by May Dawson
“Deidra.” In the background, I could hear the jangle of his car keys and the sound of a door closing.
“It’s a good story, you’ll love it.” I chewed my lower lip. “Stay on the line and come get me?”
“I’m already in the truck.” In the distance, the engine started. Country music suddenly blared, making me wince, before he snapped the radio off.
I put my back against one of the cement pillars in front of the school so I could watch both the doors and the parking circle. As I filled Liam in, I kept a wary eye out for Nick or his buddies.
“The same Nick that almost broke that kid’s nose? You think you broke his nose?” Liam sounded far more amused than most people do when their kid is most likely headed towards a suspension.
“It’s ironic, don’t you think?”
“I thought I banned Alanis Morisette music from our house until you started using the word ironic properly.”
“Rude.”
He tutted on the phone. “What am I going to do with you, Deidra? What kind of delinquent gets kicked out of Homecoming?”
“The kind you love and adore?”
The truck turned down the traffic circle in front of the school, and I released a slow breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. Safe. I was always safe when Liam and I were together.
As he stopped the car, his tattooed arm rested on the rolled-down window. “The kind of delinquent I’m going to buy ice cream. But only because this time, I think you’re in the right.”
“I know, I know.”
Liam was strict in many ways, far from what most people expected when they heard the quick banter between us. I both trained and worked in his dojo after school every day, I got good grades, and while I didn’t have a curfew, he always knew where I was. But he had my back.
I slid into the cab and shut the door with a bang. Then I texted Kate and the rest of the crew to tell them where I’d gone.
“You know, it wouldn’t take me two minutes to send a simple text if I had a real phone,” I pointed out.
“That is a real phone,” Liam said. “Smart phones make for dumb people.”
“You need to join the twenty-first century,” I said. “For my sake.”
“You love me,” he said.
“You love me more,” I shot back quickly, the way we always had.
No matter how strict he could be, I knew he was in my corner one-hundred-percent.
I chewed my lip, wishing I could find the words to thank him for that. But the two of us had never been mushy people. He showed me he loved me in that daily work in the dojo, so no one could ever hurt me like they did my parents.
I figured I’d find a way to thank him another time. Maybe I’d make something to give to him on graduation since it would be seriously amazing if I made it there.
For now, I just snapped on the car radio and switched it over to my favorite station as he sighed.
Chapter 3
When we pulled up in front of Duffy’s twenty-four-hour diner, it was the lone bright spot on a quiet street. The lights shone out of the windows, and on the roof, a man with an excessively large head and a grin to match, holding a pie, revolved slowly.
“The guy on the roof is so creepy when we’re here at night,” I said, looking up at it.
“Duffy?” Liam sounded affronted.
“You think that’s supposed to be Duffy? You think it’s a statue of the first owner?” I stared up at the sharp-nosed, red-cheeked man, but he was revolving again, so all I could see was his red-checkered back, peeling denim-painted ass, and apron strings.
“Who else would it be?” When he closed his car door, it sounded like a shot going off in the quiet night. “You know, your dad and I used to stop here all the time when we came through town.”
“I know.” But I still loved hearing about my parents. I’d been so little when they died that I barely remembered them, but Liam kept them alive for me.
“Your dad would be so proud of you, kid.” He reached out to ruffle my hair with one hand.
“You’re going to mess up my curls.” I ducked away, putting my hand up to shield my hair. “Kate worked so hard on this updo.”
“Did she enjoy making you over?”
I nodded. “One night for her to pretend to fix me.”
“You don’t need fixing.” He said it with certainty, even though he was probably the only human being on planet Earth who would ever see me that way.
The diner was empty except for a couple of pot-heads eating French fries in the back corner and the late night waitress, Beth.
“Why do you have this child out so late?” Beth demanded sourly as we took our usual booth.
She was our favorite late night waitress, and coincidentally, she was also the only late night waitress.
“We’re celebrating,” Liam said.
She cocked an eyebrow at him as she plunked two glasses of water down on the table. “What is there to celebrate at midnight? We should all be in bed.”
“Deidra’s ability to stand up for herself, to take care of herself. She’s almost all grown up.” He winked at me. “Doesn’t need me anymore.”
Beth snorted “My son still lives at home. Thirty-two! Don’t let ‘em stay in your house a day past eighteen.”
“Too late.” Liam shrugged, leaning back in the booth. “I guess you’re on your own, kid.”
I pulled a face. I’d celebrated my eighteenth birthday just the weekend before. “Your fault.”
We’d moved around a lot the first few years of my life until Liam was sure that the vamps that had killed my parents weren’t going to come after me. I’d been late starting kindergarten, but to be fair, I’d had a lot to work through before I dealt with crayons and paste and the alphabet.
I’d been kind of a mess, after being four-years-old when my parents were murdered, while I heard every bit of it.
We ordered our ice cream—a chocolate chip cookie dough cone for me, and a piece of cherry pie with vanilla ice cream and a black coffee for him—and Beth sashayed off into the back to get it together.
“You’re drinking coffee at two in the morning?” I asked.
“It doesn’t keep me awake.”
“You say that now, but when you’re watching horror movies on the couch at four in the morning…”
“You’ll join me?”
“Do you mind if I meet back up with the girls?”
“Is that a good idea?” he asked, his voice neutral. “After the night you’ve had? What if those boys come looking for you?”
“We’re just sleeping over at Kate’s house.”
“No after parties?”
I made an X over my heart. I wouldn’t lie to him. It was hard for him to give me space after he’d lost his brother. Our deal was that he’d let me go where I wanted, when I wanted, as long as I always told him where that was. And as long as I did my fifteen hours a week in the dojo and gym, maximum effort.
“What are you going to do if they go to an after party after all?” he asked.
“It’s not in the plans,” I said. “But okay. I’ll play. If they go, I’ll get my butt in the Challenger and drive it on home. Okay? That way, I won’t miss out on making fun of you for the inevitable fall out from…”
I looked meaningfully at his coffee as Beth set it down on the table.
I’d left my car parked at Kate’s house, so I’d have to go back and get it one way or another. Might as well finish my girls’ night, even though Kate would have an earful to give me about getting into a fight during what was supposed to be a fun evening. Kate didn’t believe that trouble always found me.
But it was true. Otherwise, my uncle wouldn’t have had to search my parents’ blood-splattered house frantically for me while I sucked my thumb, silent and terrified, in the hidden crawl space behind the hot water heater in our basement. It had been my secret hideaway, my unfindable place when we played hide-and-go-seek.
It was just lucky that I’d shared my secret with the uncl
e I loved, and so he was able to pull me out and carry me through that blood-soaked place as the sirens blared nearer and nearer to our house. Don’t look, baby, he’d whispered to me.
But I’d looked.
“Did you get the cherry pie before he died?” I asked.
“Sometimes,” he said evenly.
It had been my dad’s usual order when they stopped here during their Hunting trips: cheeseburger and fries, black coffee, cherry pie with ice cream. My uncle was kind of a health nut, not someone who made a habit of ordering pie. In his forties now, he was lean and dangerous, his powerful arms tattooed with dark, fanciful scenes from fairy tales. His other tattoos helped hide that his chest was marked with magical runes that prevented demon possession and enhanced his instincts.
“But you’re right,” he went on. “It reminds me of him.”
Beth came back with his plate and my cone. I took it from her gingerly; somehow trickles of ice cream were already beginning to run down onto the paper.
“Tell me about the first time you came here,” I asked.
“You have a lot of questions about him tonight. Any particular reason?”
I shrugged. “I can’t work in the dojo forever.”
“Right. You can’t,” he said flatly, warming up to a familiar argument. “You can go to college. Work in the dojo during the summers. Those little kids in your Mini Tigers karate class love you.”
“Is that why I’ve been training? To go to college and…what?”
“There are so many things you can do with your life,” he said. “Your parents did not dream of that life for you.”
“I know.” I licked my lips. “What if it made me feel closer to them, though? Doing the same thing they did.”
“The same thing that got them killed?” he asked. He sighed then, running his hand through his hair. “Okay, you really want to hear this story again?”
“I really do.”
Just then, a scream vibrated through the night air outside.
It sounded like a scream, but maybe it was a car’s tires screeching or something. I cocked my head to one side, listening.
My uncle was already on his feet.
In my rush to slide out of the booth and follow him, I dropped my ice cream cone.
He looked at me over his shoulder. I could feel his urge to tell me to take the keys, get in the car, and wait for him.
But he didn’t.
He nodded and pushed out the glass double doors, and I went with him.
Read more…
Also by May Dawson
Their Shifter Princess:
Their Shifter Princess
Their Shifter Princess 2: Pack War
Their Shifter Princess 3: Coven’s Revenge
Their Shifter Academy:
Their Shifter Academy: A Prequel Novella
Their Shifter Academy 1: Unwanted
Their Shifter Academy 2: Unclaimed
Academy of the Supernatural:
Her Kind of Magic
His Dangerous Ways
Their Dark Imaginings
The Wild Angels & Hunters Series:
Wild Angels
Fierce Angels
Broken Angels
Chosen Angels
Ashley Landon, Bad Medium
Dead Girls Club
The True and the Crown series:
One Kind of Wicked
Two Kinds of Damned
Three Kinds of Lost
Four Kinds of Cursed
Five Kinds of Love
