A Sweet, Sexy Collection 1: 5 Insta-love, New Adult, Steamy Romance Novellas (Sweet, Sexy Shorts)

by Kaylee Spring

  “Finn?” April says on the other end. Her voice seems far away, the words more air than sound. “Is that you?”

  “April?” Ashley mouths at me, demanding that I pass the phone over to her. Her eyes are huge, all signs of drowsiness gone in an instant. “Where are you?”

  “Don’t you dare.” Another voice. Male and deep. Now I realize the reason her voice sounds so faint. She must be on speakerphone. That way her parents can listen in on the call.

  “I can’t tell you,” she says. The line is quiet for some time. “Honestly, I’m not really sure why I called you. I just wanted to hear your voice.”

  Another voice on her end says in a mocking tone, “How sweet.” That would be her mother.

  “I miss you too,” I say, hesitant to let her parents know that we’ve been looking for her all night. That we are still on the trail, determined to get April back. “How is your leg holding up?”

  “I miss the hospital’s painkillers, that’s for sure.”

  That’s an understatement. I’ve seen the x-rays. Her leg didn’t so much as break as it shattered. Now she’s feeling the full force of pain for the first time, and though it has had some time to heal, it’s not anywhere near normal again.

  Ashley’s fingernails are scraping at the side of my head now, trying to wrench the phone out of my grip. “I need to talk to her,” she hisses.

  “Ashley wants to talk to you. Is that alright?” The question is more directed at her parents, but it’s April who answers. “Is she there with you now?”

  The phone disappears from my ear and reappears at Ashley’s.

  “Remember when we were kids?” She says. No questions about how April is holding up. No affectionate greeting. Just a speedy question that seems completely inappropriate at the moment.

  April’s ‘Yeah’ is questioning what her childhood friend is getting at.

  “Remember that kid Taylor who said he loved to drive his father’s BMW, even though he was only thirteen when he said it. We ran into him today back in Sammington.”

  At first, I think Ashley is losing her mind. Lost it already. Or exchanged it for one of her useless necklaces she is always wearing ten of. We only moved to Sammington last year, so why would she say ‘back in Sammington’, like it’s a place we returned to after a long time away.

  Wait.

  Taylor. Thirteen. Sammington. It’s code. Ashley is making up a story just to work these words in. Not just any words, but our current address: 13 Taylor Street, Sammington. April would surely know our address, as she’s been over every weekend as far as I know.

  Ashley switches it to speakerphone but motions for me to be quiet.

  “That chubby kid we met back in third grade? Before his dad got rich, didn’t he live on the wrong side of the tracks?”

  “Maybe,” Ashley says. I stay quiet. Third grade must be code for something. Wrong side of the tracks too, but I can’t fit the pieces together. Ashley seems to be struggling too. “Anyway, he says he’s dating Rebecca. Remember her? She’s the one who brought the pineapple to your birthday party that one year?”

  Pineapple. That was always our family safe word for ‘help’. It was meant to be innocuous enough to get us out of any situation without actually saying it.

  The first time Ashley used it was when she was at her first sleepover in second grade. She’d called back home to check in. I answered the phone then, and was annoyed at first because I was having my own friends over for pizza and video games. But Ashley’s voice sounded weird. Then when she said that she was really in the mood for pineapple, I knew she wanted to come home. My father went by and picked up both her and April. Turns out Ashley was just scared to spend the night away from home. So instead they crashed my party, kicking all the boys’ butts in a racing game.

  This isn’t second grade though, and the stakes are much higher than having a bunch of little girls accusing Ashley or April of being scaredy-cats.

  “I remember the pineapple,” April says. “It was huge. I think she bought it at that store called Phillips. Remember that place?”

  Ashley mouths the word at me. I don’t remember where I know the word from at first, but then I remember dropping a fellow medical student off one night a couple of years back. His neighborhood was in serious need of public funds to bring it back to its former glory. He even told me to keep my doors locked as I drove back into the good part of town from his neighborhood. Which was on Phillip Drive. As soon as the memory hits me, my eyes go wide and I nod back at Ashley fervently.

  “I do remember that store. Is it still open, do you know?”

  By this time, April’s parents break into the conversation. “Enough of this nonsense. What is this, nostalgia hour?” her mother, Kathy, says. “You had your phone call, now sign the damn things.”

  April’s voice is further away as she shouts, “They closed back in 96. 96, did you hear—” And then the line goes dead.

  “96 Phillip Drive,” I say as Ashley pulls up a navigation app on her phone. “How far away is it?”

  “Ten minutes,” she says, showing me the screen.

  “I’ll get us there in five.”

  Chapter 13

  April

  My thigh explodes into crystallized pain as Matt slams me down into a chair at the kitchen table. He swipes his hands across it, knocking bottles and cans of beer to the floor. This leaves behind little squares of crinkled foil with burnt bits of something crusted against the aluminum, and a faint trail of white powder. I’ve never had any personal experience with hard drugs, but I know what they look like.

  “Sign,” Kathy says, shoving the pen into my hand. “No more games either. Unless you want us to revive some of our favorite games. Remember ‘Pop goes the Weasel’?”

  This was what my mother always used to say before slapping me. The game part of it was that if I tried to defend myself, I would only get slapped again on the other cheek. Photos I took secretly after one of these ‘games’ is what my lawyer used to get me emancipation from them.

  Even with the pen in hand, confronted at the depths my parents’ depravity has sunk to, I bite my lips, not wanting to give in. Stubbornness is not the only thing halting my shaking fingers. I also know that once I give them this, they will have no more need for me. There is not a foolish hope in my body that this means I’ll simply be released like a fish deemed too small might be tossed back in the pond. Because tossing this fish back would mean a liability. What if I went to the police? What if I got my own lawyer who could argue that my signature had been forced? They couldn’t risk any of that. Which left only one thing.

  “After I sign this,” I say, wanting to test them. I know that the sweeter their answer I receive, the stronger a lie it will be hiding. “What are you going to do with me?”

  Matt and Kathy exchange a look. A question dangling between their joint gazes. Finally, Kathy turns back to me with a syrupy sweet smile. “We’ll drop you right off wherever you want so you can get back to your little friends.”

  Exactly what I was afraid of. Unless I’m very lucky, and Ashley and Finn understood and are on their way here now, I’m stuck. “You’re lying.”

  Matt’s fingers wrap around the back of my neck, squeezing so tight I can feel my tendons shifting uncomfortably under my skin. “Listen here, you little brat. You’re going to sign this right now. You had all night to think about it. A comfortable night too. Not tied to heater. Access to a bathroom and water. No one figuring out ways to make you hurt.” Without any warming, the hand on my neck shoves my face down onto the table. I feel something in my nose crack.

  “You idiot,” Kathy shrieks as she yanks the papers out from under me before the blood can stain them. “These are the only copies we have. Get her some toilet paper or something.”

  While holding wads of paper up my nostrils, my fingers warm with blood, the papers are slid across the table once more. “That was just a taste of what you’re going to get if you don’t hurry up and sign these,” Kathy says. �
�And don’t think anyone is going to find you here either. We’re not exactly on the lease.”

  Matt snickers at this.

  Panting because I can’t breathe through my nose, I scan across the first page. Again, I’m not even attempting to decode the legal jargon. The words reach my eyes but not my brain, which is too occupied with coming up with a way out of this. Acting like I’m reading is just another way to buy time. But it doesn’t get much.

  “Sign here, here, and here.” Matt points to the bottom of three pages.

  My pen quivers as it hovers over the document. Before I sign where it says ‘Signature’, I see another section next to it labeled ‘Date of birth’. So they need both my name and birthday.

  A brilliant, devious idea pops into my mind. It’s so perfect that it seems too good to be true. But there is only one way to find out if it’s even going to work. Still acting like I’m hesitating, I wait until Matt’s hand clamps around my neck again before I finally place pen to paper and sign my name. Then, I add my date of birth.

  Both of the people who dare to act as my parents are watching over my shoulder, checking that I dot the ‘I’ in my name. After a moment, Kathy says, “Good. Now the next two pages.”

  Even after finishing all of my signatures, I still can’t believe I got away with it. Not as they lead me back into the room with the bars on the window. Or as the door slams behind me and three separate locks are engaged on the outside, keeping me in. All I can do is sit in the corner of the room, rubbing at my leg just where the cast ends, and hoping that I somehow get out of here before they figure out that their documents are void and null. Not that they will notice until the lawyer checks over everything and learns that the date I put as my birthday doesn’t match any of the other documents he has on me.

  Not once during my life have my parents ever remembered my birthday. And for once, their lack of love for their own daughter is something I can actually celebrate. Because I wrote the wrong date right under their noses, and they didn’t even notice.

  Chapter 14

  Finn

  “This is it.” Ashley is pointing at a squat bungalow with a front yard completely overgrown around a myriad of rusted bicycles and other trash. A single car sits in the driveway, but I don’t recognize it. Not that I expected to.

  “Let’s go,” I say and open my door just as Ashley reaches to pull me back in.

  “Wait,” she hisses in an angry whisper. “Don’t we need some sort of plan? I mean, are you just going to knock on the door and demand that they hand her over?”

  If I’m completely honest, I never got that far. All I know is that I’m not leaving this place without April. How we get her never concerned me, just that we did. Still, my sister has a point. “What do you propose?”

  She sucks in both her lips, biting on them in the way she always does when thinking. “I’m not sure, but I think it’s a good idea to at least try to walk around the house. You know, case the joint. Isn’t that what bank robbers are always saying in movies?”

  “We’re not robbers, and, in case you didn’t notice, this isn’t a bank.”

  “No, but if things go wrong and we have to fight our way in, won’t it be nice to know there isn’t some angry pit bull waiting to tear us apart?”

  “Fine. We’ll walk around the house once, but let’s keep out of sight. This doesn’t exactly look like a neighborhood where they’re going to ask questions before shooting at trespassers. And that’s what we’re about to be.”

  The street is dead, but I can’t help feeling neighbors peeking out of windows, wondering what a doctor still in scrubs and a girl whose fashion screams that she grew up in a gated community is doing in their neighborhood. We creep up the edge of the driveway to the right sound of the house. A chain-link fence runs from the back corners around the border of the backyard, but there’s no evidence of a guard dog. The right side yields nothing more than a bathroom window that we easily duck beneath as we pass, so we hop the fence and continue slinking along the back wall.

  Outside a window at the back, I hear voices. Through the closed glass, the words are only a jumble of vowel sounds all blurred together. The tone is unfriendly though. After some moments of silence, two sets of footsteps stomp off down the hall. Ashley and I move under the window with the care of mice attempting to raid a snack cabinet. I can’t help but peek inside, and in the briefest of glances, I see a woman in her upper forties with bleach-blond hair and cheap press-on nails sliding a handful of papers into a manila envelope. Ashley is already at the other end of the house, waving for me to hurry.

  When we turn the corner, a slamming door makes the rickety house shudder against my shoulder. The sound came from this side of the house, and if I were to guess, I would say it was specifically tied to the room just up ahead with the bars crossing over the window.

  Ashley gets there first and, after ten seconds of closing her eyes and focusing on any sounds emanating from the room, lifts up to peer inside. Her eyes go wide, and she says, “It’s her. It’s April!”

  I’m next to her immediately, our cheeks pressing against each other as we vie for space to see through the window. Through the dirt-encrusted glass is April sitting on the floor, her broken leg splayed out in from of her. Her head is down, hair covering her face, but it’s her. And when Ashley taps on the glass, the girl’s head shoots up.

  “Finn. Ashley.” Her voice is faint through the closed window, but I note that she said my name first. It probably doesn’t mean anything, but I love that my name came before her best friend’s. She hobbles over to us, and she is so close. Just six inches away, but we can’t touch, can’t even properly communicate for the glass and the bars.

  She tries to lift the window, but it won’t budge. I’ve seen this issue in older houses before. The ground settles and the window frames go a bit wonky. Or some idiot paints the window while it’s closed, the paint drying into a glue that keeps it shut against all but the mightiest of yanks.

  The light sheen of sweat on her head tells me that the infection we had been fighting at the hospital is rearing its ugly head now that she is off her meds. In this state, she shouldn’t even be standing. We need to get her back to the hospital. Logically, I know that the police would be better suited for this, but seeing as she is technically with people who were once her legal guardians, trying to pull April away legally would no doubt become sticky fast. We don’t have time to work around all of the red tape. Our only choice is to rip it all down. And the best place to start is with these iron bars.

  “Back up,” I mouth animatedly. I could yell the command but that would surely catch the attention of her parents. April gets the message though and takes a few steps back.

  When I place my hands on either end of the row of bars, Ashley smirks. “Are you secretly some sort of superhuman hero that I don’t know about?”

  I’m fully aware that I’ve been skinny since childhood, but for the past couple of years, I’ve taken an interest in my health, just as any good doctor should. So instead of turning to cigarettes to deal with the stress of being a resident, I turned towards weights. I’m not going to be winning any strength contests, but I’m quite a bit beefier under my scrubs that Ashley realizes. Besides, from the state of the rest of the house, I won’t be surprised if the next light breeze knocks the bars to the ground.

  I pull back, putting my whole weight into the motion, and the bars give only slightly, but it’s enough that I can feel their weak points. So I jiggle it up and down, working the screws loose, attempting to keep the motion as quiet as possible. Then I pull again. This time, the bars give about a quarter of an inch. It’s coming off, but I have to repeat the process three more times, Ashley acting as a look-out, before I lean back and the whole chunk of iron pops off the side of the house. I fall back against the neighbor’s house with a horrid crashing sound that starts a yappy dog barking inside.

  “Better hurry,” Ashley hisses at me.

  The window requires thirty seconds to work i
t open, but finally April is able to slide her hand through. The touch of her fingers against mine erases all worries about what might happen if we are caught.

  “You came for me,” she says, though it’s more of a question than a statement. I’m helping her crawl out of the window, hugging her top half while I drag her legs through. That’s when the bedroom door bursts open and her father bellows, “What do you think you’re doing, you bitch?”

  I manage to get April out on free ground. She limps three steps forward, far too slowly to outrace her enraged father who is now running back through the house. So with one arm around her shoulders and the others behind her knees, I lift April up into my arms. She is surprisingly light and startlingly hot. Fever. Infection. The part of my brain into which I have crammed years of medical facts is scrolling through its references, trying to pinpoint the exact reason for her current state.

  Matt is in the front yard when we emerge, blocking our path to the car. Ashley is able to get around him. I toss her the keys and she is in the driver’s seat immediately, calling for us to hurry up. But Matt just stands there, daring me to make any move that would take his daughter—his precious source of insurance money—vanish. “You just put her down and you can go. No hard feelings,” the brute says.

  But he’s not considering the hard feelings I’ve got. Not just for his latest act of villainy against April, but for a lifetime of abuse against the girl. When I set April down on the ground, at first she looks betrayed. That’s before I brush the hair from her forehead and give her a kiss. “I’ll be right back,” I say. Then, before Matt can prepare any sort of gloating reaction, I tackle him to the ground.

  Chapter 15

  April

  “No!” Ashley and I scream at exactly the same time as the men’s bodies collide and roll to the ground.