#7-9--The O’Connells

by Lorhainne Eckhart

  Raymond stared at the old shag carpet, listening to the thump of footsteps and then the water running upstairs. How had his son suddenly found his voice of damned independence for the first time in his life?

  Brady was refusing to leave a home that was never supposed to have been permanent. Where had this stubborn streak come from, this sudden determination that he wouldn’t have his life upended anymore? Yes, those had been his exact words, and now Raymond was at a loss for how to get his teenage son out the door and onto a plane. This was a dilemma he’d never thought he’d have.

  Raymond had lived and breathed looking over his shoulder, but he couldn’t explain why he found himself staring at the locked front door now, knowing the deadbolt would keep out no one who really wanted to get into the dated old house. Worse yet was the secret that lay behind why they couldn’t stay in Livingston, why they had come and were now leaving. The reason, which he never planned to share with his son, was that he’d had to see in person the family he’d deserted.

  Now here he was, waiting in his kitchen, knowing he was going to have to sit his son down for a talk he didn’t want to have. He listened to the footsteps upstairs and glanced at his watch. It was early for Brady to be up on a Saturday morning, even though it was close to noon.

  When he heard him on the stairs, his phone dinged with another email message: an inquiry from the Barbados cottage he’d booked and paid for, the one they were supposed to have arrived at the week before.

  Brady gave him only a passing glance as he stepped off the last stair, barefoot, his dark hair sticking up. His eyes were his mother’s, but his face and the way he walked… Raymond realized his son looked like Marcus, or maybe Luke.

  He was staring at Brady’s back as he reached into the fridge for a jug of milk and then into the cupboard for a bowl, and he could see how deeply ready his son was, by the expression on his face, to go another round with him. Brady set the bowl down, reached for a box of corn flakes, and dumped in the cereal, then milk. Because Raymond was standing in front of the drawer that held the spoons, he wondered whether his son would keep up the silent treatment or ask him to move.

  There was the standoff.

  Raymond pulled in a breath and tossed a large spoon on the counter. “Saves you having to ask, since I can see you’re still doing your best to give me the silent treatment.”

  His son didn’t flinch but snatched the spoon, then walked down over to the old table and pulled out a chair, still barefoot, in a pair of sweats and an old T-shirt.

  “So, about Barbados,” Raymond said, “I think we need to have another conversation, because we can’t stay here.”

  “I’m not leaving,” Brady said. “I told you that, so don’t think you can strongarm me, because you can’t. I told you already that I like it here. You’re the vagabond who has never been able to stay in one spot long, needing to see the world, but not me. I want roots and friends, and I’m finishing school here.” He shoved another spoonful of cereal in his mouth and didn’t look over to him.

  Raymond had to fight the urge to yell, to demand that he get his ass upstairs and pack, because he was his father and he decided when they left and when they stayed. But he’d already done that, and it had backfired. Hence, they were still there.

  What had his son said but “You can’t make me”? And so far, he’d been right. Maybe he needed to try the reasoning approach.

  “Okay, I see you’re still angry…”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Brady tossed down his spoon and looked up to him. “You texted Alison that we were leaving, on my phone, as if it was from me. She’s my friend! I like her, and you had no right. You crossed so many lines, Dad.”

  Okay, maybe he had crossed a line, but his son had never pulled something like this before, basically refusing to listen to him. Worse, Brady had no idea the danger he was putting them in.

  “Fine, I get it,” Raymond said. “You made your point, but you don’t understand. We have to leave. This was a mistake, coming here—”

  “You keep saying that.” Brady cut him off, not something he had done until now. “But when I ask you why, you treat me like I’m just a little kid who’s supposed to listen and fall in line without questioning anything you decide. You say it’s not my concern or that, my all-time favorite, you’re my father and you know best. Well, I hate to tell you this, Dad, but you don’t know what’s best for me. If you did, you wouldn’t be trying to rip me away yet again from a place I like and a girl I’m partial to. You seem to forget I’m eighteen…”

  “Not yet, you’re not.”

  Brady slapped both his hands to the tabletop, the sound ricocheting through the half-empty house. “In three weeks I will be. I’m not a kid anymore who’s going to be shuffled from one city or country to another, to places where I can’t put pictures up or have a room that’s always mine. Then there’s Alison, who I like a lot.”

  All Raymond could do was stand in horror, wondering how this had spun so far out of control—out of his control. “Alison is nothing but trouble, Brady. I told you that, and her family is going through some tough times. She’s not someone you can be involved with.”

  Brady inclined his head as if working out a kink. Raymond had never seen this kind of passion and readiness to fight in him. “I hear you, Dad, but I like Alison, and last I looked, this is a democracy, not a dictatorship. You don’t get to pick my friends or who I hang out with or who my girlfriend is. And Alison isn’t trouble. She makes me laugh and smile. So no, I’m not leaving.” Brady picked up his spoon again and dug into his cereal.

  Raymond picked up his phone, tapping the screen. “Barbados is a great place. We’d have a cottage on the white sandy beach. We’ve talked about going for a long time. Look, it was supposed to be a surprise, and maybe I didn’t handle this right. I shouldn’t have texted Alison for you. I hear you, and I’m sorry, if that will help. I promise you, this time we’ll stay put for longer. You can make some friends, take up diving like we talked about.”

  He walked over to his son, who was working a giant mouthful of milk and cereal, and held out his cell phone to show him the image of the cottage and baby-blue ocean, but Brady only looked up to him after glancing briefly at the image as if it meant nothing.

  “Not right now,” he said. “I told you that. It looks nice, Dad, but I’m not going. I’m not leaving Alison right now. I’ve been dragged everywhere for years, but no more. I’m finishing school here. I have friends and Alison. I need to get ready.” He shoved in his last mouthful of cereal before grabbing his bowl and taking it to the sink to rinse it out.

  “Get ready for what?” Raymond said. They had to leave Livingston, yet his kid was far too determined, far too independent for his liking. Even though he had known this day was coming, this was a side of his son he’d never expected to see.

  “I have a date for a wedding,” Brady said.

  “A wedding, what wedding? Who’s getting married?”

  Brady left the bowl in the sink and started to leave the kitchen, but he stopped in the archway and looked back at his dad before shrugging. “Alison’s parents are, and I’m her date. I need to hurry, because I promised her I’d be there at one, and I still need to shower and dress.”

  Then his son was gone, and all Raymond could do was think of what a problem this was. His son was too stubborn, and another of his sons was getting married.

  He knew there was no way this Alison and Brady thing could continue, but he also knew that leaving town without Brady ever learning the truth was now completely off the table. He couldn’t stop his son from walking out the door right now and going to this wedding.

  “Shit,” he said. This was just another thing he’d somehow lost control of.

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  Other works available

  “When Sara’s brutally attacked while leaving campus one night, Devon Reed comes to her rescue. But Devon’s no white knight, and as all too often happens, no go
od deed goes unpunished. When Devon finds himself facing charges, it may only be Sara’s faith in him that will save him this time.” Catlou

  * * *

  Sara Friessen considers herself to be a typical teenager with an overprotective father, but when she is brutally attacked one night in a darkened parking lot she is saved by a mysterious handsome stranger who comes to her rescue. Only Devon Reed would never consider himself the kind of guy that could ever belong to her world, considering the ruthless dark world he belongs to and the fact he may no more about the night she was attacked, and who really tried to hurt her.

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  Circumstances that brought Sara & Devon together could ultimately tear them apart. Stay Away From My Daughter now available everywhere "There is action, suspense and a big surprise ending I sure did not see coming! Well written!" ★★★★★ Karen L., Reviewer

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  Stay Away From My Daughter

  Chapter 1

  Her phone was ringing again, a ridiculous squawking rooster, a.k.a. the ringtone she’d assigned for her dad, and it echoed as she walked across the dimly lit parking lot of the college campus, which was half empty.

  Sara Friessen was tempted once again not to answer.

  She could do that. She had done that.

  What would she pretend when her dad asked her why she hadn’t answered her phone, which he paid for? Would she say she hadn’t heard it, or would she tell the truth, which was that she was feeling as though she were on a tight leash and didn’t want to have to face yet another inquisition?

  Yeah, the latter definitely wouldn’t go over well, considering how overprotective her dad was of his family. Scratch that—he was obsessively overprotective of his youngest daughter. His sons were a different story, a fact she’d pointed out to him was the pure definition of sexism. He’d told her to deal with it, because it was a man’s role to protect his daughter, his wife, his family, and if that meant he was sexist, well, then he happily would take the title.

  That was an argument she wasn’t going to win with her dad.

  She was pretty sure her dad had also put a tracking app on his phone so that he would know where she was every minute of the day. She wondered, truth be told, of the legality of that. It was a gray area of the law, considering she was his daughter, but her dad wouldn’t take kindly to having that pointed out to him.

  Her thumb hovered over the green and red buttons. Answer or decline? Andy Friessen was not a man she could keep blowing off, especially considering how late it was.

  “I’m seriously on my way home,” she answered and said, putting all the annoyance she could into her tone and letting out a frustrated sigh as she kept walking to her black pickup. Well, it was her dad’s older model, which he’d insisted she drive, a fully loaded crew cab with leather seats—and yet another way to control what she was doing. He’d bought a newer version, also black. She’d have preferred to pick up a practical starter car for a few hundred bucks, something that would be entirely hers, not handed to her by her father. Just once, she’d like to be able to manage everything about her own life.

  “Your father has called you twice, Sara,” her mother said. “You were supposed to be home already. It’s after ten.”

  She dug in her purse for the truck keys. It was looped over her shoulder with her laptop bag, and she could feel the tension that pulled across her shoulders as she felt the tightening of the leash around her neck. It was a joke between Sara and her mom, but at times like this, she swore she could feel the leather biting into her skin. It felt very real.

  “Would it do any good to say I lost track of time? Seriously, Mom, I’m eighteen and would really appreciate it if you and Dad would ease up. Maybe you could remind him, since I’m pretty sure he’s tracking me, that I’m capable of taking care of myself. I need some space. Stuff happens, and I’m going to get sidetracked when I’m studying. I thought you were going to talk to Dad about backing off. It’s getting really fricking embarrassing when I’m studying with my friends and my phone keeps ringing, and there’s Dad’s name on my screen. Even my friends are starting to wonder about this incessant need to set a ridiculously early curfew and continually check in…”

  “Are you done?” Her mom cut her off, and she could hear impatience and sternness, which she’d never heard in her mom’s tone before. “Sara, you said you would be home at nine, and it’s now eight after ten, to be exact. When you tell us you’ll be home at a certain time and you don’t show up, we worry, and then you don’t answer your phone, so what are we to think?”

  Something about the way her mom was talking let her know clearly that she’d gone too far and there was no talking her way out of this. She didn’t have to be standing in front of Laura Friessen to realize how mad she really was.

  “Where are you, exactly, right now?” Laura said. “Because you said you were going to meet friends to study and do homework at the coffeeshop. Let me remind you, Sara, if you lie to me, it will be the last thing you ever do, and even your father isn’t going to step in and save you from such a fate. You go on and on about wanting to have freedom to date, to make your own decisions and be treated like an adult, but being eighteen means only that you’re eighteen. You’re still very much my daughter, and you’re acting like a spoiled, inconsiderate brat. That makes you anything but a responsible adult, because responsible adults don’t cause unneeded worry to their parents. This just confirms that you can’t be trusted, and the short leash your father has you on is necessary, because you can’t even pick up the damn phone and call us to say you’re going to be late and tell us where you are. Then we wouldn’t be sitting here, worrying and thinking you’ve been in an accident and are lying half dead on the side of the road!”

  Holy shit! She’d never received this kind of scolding from her mom before, and she could feel the reprimand, realizing she should have picked up the phone instead of letting her friends goad her into not answering. The fact was that she’d been hanging out in the dorm party area on the comfy stained sofas, passing around a bottle of tequila, not doing homework in the coffeeshop. “Okay, I get it,” she said, about to hang up. “I’m on my way home. Ten minutes and I’ll be there.”

  “Twenty, Sara, because ten is what it takes if you’re speeding, which is exactly what you’re not going to do. And you didn’t answer me about where you were. You said you were at the coffeeshop, but to our surprise, when we phoned the coffeeshop because we were thinking the worst, you want to know what they said?”

  She pulled her phone away. “Fuck,” she said under her breath. Of course she should have known. She and her friends had walked in and then right out of the empty coffeehouse. Tonight, everyone was hanging in the dorm, drinking, partying, and doing what every normal college kid did—nothing her parents should ever know about.

  “I heard that, Sara,” Laura said. “You want to tell me where you were, or do you need those twenty minutes to come up with a story? Let me remind you we already know the truth.”

  Oh, shit! Maybe her dad was having her followed. She wouldn’t put it past him, and she felt the hair on the back of her neck spike. It was a creepy feeling, and she found herself looking around the basically deserted lot, with just a few other cars. She could hear the faint noise of someone’s music coming from the dorm she’d just left.

  “It’s not a big deal. We really did go into the coffeehouse but ended up in the dorm instead, where it was more comfortable on the sofas and less noisy.” She winced, wondering if her nose grew, because the music blasting in the dorm had been anything but quiet. “Okay, Mom, I’m at the truck.” She pressed the fob and heard the lock click. “Just unlocked it and am getting in, so I’ll be home in twenty. You don’t have to wait up…”

  “We’re waiting up, Sara,” her mom said, and then the line went dead. Her mom had hung up on her.

  She was seriously in deep shit. She stared at the phone, knowing her paren
ts were likely going to give her an earful when she got home, and maybe it wasn’t her dad she needed to be worried about. Would they be able to smell the two shots of tequila she’d had? She stopped at the truck after opening the door and held her hand up to her mouth, taking a whiff. Yeah, maybe some gum would help.

  “Hey there, great party.”

  She glanced over her shoulder to the guy walking across the lot: light hair, blue jeans, and a green and white jersey.

  “Sure,” was all she said as she pulled open the back door of the truck and rested her computer bag on the seat. Then the guy was there in front of her as she tried to close the back door.

  “So this is your truck? Fancy,” he said with a smile. His wavy hair and face weren’t familiar, but she could see the interest for her in his expression.

  “Yeah, it is. Excuse me.” She stepped back, but he moved in front of her and was now standing between her and the open driver’s door.

  “So how about giving a guy a ride home? Maybe we can continue the party,” he said.

  She went to step around him, but he moved in front of her. He had about three, four inches on her in height and a solid build, too. She could smell the cigarette smoke on him.

  “Sorry, not interested. My dad would kill me. I don’t know you, and I’m kind of late, so no.”

  He didn’t move, so she stepped back, taking in the darkened parking lot and wondering who this guy was.

  “Well, that’s not how it seemed in there.” He gestured with his thumb to the dorm, which was still lit up, the party going strong. “I guess I’m confused. You were drinking with everyone, passing the bottle around, there for a good time. I noticed the looks.” His hand was on her arm, his grip strong.

  What the fuck? She pulled her arm away. “Hey, back off. I seriously think not. I was hanging with my friends, and if you think I was eyeing you up, you’re delusional. I don’t even remember seeing you. You’re dreaming, buddy.” She went to step around him again, but he took a step closer to her, right in her space, right in front of her. He was so quick, and she shrugged off his hand as it touched her shoulder again. He was so close she could smell the liquor, the lingering nicotine. That smell alone made her want to gag.