Phoebe: Book One of Broken Girls Series

by J. A. Hornbuckle

  “Hell, mamacita,” Cruz yelled with another laugh. “Don’t you think your laying it on a bit thick for the kid? ‘A woman who can give her man both love and respect’? Seriously? The bruja has only been coming around for a couple of months.”

  “He’s got a point, Mom,” Max agreed. “Anybody can be on their best behavior at the beginning of something, but the real person inside always comes out later.”

  “How would you know, senor hot-shot? Huh?” Maggie shot back. “How many second dates do you get? Nada, that’s how many! How many bonita chicas you bring to my table since you got out of the military? Nada, again! So don’t talk to me about tu hermanos mujer de su corazón. I spend time with her while you do not.”

  “Shit, she’s on a tear tonight!” Cruz drawled, looking around the table. “Guess we shouldn’t have let her have that second glass of wine.”

  “I am still the boss of this house and of you!” Ryker’s mother yelled, slapping a palm against the table again before reaching for her wine glass. “You touch mi vino and I will cut you, hijo or not.”

  “Okay, okay. Calm down.” Max said on a lazy, calming note. “No one taking your wine. But I still say Ryker’s too young to be thinking about marriage.”

  Maggie rolled her eyes. “And I was Ryker’s age when he was born. So put that in your cigarro and smoke it!”

  Ryker hadn’t been saying much, just shooting his eyes around the table as his mom and brothers got into it yet again. It was familiar, just a part of the way the three interacted, although the subject matter was new. And while he’d never had the word ‘marriage’ cross his mind before, he got the feeling a seed had been planted deep inside his heart.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I stared at the cardboard envelope in my hands which had, in the few minutes after I’d plucked it from the fingers of the Fed Ex guy, become a living thing. Especially after I’d seen the return address label.

  University of Colorado Hospital (Aurora), it said and just reading it made my heart squeeze before it began booming in my chest.

  I’d put in my application months ago, long before I met Ryker. Well before he’d turned my world upside down. Weeks and weeks before I’d fallen in love with him. Yet, somehow I’d forgotten all about it.

  Liar, liar, pants on fire, my brain chided, which was closer to the truth. I hadn't forgotten, but shoved it into one of the farthest corners of my heart, an area I no longer reviewed daily. The one marked ‘Master Plan’.

  I hadn’t looked at my checklist in months, not after adding the tick-mark when I’d moved into the apartment.

  Which was crazy!

  From the time I could write I’d spend hours on my lists, planning out my future in minute detail. Thinking and strategizing every item on it, like a General planning troop movements in order to win a war. And for me, succeeding in life was warfare. Fighting against every distraction, impediment or stumbling block (like 9th grade Algebra), in order to battle any and every damn thing that held me back from success. Engaging in skirmishes I was determined to overcome, to win in the game of controlling the success of my life.

  Carefully placing the unopened envelope on the coffee table, I sat directly in front of it, my butt on the closest edge of the cushion, unable to take my eyes off it.

  And most definitely not ready to open it.

  Because I knew, absolutely freaking knew whatever it contained was going to change my everything—although for good or for bad, I couldn’t yet say.

  It must’ve been hours later when I heard a knock on my door, startling me out of my eighteenth re-reading of every piece of paper, every form, every freaking word the envelope contained.

  And I was in agony at realizing the choice before me.

  One marked as a ‘crossroad’.

  I heard the sound of Ryker’s key and I moved as fast as humanly possible to scoop up all the paperwork and shove it back into the flat, cardboard carton as I yelled out, “Coming,” in a reedy, thin voice. Quickly stepping to the front door, I threw the mailer onto the dining room table before the door opened to admit my Ryker.

  Looking, as always, more gorgeous than he should.

  And to my eyes and weary, racing heart, a calm port in the midst of my internal storm.

  “Hey, cariña,” I heard him say as he swept me up in his arms the moment the door closed. “How was your day?” His mouth descended to mine, although he paused just before our lips met. Staring into my eyes then scanning my face, he pulled his head back. “What’s wrong?”

  “N-nothing,” I stuttered, dragging my eyes from his. “How did your day go?”

  “Fine,” he shot back. “Now tell me what’s going on. And don’t say ‘nothing’ again because you’re pale as shit and trembling like a leaf.”

  I shook my head to shake my thoughts into some kind of order so I could answer, but Ryker must’ve thought I was telling him ‘no’. Dropping his arms, he took off his suit coat, throwing it over the back of the couch and began rolling up the sleeves of his shirt on a long exhale.

  “Ryker—”.

  “Fuck, baby!” Ryker’s growl erupted loudly as he yanked at the knot of his tie. “This has gotta stop.”

  I didn’t say anything, unsure what he meant by his all-inclusive ‘this’.

  Cramming his tie into the pocket of his coat, he turned my way with a frown. “How is it we can talk about any fucking thing under the sun except the important stuff?”

  Parting my lips, I wanted to tell him I didn’t know…but I did. Diana told me, had spoken about ‘emotional trust’, something I wasn’t sure we had together. And in light of today’s news, might not ever achieve.

  He lifted his chin and tried for a smile as he reached for my hand. “C’mere, mi cariña. I’ve got a story to tell you.”

  Oh shit!

  Yes, we needed to talk about our secrets, the things we’d been hiding since the day we first met. But tonight was absolutely, in no fah-reaking way, shape or form the time for true confessions!

  Leading me to the sofa, Ryker sat down and pulled me onto his lap until I was straddling him. “I should’ve told you this a long time ago. But honestly? I didn’t want you to think less of me.”

  Oh god, oh god, oh god!

  Not now!

  “I was in middle school when I was first introduced to computers and something about them just made sense to me. While others were still trying to figure out the different between a platform and a program, I was already onto DOS and learning the rudiments of code.”

  “Ryker, you really don’t have to—”.

  Placing his fingers on my mouth, he stared deep in my eyes. “Yeah, baby. I do.” He cleared his throat and resumed. “Ma had a rule about high school and extra-curricular activities. As in, we had to have them along with maintaining good grades. For Max, it was football while Cruz took up baseball. Me? I went with what I knew and loved, so I joined the computer club. Which is where I met Marty and Keith while learning a whole new set of skills, but not of the good kind.”

  I parted my lips, aching to have him stop (please god, make him stop!) his story, but before I could say anything, he put his hands on my waist and gave me a little shake. “Shh, just lemme get this out, okay?”

  He must’ve seen some form of acquiescence from me because he continued. “I don’t know what started it or how we got it in our heads, but at some point we got the idea to reprogram different websites using our new skills of writing our own code. First it was only a line or two on smaller sites but grew bolder as we saw the results of our efforts. Not that we wanted to launch a virus or anything—we were just messing around and, for us, it was hella fun. That was, until I got carried away with the idea to fuck with the Colorado Welfare System.”

  When he paused and reached for the bottle of water I’d been sipping on earlier, I didn’t say a word. Not because I no longer wanted to prevent him from telling me, I did. But I’d started to get caught up in his story.

  “I don’t know what I was thinki
ng. Maybe I thought I was some sort of modern day Robin Hood or something, but I came up with this wild idea to hack into the system and mess with the amount of money we got each month. Not just for my family, but for Keith’s and Marty’s too since their folks were struggling as much as mine. And my friends were all in when I finally told them what I wanted to do.”

  Ryker closed his eyes and swallowed, making my heart ache for the pain I clearly saw in his face.

  “It took us hours, then weeks to identify the lines of code we needed to infiltrate and change. And another week to crack all the passwords. But when the day finally came we were going to do it, when we were going to jack-up the amount of money on the monthly checks to more than three times what our families were getting? Dios, we were so excited, we could barely wait for school to end so we could get to my house and enact our plan. Which all went to motherfucking shit as soon as we uploaded the new and improved code.”

  “What happened?” I was fully into by then, mentally seeing three gangly teenagers squirming in class as they watched the clock.

  “I fucked up.” His beautiful, chocolate-velvet voice sounded harsh and raw to me which only echoed the bleakness in his eyes. “Screwed up a line of code and crashed the whole goddamn system for thirty-six hours. And created such a fucking mess no one got their checks for three weeks after they were supposed to.”

  Then Ryker went into the rest of it: his arrest, his trial and then his years in juvie before serving the last two years in prison. It utterly heartbreaking to hear but I only noticed I was crying when he used his thumbs and fingers to wipe away my tears.

  But the more Ryker told me, the more I felt him relax into the couch as if confiding in me about the seven missing years unburdened him in some way.

  Sliding his hands from my waist to my back, he pulled me close until I was snuggled into his chest. “Do you hate me, Phoebe? Think less of me for being convicted for a cyber-crime and serving time in jail?”

  “N-no,” I replied on a hitched breath, vowing to never admit I’d been told a small portion of his confession in advance. My answer gained me the reward of a tight squeeze and a kiss to the top of my head, giving me the confidence to continue. “I’m so sorry, honey. Sorry you went through that and if I could take it away, I would. But you did your penance, right? Paid the price for being young and dumb and talented in the ways of computers?”

  He seemed relieved I got it and his heart was in the smile he gave me. As if he could conquer the world as long as I was by his side. “Then can we order pizza? Because I’m starving and need food before you tell me your stuff.”

  Wait! What?

  “My stuff?”

  Shuffling me off his lap as he pulled out his cellphone, Ryker didn’t spare me a glance as he scrolled through his contacts list. “Yeah. Isn’t that what you said, cariña? That you’d tell me your secrets when I was ready to tell you mine?”

  Oh god!

  *.*.*.*.*

  Ryker saw Phoebe fussing as they waited for the pizza, pacing from kitchen to the couch, twisting and wringing her hands whenever they were empty. And he didn’t know what to think. Was what she had to tell any worse than what he’d admitted to?

  He wished he had the balls to tell her how he felt after unloading all his teen-aged doings, about how free he felt in confessing to her what he’d done and the price he’d paid for his bad decisions. But he got the impression his girl needed to be left alone with her thoughts.

  So much so, it wasn’t until she was holding her second piece of the large pie he’d ordered that she actually completed a full sentence.

  “I told you my parents were killed in a car crash when I was six, right?”

  His mouth filled with the cheesy-gooey goodness, Ryker could only nod.

  She took in a long inhale, her eyes trained to the wedge in her hands. “I didn’t have any living relatives, so I got put in the CPS system. And within a year, I was relocated three times. That was until I landed at the Davis’s.”

  Grabbing her napkin to blot at the grease of the pepperoni of her slice, Ryker watched her closely. She looked calm until his eyes noted how fast she was breathing. “All the other homes I’d been in had a lot of kids. Probably too many. But there were only two other children at the new one. And after only a week there, a terrible, god-awful week, I knew why.”

  He swallowed thickly, assessing her unfocused eyes, her rapid breathing.

  “Sloan and Marcy liked to party,” she stated flatly. “And liked to do it on the government dime by taking in kids with no family. Because then they wouldn’t have to do any housework, or laundry or do anything except drink beer and smoke whatever they had on hand. It was up to the three of us to do all the cooking, laundry and cleaning.”

  She raised gutted, almost blank eyes to his. “I was seven, Ryker. And I was the oldest even though I could barely reach the faucets of the sink.”

  Fuck, he wanted to go to her! To hold her safe from the torment she was remembering, but there was something in her posture telling him his touch wouldn’t be welcome.

  “Everyday brought a new disaster,” she breathed in a small voice. “Whether it was a broken dish, clothes not sorted before they were washed or nothing more than crying for our parents at night in the room the three of us shared.”

  Ice began to invade Ryker’s veins knowing the worst of it was yet to come.

  “So we got punished.”

  She dropped her slice of pizza to her plate without taking a bite, but her face remained bent to it, studying it as if it held answers to questions his heart hadn’t yet heard.

  “The slaps on our backsides weren’t so bad,” she related in a dull voice. “It was when we were locked in a dark closet that was the worse.”

  His brain put two-and-two together, remembering how he’d lugged the closets and laundry room doors out to the truck when she’d first moved in.

  “Can you imagine it? Seven years old and scared out of your mind by new people who screamed in your face for not doing grown-up jobs properly without any instruction and then being stuck in a cold, dark place for hours at a time in order to teach you a lesson?” She raised her face to his, but kept her eyes carefully averted. “Your fingers bloody from clawing at the door and throat raw from screaming in the gloomy shadows where you knew monsters lived, begging to be let out. Promising to be better, to do whatever they wanted if they would only let you out into the light.”

  Ryker tried to swallow, but the lump in his throat to both her words and stricken expression prevented it.

  Fucking hell!

  She sat up a bit straighter, running a nail along the edge of her plate. “Carmen was the one who found me, getting my case just a week before. I was huddled in a corner of the empty coat-closet when she found me, covered in my own filth, wearing nothing but a nightgown and with a throat so abraded from screaming my voice was only a whisper.”

  He pushed a thumb and a forefinger to his eyes to prevent the wetness there from leaking out, unable to accept what she was telling him without exposing the devastation of his heart at hearing how his beautiful, amazing girlfriend was mistreated, fucking abused as a child.

  “I-I don’t know what happened to Jerry and Missy, but I was at Diana’s house that very same night.” She took a deep, shuddering breath he didn’t watch, but the hearing of it scored deep inside him. “Charges were filed. I saw them again at the courthouse when I was made to talk with a judge, luckily in chambers and without either Marcy or Sloan present. The Davis’s got six years of prison for each of us, to be served consecutively.”

  Holy fuck!

  Wiping his wet eyes, Ryker blinked as his gaze roamed over all the fucking nightlights, over every lamp and over every blazing bulb his girl kept fiercely burning, finally understanding and hurting with his new knowledge.

  “I’m so sorry, mi cariña,” he managed to choke out.

  “The Temporary Order of Protection was filed because he was released from prison recently, but has been making t
hreats for years about what he was going to do to me once he got out.”

  “Did the police think he was your attacker, baby?” His voice was soft but even he could hear the edges of a growl in it. “Do you think it was him?”

  “I don’t know,” she mumbled. “I didn’t see whoever it was.”

  “I’ll never let him get you, Phoebe. Not ever.”

  But it was if she didn’t hear him as she continued. “Diana was the one who taught me to control my fear of the dark and to dream instead. To take control of my future. With her gentle guidance, I filled page after page with my little girl ideas of how I would work for my future, to succeed when I’d been told I couldn’t.”

  Phoebe stood, her gaze still averted from him as she moved to the laptop she kept on one of the kitchen countertops. “I even created a spreadsheet about how I was going to do it…to win at living my life despite my past.”

  Coming to sit beside him, Phoebe pulled up an Excel spreadsheet and began pointing. “See? This is when I really got serious about getting the best grades in order to obtain a scholarship at UoC – Grantham in nursing.”

  Ryker’s eyes looked where she pointed and caught on the year 1999. Fucking hell, she knew and planned to become a nurse when she was only fifteen years old?

  “And this is when I started my new dream, building on what I’d already accomplished.”

  The heading at the top of the page, in a bold, 24 Calibri font shouted it was ‘Phoebe’s Master Plan’. He read through all the different entries, idly noting the ‘X’ and the date she’d managed to meet each one in her short lifetime.

  Standing again, she twirled and raced to the table, Ryker’s jaw dropping in shock at her gaiety after the hell she’d described just moments before. Coming back to where he sat, hugging a Fed Ex envelope to her chest with glittering eyes and a winsome smile, he immediately witnessed her change of mood.

  “And after years of work, of struggle, I got this today,” she proclaimed, shoving the flat piece of cardboard into his chest. “Go on, read it!”