Services was beyond me, but I wasn’t going to ask too many questions.

They’d given me a key the week after I moved here, and let me come and go as I pleased so I didn’t have to be at my foster home more than I needed to be.

If you added Kara—my flighty best friend, who was pregnant at sixteen—we made up quite the little band of misfits.

“She’ll be fine, Isla. Her parents have probably grounded her or something.”

He was probably right, but I chewed my thumbnail all the same, a nervous habit I’d had for as long as I could remember.

Wyatt reached over and grabbed my hand, popping my thumb from my mouth. “Stop, Lala, or you’ll make it bleed.” I huffed, but dropped my hand back into my lap.

Wyatt was the only one I let call me Lala, because let’s face it, it made me sound like a five-year-old. But I had a soft spot for Wyatt, who was the baby of our group at sixteen, a year younger than me and a few months younger than Kara.

I tossed and turned a little more, trying to get comfy on the guys’ lumpy couch, before I gave up. “I’m gonna head home,” I announced, getting to my feet. The guys all stood. It was a weird, old-school thing they did every time I got to my feet. Even if I was just going to pee.

They all came over and kissed my cheek—another weird ritual they did, but I wasn’t complaining.

It made me feel special, and besides, it wasn’t romantic between us.

We were friends, completely platonic, and it had been that way since I moved to town a year ago.

They didn’t have any interest in me other than as a friend.

I looked them all over. They looked related, that was for sure, each one with beautiful olive skin that shone almost bronze in the sunlight, and deep golden hair, though Axel’s was a little darker than Wyatt and Archer’s.

But they were all different. Axel was tall and built like a Greek statue, with a gruff attitude that hid his soft center.

Whenever we went down swimming at Geronimo’s Bend, I basically had to pick my jaw up off the ground when he took his shirt off.

Archer was just as tall, and his shoulders were just as wide, but his body was leaner, probably due to the fact that he worked as a mechanic rather than a tree feller like Axel. The girls loved him, and he was a terrible flirt, but there was a serious side to him that I wasn’t sure anyone else saw.

Wyatt was tall, but rake thin. He definitely hadn’t grown into his limbs yet, but I thought that in the next couple of years, he might get bigger than even Axel.

“Archer will walk you home,” Axel stated.

It wasn’t an offer. It was fact. At the beginning, I’d tried to argue that I was fine.

I’d basically lived on the streets before I moved to Chatsville.

But no matter how much I argued, I always got an escort to walk me home through the sleepy streets of my new hometown.

Archer held out an arm to me. “You want a ride home on my bike?” he asked, grinning, already knowing my answer.

It was a resounding hell no. I’d seen that thing back when it was just rusted pieces of metal that looked like they belonged in a dumpster.

He’d restored it by hand, and now it was a beautiful piece of machinery, but I did not want to be a road fatality statistic, thank you very much.

I didn’t even care that I only lived three blocks away, so the likelihood of us going over twenty miles an hour was pretty slim.

“One day, I’ll get you on the back of my bike, Isla, and you’ll fall in love with riding forever,” he promised in that flirty way he had, like what he was saying was part joke, part promise.

“Not in this lifetime, Archie.” I slipped my backpack onto my shoulders and leaned in to give Wyatt one last kiss on the head.

We were an affectionate bunch, Kara included, and while it had taken me a while to adjust to their need for physical contact, I now reveled in it.

I knew that human contact was part of what I’d been missing all my life. I was so lucky now.

Archer held out an elbow, and like an old-fashioned gentleman, escorted me out of their apartment and down the stairs. In a last-ditch effort, I tried to call Kara again. It went straight to voicemail yet again. “Do you think Kara’s okay? What if there’s something wrong with the baby?”

Archer’s face hardened. “I don’t know. But there’s nothing we can do to help. She’ll find us when she needs us.”

Kara had gotten pregnant after I’d been in town only a couple of weeks.

She’d instantly befriended me at school, ignoring my fuck off face and sitting down opposite me in the cafeteria, declaring that we were going to be friends.

She’d been right. Her joy was infectious.

But there were only highs and lows with Kara; there were no ordinary days.

Every day was as wild as a party, or as somber as a funeral.

Eventually, she’d dragged a shy Wyatt over to meet me, and we became our own little clique.

When she’d gotten pregnant, I’d been shocked.

I hadn’t realized she’d even been seeing anyone, although at first, I’d thought maybe it was one of the guys.

Axel in particular doted on her, but I soon realized it was more familial than sexual.

No, I was positive the baby’s father wasn’t one of my guys, but she wouldn’t tell any of us who it was.

Well, she wouldn’t tell me. The guys didn’t even try to guess.

We were silent as we walked down the street, past the sweet little rows of houses with manicured lawns and landscaped rock gardens.

Chatsville was quaint, and on the surface, it looked like a postcard.

But for some reason, something always felt a little off about the town, something that made the hair on the back of my neck tingle, though I could never pinpoint why I felt that way.

I shivered and stepped closer to Archer.

I complained about my escorts home, but sometimes, I was secretly glad they were there.

He took the opportunity to wrap an arm around my shoulders. “What are we doing for your eighteenth birthday, Sweet Cheeks?”

As the icy wind that promised winter swirled around us, I pressed closer to his side.

“I don’t know. I’ve never had a party. I don’t think I’m the party girl type.

Maybe I’ll do what normal teens do when they turn eighteen.

Vote. Get my driver’s license. Get blackout drunk.

Maybe I’ll finally get rid of my V card. ”

I grinned when Archer let out a choking sound. “Don’t even joke about it, Isla. You’ll give me a heart attack, and Axel will be forced to beat the unfortunate soul to a pulp for sullying his perfect Isla.”

I elbowed him in the ribs. “I was kidding, doofus. Have you seen the quality of guys at my high school? Wyatt excluded, of course, but it’s not like I could lose my virginity to Wyatt.”

“Don’t want to be a cougar?” he laughed, though he was pulling a weird face.

“No, I don’t want to mess up what we have.

He means too much to screw it up with sex.

Sex ruins everything.” I’d seen my mother, and her Johns, and the drugs.

Sex was a commodity, and nothing I’d seen since had convinced me that it’d be any different for me.

The guys meant too much to me to even chance fucking it all up.

“We’ll figure something out for your birthday, Isla. You just leave it to me. I have a whole week to come up with an extravaganza that’ll make you forget every other birthday you’ve ever had.”

I grinned at him. He would, too; I had no doubt. But in all honesty, pizza and movies with the guys and Kara was all I needed. I didn’t need an extravaganza. I just needed my family.

We stopped in front of my foster parents’ house, and I sighed. It wasn’t that it was bad. I’d had way, way worse. Leaning over, I kissed Archer’s cheek. “Night, Archie. I’ll see you guys tomorrow?”

He hugged me tight. “Yeah, we’ll pick you up on the way to school. Night.”

He stood on the path and waited until I walked around to the side of the house, letting myself in the back door.

I gave him a wave and snuck into the house on silent feet.

I could hear Tony and Lorraine fighting in the front room, so I made my way to my small bedroom in the back of the house.

Once in there, I switched on the light and slid the chair under the doorknob.

When I’d first arrived, their fights had scared me.

Too often, foster kids were a convenient punching bag.

But I’d eventually gotten used to the raised voices and the sound of Tony’s fist hitting the drywall.

I was pretty sure they hated each other.

But they just ignored me, and I was okay with that.