Wicked Stepbrother (Book Two)

by Lila Price

  But no amount of expensive toys could hide their white trash ways.

  “Good night!” Blake shouted in a singsong voice, cackling afterwards.

  I ran toward them. “Hey, this check is short!” I said. “It’s almost two hundred dollars short and I need that—“

  “Bring it up with my Dad tomorrow,” Devin said as he unlocked and opened his door.

  “Dammit,” I said, the tears finally starting. “You can’t do this to me again. Last time he never paid me what he owed—“

  Suddenly, Marvin came towards me, pointing, shouting. “We never stiffed you, you dumb cunt. It’s not our fault your broke ass parents needed my Dad to bail them out. Where would ya’ll be if we hadn’t bought your fucking shitty ass house so they didn’t take it to auction? Huh?”

  I backed away, tears pouring down my face. “Just go away,” I said.

  “You have the balls to complain about a couple hundred bucks when you’d be fucking homeless without us.” He smirked. “Get the fuck outta here.”

  Suddenly, a deep male voice boomed from nearby. “Damn, your folks should have taught you better manners, son.”

  The three men turned to see who had been talking. I followed their gaze too.

  The parking lot was almost completely dark and empty, but there was a pickup trunk idling nearby, and a man was sitting in the truck bed, bathed in shadow.

  My body awoke with a jolt. That voice. It couldn’t be but it had to be—

  No. No way. He’d been waiting in the parking lot? For me?

  “Hey, buddy, why don’t you mind your own fucking business?” Devin said.

  Uncle Billy’s three sons were knuckleheads and I knew that first hand. They liked to fight, and they weren’t afraid to fight dirty. I’d seen them stomp guys at parties in the recent past.

  They found it funny to gang up on people.

  Green Eyes spoke again calmly. “It is my business when cowardly men try to intimidate a young lady.”

  “Yeah, well suck my balls, faggot,” Marvin said, grabbing his crotch.

  I shook my head. “I’m leaving,” I said, starting toward my car. The hair on the back of my neck was standing on end. I felt scared and tired and completely undone.

  As I got closer to the car, I stopped and saw that the man had jumped off the back of the truck and was moving towards my three cousins.

  Shit.

  He was going to get himself beaten half to death.

  “If your parents didn’t teach you how to speak with respect, then I guess I’ll have to do it,” he said, removing his jacket and tossing it back toward his truck.

  “Please, don’t do this,” I said, knowing it was already too late.

  He turned to look at me, and now I was certain it was him. Even though I couldn’t see the telltale green eyes, I would have recognized that face anywhere, even half in darkness at night.

  Where had all his friends gone and why was he still here a couple of hours later, waiting in a dark parking lot?

  As he turned to look at me, my idiot cousins ran at him, all three at once.

  I shrieked.

  It was going to be horrible. I’d seen this play out before, only in the past someone had always been around to break up the violence. This time we were in an empty parking lot and I knew my cousins wouldn’t stop on my account.

  Suddenly, they converged on him.

  But in a matter of moments it became clear that this was different. This man wasn’t just an ordinary frat boy.

  I’d been wrong about him.

  Very wrong.

  He stepped back, dodged one of their clumsy punches and then attacked with a barrage of his own punches and kicks. Each blow that he threw was precise and intended to cause maximum carnage.

  He blasted Devin in the face with two quick punches, and Devin fell down on the concrete like a sack of bricks, completely still.

  Blake tried to grab a hold of Green Eyes, but the stranger easily broke away from Blake’s clutches, pivoted and threw a powerful kick that landed in Blake’s midsection. Blake fell backwards and crashed through some bushes.

  Now it was just Green Eyes and Marvin.

  “You like calling women names?” the man said.

  “Hey, just—chill out,” Marvin said. “You can chill, man. We get the point.”

  “Not yet you don’t,” he said, and then he leaned forward and head butted Marvin, and Marvin’s nose exploded in a fountain of blood as he collapsed to the ground and writhed in pain.

  The man turned and walked toward me quickly. “You okay?” he asked. He wasn’t even breathing heavily.

  I nodded, too frightened to talk.

  “Good,” he said, giving me that strange grin. “What’s your name?” he asked, sounding casual, as if he hadn’t just dealt out devastating violence to my three cousins, who were even now in various states of distress.

  “I’m Caeli,” I said, swallowing. Even after all of the madness, I was still struck by his gorgeous good looks. Nobody that good looking should be able to fight like that, I decided.

  It seemed almost against the laws of physics.

  “My name’s Zack. Zack Wild,” he said, offering his hand.

  I reached out and he took my hand in his, surprising me with his gentleness. “Hi, Zack,” I said. “I think you should probably go or you’ll be arrested.”

  He smiled and laughed a little. “Probably right.” He held my hand a bit longer and I felt the heat spiral up my hand and through my arm. “Caeli what?” he said, cocking an eyebrow.

  “I shouldn’t—“

  “That’s okay,” he said, letting go. “I get it.” And then he turned and walked back to his pickup truck.

  “It’s Caeli Powers,” I called out, just before he got inside.

  He stopped, gave a quick nod, and then opened the door of his truck and got inside. He drove away from the scene only a couple of minutes before the police arrived.

  ZACK

  Waiting outside for that girl had been stupid. I’d sensed that she was going to bring me nothing but trouble, and yet still I’d done it. I’d told my friends to leave the restaurant without me…

  Friends. Ha. That was a good one. Those guys knew almost nothing about me, they just liked to hang around because I told funny stories and had a way with the ladies. Calling them friends was a stretch.

  I didn’t have friends anymore.

  Now, driving home after that scuffle in the parking lot of the burger joint, I replayed the incident and shook my head. That had been really stupid and I was lucky not to have ended up behind bars.

  My hands started shaking.

  I felt like I could hardly breathe. On the road in front of me, I no longer saw the normal city streets of the good ol’ US of A. Instead, I felt like I was looking out at the streets of Kabul.

  I pulled the car over and stopped.

  Shit. This can’t be happening to me. Not now, not here.

  My mind was flashing back to images, sounds and even smells that I’d been trying to forget.

  Chase’s voice, his laughter, echoes in my ears as if he’s right next to me.

  “When I get back, the first thing I’m going to do, bro—“

  And then the sounds of explosive gunfire and the screams. The fucking screams I’ll never forget, and how Chase looks as I press my hand over the gaping bullet wound in his throat.

  Telling him everything’s fine, it’s not that bad—as he bleeds out right in front of me and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it, and I’m sure we’re all going to die out here.

  I came back to myself as if I’d somehow been power-slammed back inside my own body. As if I literally went outside myself and then came back in again, snapped back to the present.

  I glanced in the rearview mirror and my eyes looked positively insane.

  “Get a hold of yourself, Zack,” I whispered, rubbing a hand over my face. That’s when I glanced at my knuckles, swollen and bloody from where I’d smashed those jerks who had
been messing with that waitress.

  Her name, she’d said—her name was Caeli. Caeli Powers.

  Just remembering her name slowed my breathing and my heart rate a little, calmed me somehow.

  “Caeli.” I spoke the name and felt more like myself, as if speaking her name aloud and recalling the image of her face could do that for me—could give me something I hadn’t had in a long time.

  Something in her eyes had woken up something in me that I’d been sure was dead.

  But she was just some waitress who I’d never see again. Unless I was crazy enough to try and track her down.

  I wondered what she thought of me after everything that had happened. We hadn’t exactly gotten off on the best foot back there, what with me giving her shit when she spilled that milkshake on herself…

  I smiled a little, laughing as I thought about the look on her face and how she’d stared me down, glared at me like I was the devil himself.

  And maybe, just maybe, I was. But if I was the devil then I had a right to whatever pleasures I could find on this crummy earth.

  I pictured her face again, the way she’d swung that ass when she’d turned and walked with attitude back to her post behind the counter at the burger joint.

  She was cute, funny, sexy.

  Caeli had that something special that made me want to take her clothes off, throw her buck-naked on the bed and do unspeakable things to her, while at the same time she made me want to…

  What?

  I blinked, took a deep breath and let it out.

  She’s just another girl. No different then the rest, Zack. She’s some random who works at a burger joint and you beat up her co-workers and now she probably thinks you’re nuts on top of everything else.

  And she might be right, too.

  As I was about to finally pull back on the road and start driving, I got a phone call. The number was blocked, so I should’ve known better, but for some reason I decided to answer.

  “Hello,” I said, gruffer than necessary.

  “Zack, it’s Caden. We need to talk.”

  I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth. “I already fucking told you assholes to leave me alone. When will you listen?”

  “Just wait a minute and—“

  “No, you wait a minute,” I said, and already my blood was boiling again. “I told you to stop bothering me. Stop calling me, stop trying to find me. And you better listen to me or else you’ll wish you’d never heard of me. Got it?”

  There was a long pause. “We’re not going to stop until we find you.”

  And then the line went dead.

  “Fuck you!” I shouted, slamming my already battered fist into the steering wheel so hard that the entire truck shuddered a little, swaying on its shocks.

  My shoulders were so tight that I was getting a tension headache. I shook my head, muttering to myself, then hit the gas and guided the car back onto the road, driving towards home.

  Tonight wasn’t going to be easy.

  Sleep wasn’t going to just happen, not after me blowing my stack like that. Not just once, but twice that night, I’d lost my shit and it had put me in a bad place.

  At the next stoplight I pulled up the contact list on my phone and began to cycle through all the women I had on tap. There were literally dozens of possibilities, but as I went through one after the other, I kept getting the strangest feeling.

  It was as if all of the fun and interest had gone out of my list, the list that I’d been cultivating ever since I got home from Afghanistan.

  How many times had I gone to that well, and how many times had it worked its magic for me?

  Some hot, ready little slut who’d come over at any time of the day or night to get what I had to give.

  I’d never failed to come up with at least one name to get my juices flowing, if not a few. Hell, there were some nights in recent memory when two or three of them were happy to come over at once and be in on it together.

  But suddenly I was bored, sick of it all.

  And I knew why, in flash.

  Because not a single one of them was her.

  I didn’t want any of them. I wanted Caeli.

  CAELI

  One of the worst parts about living in one place your whole life is that everyone knows you and you know everyone else. Even the cops.

  That’s what I was thinking as two officers questioned me while they carted my cousins away in three ambulances that had responded after the fight.

  We stood in the parking lot, caught between the headlights of the various vehicles that had pulled in and were idling now, the exhaust fumes heavy in the air.

  One of the cops questioning me was Jamie Grubbs, a guy I’d gone to grade school with. When we were little, we’d been friends. He’d always been a bit strange, even then, and his name seemed to suit him.

  Grubbs.

  His hands had always been dirty, especially under his fingernails, and as he took notes on a small, battered notepad, I couldn’t help but notice that his fingernails were still dirty.

  I started to smirk and he glanced up at me and frowned.

  “Something funny, Caeli?” he asked, looking perplexed.

  “Nope,” I said, shaking my head and showing him how serious I was taking this.

  And it was serious. My cousins weren’t that badly hurt, but they were busted up and angry. Even as they were being loaded into the ambulances, I heard them shouting and swearing about what they were going to do when they caught that guy.

  Zack Wild.

  Nobody knew his name but me.

  “So you say he was just sitting out here in the bed of his truck?” Jamie asked, while his partner, Rex McCallister looked on quietly, watching me through squinty eyes.

  “Yeah, just sitting there,” I nodded.

  “Why do you suppose he was doing that?” Jamie asked.

  “How should I know?” I said.

  “I mean, that seems a little strange,” Jamie replied. He scratched his cheek and sniffed, then wiped at his mustache, which was wispy, and strands of it hung over his upper lip.

  “I guess it was strange. Maybe he knew them or something…”

  “They said they’d never met him,” Jamie interrupted, watching me now with suspicion in his eyes. “All three of your cousins said they had no idea who he was.”

  “But they did mention that this man went and talked to you after the fight,” Rex joined in. “What did he say to you?”

  I licked my lips. “I don’t recall that.”

  “He didn’t come over and talk to you, Caeli?” Jamie asked. He put his hands on his hips. “Could you give us a second?” he said to Rex.

  Rex made a face. “Jamie, this is an official statement. You really shouldn’t—“

  “Just give me a second,” Jamie said sharply. Even though he was shorter in stature than Rex, the other officer sighed and rolled his eyes, giving in.

  “Okay, but don’t take long. We need to finish up here.”

  “I know,” Jamie said, then gave me a look as if to say, ‘what an idiot’ as his partner walked off to give us a moment alone.

  Truth was, I’d have preferred it if Rex had stuck around.

  Jamie stepped closer to me, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “What the heck is going on with you, Powers?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, stepping back. His breath smelled like stale coffee and old cigarettes.

  “I mean, it looks like you’re hiding something. I don’t get it. Is this guy a boyfriend of yours or something?”

  “No, Jamie. I told you I never even met him before tonight. I just waited on his table briefly.”

  “And you never got a name or a license plate,” Jamie said, watching me closely now.

  “No. And they paid in cash, so there’s no credit card receipt,” I mentioned, happy to realize there would be no way for them to trace him.

  As weird as Jamie Grubbs was, he wasn’t stupid. Just creepy. And dirty.

  Why don
’t you just tell them his name? Why would you protect someone you don’t even know and put yourself at risk?

  You’re lying to the police, Caeli.

  The thing was, I couldn’t bring myself to rat out the man who’d stepped in to defend my honor.

  You have no idea if that’s why he beat them up. A guy like that, he was probably just looking for a fight and he found an excuse to get into one.

  But even if that was true, he had stood up and taken on my three cousins, all of them bullies, and done something I’d wished would happen to them for years.

  I’d often prayed that someone would come along and shut their mouths for them.

  I wasn’t going to get him punished for it.

  So I kept my mouth shut and lied.

  Jamie was exasperated, and after he and Rex reconvened and talked over what to do, they decided that there was nothing else to get from me.

  Jamie handed me his business card, which I took, trying not to grimace.

  “You call me if this guy shows up again or you remember anything else that could help us catch him,” Jamie said. “I feel like a guy who could do this kind of damage to three other grown ass men must be pretty fucking dangerous.”

  “Yeah, I suppose so,” I said.

  “Damn fucking right. I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him, not by a long shot, Caeli. And that worries me. It worries me a lot, especially when I think of him getting hold of you.” His eyes stared unblinkingly at me and I looked away.

  “I’ll be fine, I promise, Jamie.”

  “Well you call me if you need anything, you hear?” he said, then reached out and grasped my shoulder, squeezing once tightly.

  I resisted the urge to pull away and shrug him off, because the last thing I wanted to do was offend a cop.

  Even if he was skeevy as hell and making me uncomfortable.

  Finally, he dropped his hand to his side and told me I was free to go.

  I got in my car and started driving home.

  As I drove, I kept replaying the events of the night, starting with seeing Zack Wild for the first time at the table with his friends.

  Every time I remembered those green eyes of his looking into mine, I got the chills and my skin got goose bumps. I imagined that cocky grin, and the things he’d said to me.