Silver Bastard(9)

I started toward him, but Deep caught my arm, pulling me back.

“Careful, bro,” he said quietly. “This isn’t about him. You’re pissed about the girl. Pick your battles, because there’s a lot more Longnecks than Reapers and Bastards combined. All he did was offer you a drink.”

Fuck. I breathed deep, looking at the scared little shit and wishing desperately he’d do something—anything—to give me an excuse to take him down. My brothers would back me no matter what, but I wasn’t stupid enough to think there wouldn’t be a price for my actions.

“I’m going back to bed,” I said after a tense minute or so, pulling free. “Talk to you later, brother.”

Deep nodded, watching Teeny as I turned and stalked back up the stairs. This time the bathroom door was open. Sure enough, someone had missed the toilet, and I felt my own stomach heave sympathetically. For a sec there I thought I might lose it. Then I pulled it together enough to piss without barfing. Afterward, I turned to look at myself in the mirror. As always, the face looking back at me was ugly as fuck. Dark, ragged hair. Scar cutting across my face. Nose that’d been broken at least four times now . . .

Shit, no wonder Becca had been scared of me—I looked like a fuckin’ serial killer. I wanted to punch the mirror and break it into a thousand pieces, which would accomplish even less than beating the shit out of Teeny.

Instead I went back into the room and found her still sound asleep on the bed. Her skin was pale and fragile, dark shadows ringing her eyes. Still gorgeous, but younger and more frail-looking now. Christ. What had I done? I crawled back into bed with her, sure I’d never get to sleep. I’d underestimated how much booze was still floating around in my system, because everything went dark again.

—

This time the sun was bright and harsh. I blinked, trying to remember where I was . . . Then it all came back and I looked around, wondering where my girl went.

Shit. Becca was gone.

What the hell really happened last night? I sat up, spotting my colors hanging from a rack next to . . . school uniforms? Fuck, some kid must live in this room, I realized. That’d suck, coming home to a mess like this. I turned and lowered my feet on the far side of the bed, figuring I’d open the window to air things out, check the lay of the land in the process. I stepped on a pile of books, which fell over. I reached down to pick one up.

Textbook.

I picked up another. Shit, it was another textbook, and under that was a notebook. That’s when I started to get a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach—something I wouldn’t have pegged as possible, given how shitty I already felt about how the night had played out.

The notebook opened in my hands, and I saw the name Becca Jones written on the top of the front page, along with English: First Period and the date.

Below were notes.

Maybe she was in college, I thought desperately. Please, fuck . . . let her be in college. A piece of colored paper fell to the ground, and I dropped the notebook to pick it up.

What I saw nearly made me throw up.

It was a flyer for a dance—a high school dance.

Becca was still in school. Jailbait. The fuck? It didn’t add up . . . Then her last words to me sank in, and it all added up far too well.

“Tell him I did good, okay? Just tell him I did good. Please?”

—

I flew down the stairs half dressed, my boots thudding loudly. My shirt was filthy from her floor, but my cut was still fine—safe and sound after a night spent hanging next to Becca’s little school dresses. Fucking piece of shit pimp Teeny.

Had to be him.

This was his house. Who the hell was she? His kid? What the fuck kind of asshole pimped out his own daughter? But shit, I guess it happened all the time, all over the world. About halfway down I heard her scream, which should’ve woken up everyone all over the goddamned house. Most of them were still passed out drunk, though. I heard more shouts outside and knew my brothers were probably coming.

That turned out to be a good thing, because I came damned close to ending a man’s life that day—fucking craptastic way to start parole . . .

Teeny stood in the center of the kitchen, Becca huddled at his feet as he kicked her. Then he whacked her across the head with a fucking soup pot, of all things, and I lost my shit.

“You cocksucking asshole!” I shouted, launching myself at him. “Fucking twat! I’ll kill you!”

My fists destroyed his face with a crunch. It felt good—cathartic. He fell like a bag of concrete and some part of my brain noted vaguely that Becca was scrabbling away from us, chunks of her long hair torn loose and left on the floor. Blood, too. Another woman shouted and tugged at her, but I didn’t turn to look.