Wait for It
: Chapter 1

I woke up screaming.

Or pretty close to screaming, considering I was still getting over a cold I’d caught from Josh two weeks ago that had left me sounding like a chain-smoker going through puberty.

My eyes snapped open at the middle of my “Ahh!” to replace a mini demon inches away from my face. I jumped. I flinched. I swear my soul left my body for one millionth of a second as the two eyes staring at me blinked.

“Shit!” I shouted as my back hit the headboard, and I sucked in what might have been the last gasp I’d ever take before having my throat slit.

Except…

In the middle of reaching over to grab the pillow next to me to—I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do with it, pillow fight Willy Wonka’s evil Oompa Loompa or something—I realized it wasn’t a travel-sized disciple of Satan about to sacrifice me to the Dark Lord. Camouflaged in the nearly pitch-black room, the little face a few inches away from mine wasn’t really the devil’s minion; it was a five-year-old. He was a five-year-old. My five-year-old.

It was Louie.

“Oh my God, Lou,” I wheezed at the realization of who was trying to kill me before I turned thirty. I blinked and clutched the skin over my heart like it was about to dive-bomb out of my chest.

I shouldn’t have been surprised to replace him on my bed. How many times had he scared the living shit out of me in the exact same way over the last couple of years? One hundred? I should have been used to him sneaking in to my room by now. He was the cutest little boy I’d ever seen—in the daylight—but somehow he didn’t understand that staring at someone while they were sleeping was pretty damn creepy. Really creepy.

“Jesus Ch—” I started to say before going with “cheese and crackers.” I could still hear my mom’s voice a year ago ripping me a new one for teaching the boys to use the Lord’s name in vain. “You scared the hell—” I groaned, realizing I messed up again. I really had been trying to get better about using bad words in front of Louie at least, since Josh was a lost cause, but old habits died hard. “Heck out of me,” I went with instead, even though he’d heard words much worse than ‘hell’ and ‘Jesus’.

“I’m sorry, Tia Diana,” Louie whispered in that sugar-sweet voice that immediately had me forgiving him for everything he’d ever done and everything he would ever do.

“Lou.” My heart was still beating fast. God. I was too young to have a stroke, wasn’t I? I let the covers drop to my lap, still rubbing my chest. “You okay?” I whispered in return, trying to will my heartbeat back to a respectable pace.

He nodded seriously.

He didn’t have nightmares often, but when he did, he always found his way to me… regardless of whether I was awake or not. Based on how groggy I felt, there was no chance I’d been asleep longer than a couple of hours. Sleeping in a new house wasn’t helping my situation any. This was only our third night here. My body wasn’t used to the bed facing a different direction. Everything smelled and sounded different, too. I’d had a hard enough time relaxing even back at our old apartment, so I wasn’t surprised when I found myself in bed the last two nights messing around on my phone until I started dropping it on my face from how tired I was.

A small-fingered hand landed on my leg over the sheets. “I can’t sleep,” the little boy admitted, still whispering like he was trying not to wake me up even more than he already had by scaring the Holy Spirit and a couple drops of pee out of me. The darkness in the room hid Louie’s blond hair and those blue eyes that still made my heart ache every so often. “There’s alotta noise outside. Can I sleep with you?”

The yawn that came out of me lasted about fifteen seconds, ugly and choppy, my eyes watering in the process. “What kind of noise?”

“I think somebody’s fighting by my window.” He hunched his shoulders as he patted my leg.

That had me sitting up straight. Lou had an active imagination, but not that active. He’d spared us from having imaginary friends, but he hadn’t saved me from pretending the toilet was a birdbath and he was a parrot when he was three.

A fight? Here?

I’d seen at least fifty houses before coming to this one. Fifty different sale listings that didn’t work for one reason or another. They had either been too far from good schools, the neighborhood had looked sketchy, the yard hadn’t been big enough, the house needed too much work, or it had been out of my price range.

So when my real estate agent mentioned having one more to show me, I hadn’t been too optimistic. But she brought me to it anyway; it was a foreclosure that had only been on the market for a few days in a working-class neighborhood. I hadn’t let myself get my hopes up. The fact it had three bedrooms, a huge front and backyard, and only needed a minimum amount of cosmetic work had been enough for me. I’d jumped on it and bought it.

Diana Casillas, homeowner. It was about time. I had been more than ready to get out of the two-bedroom apartment the boys and I had been holed up in for the last two years.

After all the dumps I’d been to, this place had been the light at the end of the tunnel. It wasn’t perfect, but the potential was there. Despite not being in some fancy new subdivision in the suburbs, the surrounding schools were great. The greatest surprise of all was that it was close to where my job was being relocated, so I wouldn’t waste hours of my life driving back and forth.

The thing was, I’d met a few of the new neighbors over the course of the month and a half it took to close on the house, but not all of them. The people who lived closest to Louie’s bedroom were an elderly couple, not exactly the kind of people who you would imagine fighting in the middle of the night. The rest were nice families with little kids and everything. A neighborhood with a history of crime was the kind of shit I had been trying to avoid.

Nobody was supposed to be fighting, much less in the middle of the night.

“You can stay with me. Just don’t kick me in the stomach again, okay? You almost cracked my rib last time,” I reminded him in case he’d forgotten the giant bruise he’d given me that had me gasping for breath every time I bent over. I reached over to turn on the side lamp, nearly knocking it off the nightstand. Swinging my legs off the side of the bed, I tugged on the back of Louie’s pajama pants to give him a partial wedgie as I got to my feet.

“It was an accident!” he giggled like he hadn’t caused me weeks of pain by using my midsection as a ball, making it apparent he could have a career in soccer if he ever wanted to. We already had two soccer players in our extended family; we didn’t need another one. With the light on, that tiny mischievous smile that owned my heart had the same effect on me it always had: it made everything in the world more bearable.

“Sure it was.” I winked at him before yawning again and stretching my arms over my head to get some blood pumping throughout my body. “I’ll be back in a minute, but try to go to sleep, okay? Grandma is picking you up early.”

“Where are you going?”

There was always a hint of worry in his tone any and every time I went somewhere without him, like he expected me not to come back. I hated it. “To check on the noise. I’ll be right back,” I explained calmly, trying to tell him without words that it would take a weapon of mass destruction to keep me from him. But I didn’t make the promise out loud. He needed to believe that on his own without me reminding him every time.

Louie nodded, already climbing under the covers, easing my conscience just a little. He was all gangly legs and arms, and that glowing peach skin that was his inheritance from his mom’s Danish ancestry and our Mexican side. There wasn’t a tanning bed or self-tanner in the world that could replicate his shade of gold.

“Go to sleep.”

Turning off the lamp again, I slipped out of the bedroom, leaving the door cracked behind me. Thankfully, I’d put on shorts before I went to sleep. My hand went out to the walls to try and navigate my way around; I wasn’t familiar with the layout of the house yet. The boys weren’t scared of the dark, so we didn’t bother with nightlights. As long as I could remember, my brother and I had convinced both of them that the bogeyman should be afraid of them, not them of it. I hadn’t gotten around to hanging up anything yet, so there was no chance of me knocking pictures off their hangers as I steered down the hallway that separated my room from Louie and Josh’s.

When the boys had first come to live with me, I would replace myself waking up at least once a night to check on them, to make sure they hadn’t magically disappeared like some Unsolved Mystery. Now, I only did it on nights like this one when Louie woke me up.

The first thing I spotted on Josh’s bed was the long furry body that seemed to take up most of it, our family’s 160 pound, worst bodyguard in the world. Mac was passed out, completely oblivious to me coming into the room, and to top it off, he hadn’t even reacted to me screaming when I’d found Louie hovering. Higher up on the bed was the top of Josh’s brown head of hair, so much like mine and Rodrigo’s, peeking out from below the plain blue comforter he’d chosen two weeks ago. It was a miracle I hadn’t started blubbering like a baby in the middle of the store. It had killed me a little when I had asked him if he wanted a Ninja Turtles set, and he’d opted for a basic blue one. He wasn’t even turning eleven for a few more weeks, and he already thought he was too big for cartoon characters. I could still remember him in onesies like it was yesterday, damn it.

I left Josh’s door mostly closed and headed toward Louie’s room, the smallest one of the three and the one closest to the front of the house. I’d barely made it to his door when I heard shouting. There was no way that was coming from the elderly neighbors next door. The people living on the other side in a bungalow were a couple around my age with a baby.

The neighborhood had seemed like a safe one. Most of the driveways nearby had new-ish cars, but there were some filled with models that had been redesigned years ago. I hadn’t been able to help but notice the lawns were all well taken care of, the houses nice and neat, even if they were all built before I’d been born. All signs pointed toward this house being a great place to raise two kids. It reminded me of where I had grown up.

Rodrigo would have approved.

Moving Lou’s blinds as stealthily as possible to look out the window, it didn’t take me long to replace where the noise was coming from. Across the street, two houses to the right were a pair of cars parked in a way that blocked traffic from being able to pass, if there had been anyone driving around in the middle of the night on a weekday. But it was the four men highlighted beneath the street lamp on the sidewalk that had me zoning in on them.

They were fighting, just like Louie had hinted at. It only took me a second to realize that three of them were circling one. I’d seen enough fights on television to know that when three guys circled one, it didn’t mean anything good was about to go down.

Was this really happening? I couldn’t have gotten like a six-month grace period before things like this went down at a neighbor’s house? A stranger was about to get jumped, and I could only assume someone I was now living across the street from was a part of it. Was the man on his own my neighbor? Or was my neighbor one of the guys trying to jump the single one?

It was right then, in the middle of trying to guess what the hell was happening, that the man in the middle of the circle had a punch connect with his jaw. He dropped to a knee, swinging back wildly, missing all of his attackers. The other three took advantage and lunged at the guy on his own.

Oh my God. They were going to kick his ass, and I was standing there watching. Watching.

I couldn’t go out there.

Could I?

I had Louie and Josh now. Jesus Christ. I didn’t need to look around the room to know it was still full of boxes of toys and clothes. How a little boy had so much stuff was beyond me. I’d just bought him an Iron Man comforter for his twin-sized bed.

It wasn’t just me I was responsible for, I thought as I witnessed the guy get kicked in the ribs. What if the men had guns? What if—

Through the window, I kept watching Guy On His Own get punched repeatedly by the same person. Over and over again. It was an ass beating if I had ever seen an ass beating. If that wasn’t bad enough, another man stepped in and took over. My heart grew about four sizes. Jesus. Jesus. He was getting his ass whooped. Guy On His Own fell to his side, kicked over and over again the minute one of his attackers had an opening. They were like hyenas on a wounded gazelle. They were going to kill him.

And I was standing there. Still.

I thought about my brother, feeling that familiar ache pierce my heart and flood it with grief and regret and anger all at once. Hesitating could be the difference between life and death, didn’t I know that?

I couldn’t live with myself if something happened that I could have prevented. I didn’t think about the possibility of them having guns or someone coming after me in retaliation, and I sure as hell didn’t take into consideration how my parents, much less the boys, would handle me doing something so reckless. But what kind of person would I be if I just stood inside my house and did nothing to help someone who obviously needed it?

Before I could talk myself out of it, I ran out of the bedroom and toward the front, my feet bare. I didn’t want to waste time running back to my room for my phone or shoes, but I clearly remembered Josh leaving his baseball bag by the front door so he wouldn’t forget it when he left with his grandparents’ tomorrow. If I made it through tonight, I really needed to start calling around to replace him a new baseball team, I reminded myself before shoving the plan away for a better time.

I needed to go help because it was the right thing to do and because I needed to be a role model for the boys. And running from obstacles wasn’t something they needed to learn from anyone.

The fact was, it was down to the Larsens, my parents, and me to mold them into who they’d become later in life. That was one of the first things I’d had to come to terms with when I became their guardian. It was up to me. If I messed up with them… I couldn’t let that happen. I wanted them to grow up to be good, honorable people even if it seemed like I had forever until they were something more than the little boys who could barely aim their pee into the toilet and not miss. I didn’t want Rodrigo’s kids to turn out differently just because he wasn’t around to raise them, because I knew exactly whose fault it would be if they grew into little shits: mine.

I didn’t need that on my conscience.

Right where he had left it, I grabbed the bat sticking out of Josh’s bag, testing the weight of the composite. It wasn’t until I eased the front door closed behind me that the urge to run back into the house really hit me. The part of my brain that realized how stupid of an idea doing this was wanted to be back in my room under the covers. It didn’t want to have to make this decision—risk my life or not risk my life? But just thinking Rodrigo’s name kept me going.

As I ran down the three steps leading from the deck to the walkway, I sent a silent prayer, hoping this wasn’t going to backfire on me. My feet had just hit the cement when I noticed the man all by himself was still surrounded, still getting his ass beat. Panic climbed all over my shoulders. How did no one else hear this? I wondered before figuring it didn’t matter. I had to do what I had to do, and that was help this guy out and get back in my house in one piece.

“The cops are on their way!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, raising the bat up high. “Leave him alone!”

In the greatest surprise of my life, the three men stopped instantly; one of their legs was suspended in the air midkick, and they looked at each other in obvious hesitation, giving me a blurry view of their bland, unremarkable faces. There was nothing special about them; they were tall-ish and had thin builds.

“Back up!” I screamed, my voice cracking, when they kept standing there. I really, really hoped it was my neighbor on the ground and not one of the other guys, or else getting in and out of my house was going to be real awkward for a long time.

Why wasn’t anyone out here helping? I wondered one more time, not understanding why no one else had come out. They weren’t exactly being quiet.

My heart was beating a mile a minute, and I was already sweating like a pig. I was on my own; terrified even as adrenaline pumped through me, but what the hell was I supposed to do? Stand there with my thumb up my butt?

“Back up!” I yelled again with more balls behind my tone, pissed beyond reason that this kind of shit would even be happening in my neighborhood.

There was a single harsh whisper, and then one of attackers took a step back toward the man on the ground and kicked him hard before pointing. “This isn’t over, motherfucker!” he hissed.

As cowardly as it was, I couldn’t help but feel more than a little thankful when two of the jerks jumped into a car together and the other got into the second vehicle without a second glance in my direction, tires peeling onto the street.

The man on the ground barely stirred as I stepped closer to him, my legs trying their best to imitate noodles. The guy was on his back, his heels dragging back and forth across the grass as he writhed in pain, silently. His arms, both covered in tattoos to the wrist, were around his head. I was crossing on to the yard when his head tipped up. He didn’t take much time rolling onto his side, then finally to his hands and knees, pausing in that position.

I dropped the bat on the lawn. “Whoa, buddy, you all right?” was the only thing I could think of to ask as I went to my knees right next to my more-than-likely neighbor. His attention was still focused on the ground. His breathing was choppy and uneven; a line of saliva and blood trailed from what I could only assume was his mouth to the grass. He coughed and more rose-colored fluids dribbled out.

Distracted and, honestly, pretty damn close to panicking, I noticed the hands holding him up were covered in tattoos too, but it was the splotches covering both sets of his knuckles that were a telltale sign he’d tried to fight back at least. Maybe he didn’t know how to fight, but he could get an E for effort.

“Hey, are you all right?” I asked again, slipping my gaze over him, searching for some sign that said he was okay even though chances were he probably wasn’t. I’d seen how much they had hurt him. How could he be fine?

His choppy breathing got even rougher before the man bowed his back and spit; his exhale afterward rattled and sounded painful.

I looked him over; the fluorescent street light made his hair look dark blond. The T-shirt he had on was spotted with blood. But it was his bare feet that said everything; he had to be my neighbor. Why else wouldn’t he have on shoes? Had he opened the door expecting everything to be okay and then gotten jumped?

“What can I help you with?” My voice was shaky and low as he started trying to get off his hands and solely onto his knees, either not realizing I was there or not caring. I moved closer and was caught off guard when an arm reached up toward me.

I only hesitated for a second before taking his wrist, sliding my shoulder under his arm as the blades of grass rubbed against my bare knees. His weight came down on me as his inner elbow settled around the back of my neck. A hint of some kind of liquor hit my nostrils as I slung my arm around his lower back. Anxiety prickled my belly at his closeness. I didn’t know this fool. I had no idea what he was capable of, or what kind of person he was. I mean, who got jumped outside their home? That wasn’t some random, being-in-the-wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time crap. It was personal.

It didn’t matter. At least a small part of me recognized that it shouldn’t matter. Three against one were shitty odds even if they were deserved.

When he tried getting to his feet, I did too, huffing and struggling a lot more than I’d like to admit as he used me for support. “Pal, I need you to tell me if you’re okay or not,” I told him, swallowing the heartbeat knocking around in my throat as I pictured him keeling over on me from internal bleeding. That would make my night. “Hey, can you hear me? Are you all right?”

“I’m fucking fine,” was his wonderful answer as he spat out more saliva.

Uh-huh, that wasn’t really believable when he sounded like he’d tried running a marathon he hadn’t trained for and bailed halfway through. But what was I going to do? Call him a liar even as he leaned half his weight on me? “Is this your house?”

“Mm-hmm,” the man grumbled the response deep in his throat.

Keeping my gaze low, I glanced around the lawn, trying to ignore what was probably close to 200 pounds using me as a crutch. Just like nearly every other house in the neighborhood, the one we were in front of had a deck built three steps up leading to the front door. I raised my free hand and pointed toward it. “I need you to sit down for a second, all right?” My back was about to give out.

Out of my peripheral vision, he seemed to nod or gesture in agreement, but I only caught a glimpse of a jawline covered in a thick beard that belonged on a hipster or a lumberjack. Thankfully, he must have sensed my spine was about to snap in half because he took weight off me as we walked forward ten feet that felt like half a mile. His body was slightly hunched, his breathing rattled. At the steps, I turned to lead him down so he could sit, letting me get a good look at him up close.

At first glance, I realized he was older than me. Maybe ten years, maybe twenty years, some men were hard to guess, and he was one of them. His cheeks had pink-colored patches highlighting spots across them. There was a big split along his eyebrow, and a smaller but just as bloody cut on his bottom lip. I couldn’t put my finger on what shade his skin tone was with only the crappy night lighting to illuminate the area we were in, but it was obvious he was a little pale. He was good-looking under normal circumstances, all right. But it was his eyes that had me staying in a crouch just a foot or two away from my new neighbor. Red streaks stretched out along irises whose color I couldn’t figure out, a sign that he’d been drinking.

Or did the bloodshot eyes mean something else? Shit.

“Are you all right?” I asked him again. I wasn’t a doctor; I didn’t know what different symptoms meant.

An ink-covered throat bobbed with what I could only assume was a swallow as he opened and closed his eyes slowly like he was disoriented or something. He was looking at me, but it was almost as if he was looking through me. Could he have brain damage?

“Hey, should I call an ambulance or the cops?”

That had his eyes snapping up to me. His answer was sharp and a little ugly. “No.”

I watched him. “You’re bleeding.” Just as I said it, a line of red trailed along his temple from his eyebrow right in front of me. Jesus.

“No,” the stranger repeated, his forehead lining with a frown that had me forgetting he was attractive because stupidity wasn’t cute. It just wasn’t.

“You are.” I’m sure my eyes were going wide in a “are you fucking kidding me” look. He wasn’t even bothering to wipe the blood away as it made a path down his cheek.

“I told you. I’m fucking fine.”

I had to choke back the urge to snap at him for talking to me like that. The only thing that kept me from opening my big mouth was that I thought about how I’d feel if I’d gotten beat up, and I probably wouldn’t be very nice either. But I still sounded grumpier than I had a second before as I gritted out, “I’m trying to help you. They were kicking you. You might have a broken rib… or a concussion….”

The trail of blood made its way toward his ear. How the hell could he tell me he was fine?

“You’re bleeding right in front of me. Look. Touch it if you don’t believe me,” I told him, tapping my index finger against my face in the exact spot I wanted him to do the same, like hello idiot, listen to me.

The man shook his head, letting out a slow, painful exhale as he finally reached toward his face and wiped at the blood, making a bigger mess. He glanced at his stained fingers and frowned, his mouth drooping at the sides like he couldn’t believe he’d been injured after everything that had just happened. “No cops. No hospital. I’m fine,” he insisted, his tone getting ruder by the syllable.

Jesus Christ.

Men. Fucking men.

If it were me, I would have already been on an ambulance wanting to get checked out. But I could already tell from the expression on his face—I could smell a stubborn-ass a mile away; I could recognize my own kind—there was no way I was going to talk him out of his decision.

What a dumbass.

“Are you sure?” I asked again, just so my conscience could be sure I’d done what he had requested even if I thought he was being a fucking idiot.

His blink was slow as he looked at me one more time, a slight grimace pinching one cheek before he could mask the fact he was human and hurting. “I said yeah.”

I said yeah.

This asshole was about three seconds away from me finishing off the job the other guys started if he didn’t keep that tone to himself. But the blood all over the front of his shirt had me keeping my mouth closed for maybe the fifth time in my entire life. He was hurt. He seemed to have trouble breathing. What if he had a punctured lung? What was I supposed to do?

The answer was: nothing. I couldn’t do anything unless he wanted it.

He was a grown man. I couldn’t force him to do anything he didn’t want to.

I should go back to my house. I’d already done enough. I didn’t want to deal with this, but… I knew I couldn’t go back inside until I was sure pretty sure he wouldn’t pass out on the lawn.

“All right, come on then. If you’re going to lie and say you’re fine, at least let me help get you inside your house,” I pretty much muttered, frustrated that I couldn’t just say “okay” and let him go on about his business. I was even more frustrated that he was blowing this off like it was nothing and that there wasn’t a chance there was something genuinely wrong with him.

His eyelids hung low over his eyes for a moment before my neighbor nodded, flicking his gaze in my direction. Another rattling breath came out of his chest, all reluctant and stupid.

I held out my hand to help him up, but he ignored it. Instead, it took him a moment to get back to his feet, while my hand waited in midair in case he changed his mind. He didn’t. Slowly and on his own, he climbed up the stairs, and I followed behind him, there to break his fall. With his back to me, I realized he wasn’t just heavy, he was a pretty big guy overall. Even without him standing straight up, it was easy to tell he was around six feet tall and definitely a lot heavier than me. He grunted under his breath as he took one step after another up to the deck, and I had to tell myself that, if he didn’t want me to call the cops, I needed to respect his wishes.

Even if I thought he was being a giant idiot and there was a chance he could die from his injuries.

I couldn’t keep my mouth from opening one last time, anxiety riding me hard. “You really should go get checked out.”

“I don’t need to get checked out,” he insisted in what was the rudest tone I’d ever heard.

You tried, Di. You tried.

There was a metal security door blocking a regular wooden one, and my neighbor reached out to open the first and then the second, going inside with me following after. All of the lights were off as he stumbled in, him grunting in the process. I couldn’t see a single thing as the drunk and beaten-up man stumbled forward. My bare feet were on carpet, and I prayed he didn’t have needles lying around or anything. A few seconds later, there was the sound of a thud and then a double click before a side lamp flickered on.

It was one of my worst nightmares.

His house was a mess.

There were piles of clothes that may or may not be clean on the couch and two recliners in the living room. A giant television was mounted to the wall, lines of cables dangling out from the bottom, linking it to two gaming systems I recognized. Cans of soda and beer were all over the side tables; balled-up napkins, receipts, socks, wrappers for fast food, and who knows what the hell else covered the floor.

He was huffing in pain as I kept looking around, catching sight of a baseball in a dusty glass case and an equally dirty trophy on the console table to my left. This whole place reminded me of the first apartment I’d had with Rodrigo. We’d been pigs after we had moved out of our parents’ place, but that was because our mom was a clean freak, and for once in our lives we didn’t have to pick up after ourselves religiously. Nowadays, with two boys and a job that was over full-time hours, I was pretty lenient with what I could live with.

But this place had me side-eyeing everything, scrunching up my toes.

The guy—man—let out a long groan as he slowly lowered himself onto a recliner, one hand gripping the side arm.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to call an ambulance?”

He let out another “Uh-huh” as he laid back, his head dropping against the headrest, his colorful throat bobbing with a swallow.

“Sure?”

He didn’t even bother replying.

I hesitated as I took in the red stains on his clothing and the swelling spots on his face, and thought about him getting kicked again. “I can take you to the hospital. I’ll just need a few minutes.” The idea of waking up Josh and Louie was an awful one, but if I had to do it, I would.

“No hospital,” he murmured, swallowing hard again. His eyes were shut.

I stared at him for a minute, taking in the sharp lines of his profile. I hated feeling useless, I really did. “Is there anyone I can call for you?”

My neighbor might have shaken his head, but the movement was so restrained it was hard to be sure. “No. I’m fine.”

He didn’t look fine to me.

“You can leave now,” he muttered, those hands of his gripping his thighs so hard the knuckles turned white.

I didn’t want to be in his house with him, but I knew I couldn’t just skip on out either. The idea of being in a strange man’s house at night alone sent about a thousand alarm bells ringing in my head. This was the kind of stupid shit women in movies did that got them dumped into a deep hole in some psycho’s basement. But bailing wasn’t the right thing to do, and if it made a difference, people didn’t usually have basements in the Texas Hill Country. I looked around and kept my question about whether he had a first aid kit or not to myself. “Do you have anything I can use to clean your cuts?”

The man’s eyes were closed, and from his lap, a couple of his fingers on his left hand wiggled in a dismissive gesture that had me narrowing my eyes.

“Do you know how many germs people carry around on their hands?” I asked him slowly.

I wasn’t a fan of the look he slid my way with only one opened eye.

And he wasn’t a fan of my persistence. “I’m not joking. Do you have any idea?”

He stared at me for all of maybe a second before closing his eyes and making another dismissive gesture that insisted he was going to be an idiot about this. “I already said I’m fucking—”

“What the hell is going on?” an unfamiliar voice spoke up out of nowhere, just about scaring the shit out of me.

Standing in the space where the living room transitioned into what was either a hallway or the kitchen was a half-naked man. A half-naked man rubbing at his eyes and frowning.

“Nothing. Go back to sleep.” The grumpy idiot on the chair couldn’t even talk without groaning.

The sleepy man kept frowning and blinking, still obviously out of it. He reached an arm out toward the wall behind him, flicking the overhead fan light on.

And God help me.

God help me.

The new guy, the not-beat-up dumbass, was only in black boxers. It was obvious even from the ten plus feet between us that he was tall, maybe even taller than Beat-up Dumbass. His hair was cut nearly to the scalp, his face was stubbled but not really bearded, and he was built like those long-limbed male models with brawny chests, six-packs, thighs for days, and a giant brown and black tattoo that seemed to cover everything from his upper arms, across his pectorals to the notch at his throat and continuing to arch up above his trapezius muscles, disappearing somewhere on his back.

He was built like a porn star. The really attractive, muscular porn stars.

Or I guess a male calendar model.

I’d obviously been watching too much guy-on-guy porn lately for that to be the first kind of body I associated him with.

I knew the exact moment his tired eyes noticed I was there because he stood straight up and all of those muscles went tight. “Who are you?” he asked slowly, dryly, his voice rough with sleep.

Dropping my hand from where it was over my heart—I didn’t even remember reaching up—I caught the ragged breath in my chest and held up my palms so that they faced toward him in surrender, taking in his features that weren’t from the neck down. His face was all angles and sharp lines like a gangster in a Russian mafia movie. Not exactly handsome but there was something about it… I coughed. Focus. “I just helped him outside,” I explained, standing there like a deer caught in the headlights.

Wasn’t that obvious? The beat-up guy was bleeding. Why else would I be standing there?

The half-naked stranger stared at me, unblinking, unmoving before his gaze switched back to the man on the recliner. “What happened?”

Beat-up Dumbass shook his head and lay back against the couch, waving his fingers dismissively. “Nothing. Mind your own fucking business and go back to sleep.”

Was I…? Should I…? I should go. I should probably go, I decided. I cleared my throat and luckily neither one of them glanced at me. “All right, well, I’m going to head out now—”

“What happened?” the half-naked man asked again, and it didn’t take a genius to know the question was directed at me… because his gaze was locked on mine, all hooded eyelids and a frown that made me uncomfortable.

“I already fucking told you nothing!” Beat-up Dumbass hissed, raising a hand to his eyes and draping it over them.

The not-beat-up guy didn’t even glance at the other man. I was pretty sure his nostrils had flared at some point, and I could definitely see his loosely hanging hands were opening and closing into fists. His voice was low and almost hoarse. “Can you please tell me why the hell he’s on the chair, looking like he just got his ass beat?”

Because he had? I opened my mouth, closed it, and mentally shrugged. I wanted to get the hell out of there, and it wasn’t like I had some allegiance to the beat-up guy. “He got jumped, and I helped him. I didn’t want to leave him out there.” My eyes bounced back and forth between the chair and the muscles—I mean, the guy in the boxers that only covered about a third of his thighs.

“Jumped?” One of the man’s thick eyebrows seemed to creep up a half inch on his broad forehead.

I’d swear his chin jutted out as he picked at my words to repeat. I’d had enough experiences pissing people off in my life—specifically my mom—to know those three traits were a sign of someone who was angry but trying not to be and failing miserably.

I probably made it worse by adding, “On the lawn outside.”

The width of his shoulders seemed to double, bringing attention to bulky biceps flexing to life with the hands he was fisting in pretty obvious anger. I couldn’t tell how old he was… but it wasn’t like that mattered.

“He got jumped on the lawn outside?” the newest stranger asked stiffly, his shoulders rolling back, his stubble-covered chin inching out a little more.

Why did I feel like I was tattling to Dad? “Uh-huh.”

The man on the recliner groaned in exasperation.

I would have been worried about being a big mouth except Beat-up Dumbass didn’t look like he’d make it five feet on his own.

The half-naked man’s biceps became even more bunched as his hand—a large one—went up to grip the top of his buzz-cut dark hair. “Who?” the man asked in that raspy, deep voice of his that had nothing to do with a head cold, like mine did. I had a feeling it wasn’t a sleep-induced voice either.

“Who what?” I asked slowly, trying to decide the best way to bail on this conversation as quickly as possible.

“Who did it?”

Should I have asked them for their names and addresses? I shrugged, my discomfort growing by the second. Get out, Diana, a little voice inside my head warned me.

“It’s none of your fucking business,” Beat-up Dumbass muttered as angrily as someone who may or may not have internal injuries was capable of.

But at the same time as he gave his response, I blabbered, “Three guys.”

“Outside this house?” Half-naked Man pointed toward the floor with an index finger.

I nodded.

There was a moment of silence before:

“I’m gonna fucking kill you,” the man hissed, not completely under his breath, his head swinging over in the direction of the recliner. The hand dangling at his side tightened into a fist that had me eyeing the door and taking a step in reverse.

And it was probably that, that had me blurting out as I took another step back, “All right. I’m going to bounce now. I’d go to the doctor if I was you, buddy. I hope you get better—”

The not-beat-up guy’s attention slid back to me as a shaky exhale left his broad chest, his hand went loose once more at his side, and he blinked. “Who are you?”

I didn’t like telling strangers where I lived, but it wasn’t like I was Batman, saving strangers in the night because I was trying to save the world from crime. I was just an idiot who couldn’t ignore someone in need if I had the power to help them. Damn it. Plus, if either one of them—or both of them—lived in this house, they were going to eventually see me around. “I just moved in across the street.”

The man with the hard face and tiny boxers seemed distracted as he looked me over, like he was trying to sniff out if I was lying or not. I’m sure the only thing he would be able to tell was the fact that I was really regretting trying to be a good person and getting involved in this awkward-ass situation.

Glancing back and forth between the man standing there and the other one on the recliner, barely holding it together, I figured I could leave. I wasn’t leaving the beat-up guy alone, and maybe the other man was pissed off at him, but who the hell knew what the backstory between them was. You didn’t say you were going to “fucking kill” someone unless they’d pissed you off enough times in the past. I’d been there. Maybe he was right to be mad. Maybe he wasn’t. All I knew was that I had tried my best and it was time to get the fuck out.

“All right, well, bye and good luck,” I said. Before either one of them responded, and later on I realized I hadn’t learned anyone’s name, I was out the door and walking across the street, going home. That had been uncomfortable and not something I’d want to go through again. I had tried. I just hoped it didn’t come back to bite me in the ass.

I took my time walking back. The adrenaline pumping through me had disappeared, and I was tired. I picked up Josh’s bat off the lawn and crossed the street, wondering what the hell that had all been about but knowing my chances of replaceing out were slim to none. As I made it to my lawn, I zeroed in on a short, skinny figure standing behind the screen front door in just a T-shirt that was a size too small and underwear, his hands were on his hips.

“Lou? What the fu—dge are you doing?” I snapped, raising my hands at my sides.

The smile that came over his face said he knew exactly what I’d been on the verge of saying, and I wasn’t surprised. Of course he knew. My brother had thrown around the word “fuck” like it was the name of his imaginary third kid. Not for the first time, I remembered my parents had never complained to him about how he needed to stop saying certain words in front of the kids. Huh.

“I didn’t know where you went, Buttercup,” he explained innocently, pushing the door open as he used his nickname for me.

And just like that, my irritation at him for staying up crumbled into a thousand pieces. I was such a sucker. I opened the screen door fully and bent to pick him up. He was getting bigger every day, and it was only a matter of time before he said he was too old to be carried. I didn’t want to think about it too much or anticipate it, because I was sure I’d end up locking myself in the bathroom with a bottle of wine, snotting everywhere.

Bouncing him in my arms, I pecked his temple. “I went to make sure the neighbor was okay. Let’s go to sleep, all right?”

He nodded against my mouth, already a mostly limp weight. “Is he okay?”

“He’s going to be okay,” I answered, fully aware that was a partial lie, but what else could I say? I hope he doesn’t die from internal bleeding, Lou? No. “Let’s go to bed, Goo.”