Playing Patience(63)

“You need to get out of here. When he wakes up it’s not going to be good.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

And I wasn’t. I refused to leave him in a place where he wasn’t safe.

“Fine, let me grab some stuff. Stand by the door and don’t move. If he gets up, get out of here and go sit in my car, okay?”

I nodded my agreement and went to stand by the door while Zeke ran to his room and started throwing random things into a bag. A piece of wood on the floor caught my eye. I reached down and picked it up. It was the part of his guitar with his mom’s signature.

Quickly, I dug through the pieces of his broken guitar. As if it were fate, I found four quotes that were still whole. The edges were broken and jagged, but still whole. I collected them and put them in my pocket. I was sure there was something I could do with the pieces.

Zeke came back out of his room and grabbed my hand.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Once we were outside, he threw his stuff in the back of his car and turned to me.

“Whose car?” he nodded over to my car.

“It’s mine, kind of.”

“Good. Follow me.”

I nodded and turned to walk away, but he softly grabbed my wrist and pulled me back to him. He ran his fingers through my hair and then leaned and planted a soft kiss on my lips.

“Seriously, snowflake, I need you.”





Seventeen



Zeke



Go back to your shitty little trailer park. I wanted to see if what they said about you was true, and now that I see it isn’t, I’m done messing around with you.

Patience’s words bounced around my head the entire ride home. The look in her eyes wasn’t right, but I couldn’t tell if she meant it or not. Either way, I was done. She was right. We were from two different worlds and I needed to stay in my zone.

Once I got home, I went straight to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. My thoughts were a scrambled mess. Part of me wanted to go kidnap Patience and keep her safe from her asshole of a father, and the other part of me knew that I should just drop it and hope that she was okay.

When I closed my eyes, all I could see was her face in ecstasy and the way she looked after we kissed. I’d never had a woman look at me with so much emotion in her eyes. I’d also never had someone cut me so deep with their words. I’m not sure when she got that capability, but I was positive it happened during our kiss.

I hated to admit it to myself, but I was falling for her and from the way she looked at me, I thought for sure she felt the same way, but then she freaked out and I couldn’t understand why or what was happening.

The one thing I did know was that something wasn’t right. Patience was hiding something. Whether it was a severe psychological disorder or the fact that her dad beat her, she was definitely hiding something.

The next day I stayed home all day. I knew it was a bad idea being stuck in the house with my dad, but after the night I had, I had too much on my brain and that last thing I wanted to do was hang around anyone. I’d be shitty company.

I was sitting on the couch, playing my acoustic guitar and thinking about my mom, when my dad came in the door from a tow run. Needing to be out of the same space as him, I got up to go to my room. He never gave me that chance. Instead, he went straight for the fight.

I’m not sure if seeing my guitar with my mom’s handwriting all over it set him off or what, but he said nothing. He didn’t give me any reason for this fight. I pushed my guitar out of the way and covered myself. Except this time was different, this time he didn’t just try to break me; he also broke things around us. He threw a plate against a wall like a Frisbee, and then tossed the coffee table across the room in a heated rage.

“You look just like her!” he spat in my face.

My cheek exploded when he brought his fist down on it and I tasted blood, but I ignored it all. I zoned out and I would’ve stayed zoned out had I not heard Patience’s voice.

At first, I thought I was losing my mind. I thought maybe I conjured up the sounds of her soothing voice as a survival mechanism. But then I peeked up and saw her standing in front of me and I knew she was real.

She stood in front of my dad like a petite avenging angel. Her blue glare cut into him as if her vision could cut him in half, and her tiny fists were balled up like she was minutes away from kicking some ass. It was the most heartwarming and frightening thing I’d ever seen.

My dad’s large frame towered over here. His shadow crept across her face, and still, she held her ground. Her T-shirt strained against her puffed out chest and her cheeks flushed with anger as she stared him square in the eye.

“Don’t you dare hit him again!”