Blindsided - A Stepbrother Romance Novel (6 page)

“Shit,” Shawn said. “You don’t think…?”

“I don’t know,” Conrad said. He took out his phone and called Beau. It went straight to voice mail. “Come on.” Shawn didn’t ask any questions, he just followed Conrad to the Charger and held on as Conrad floored it out of the lot. They made the twenty minute drive to Beau’s house in ten and before Conrad came to a complete stop Shawn had his door open and was stepping out. He jogged up to the door and by the time Conrad turned off the car and met him on the porch Beau’s mother was pulling open the door. She kept the security screen door closed between them.

“Beau’s not here,” she said.

“Where is he?” Conrad asked.

“I don’t know…”

“Miss Drinkwater if he’s hurt and needs help you need to tell us where he’s at.”

She glanced over her shoulder nervously and in a whisper she said, “I think he went over to the clinic at St. George’s.”

Shawn was looking at her like he wanted to break down the door and wring her neck. Conrad put his hand on his friend’s arm and said, “Come on, let’s go.” Shawn’s muscles were stiff but he turned and stormed off the porch and Conrad followed him. When they got back in the car Shawn said,

“This is my fucking fault.”

“How do you figure? Did you feed his drunken ass father alcohol or beat the shit out of him?”

“No, but I told him not to come over last night. I turned my back on one of my best friends for pussy that doesn’t even want me.”

“Knock that shit off. You can’t control the fucking universe.” Conrad was already turning onto the freeway to head back toward the clinic.

“Look who’s talking.” They both went silent and ten minutes later Conrad had them parked in front of the hospital. They went into the walk-in clinic and even though the place was packed they saw their friend’s long legs stretched out across the aisle as he leaned back into a seat with an ice pack over his right eye.

“Beau.” He opened his left eye and looked at Conrad. Sitting up straighter he actually grinned.

“What are you doing here?”

Conrad could feel his blood boiling as he looked at his friend’s bloody face. He’s usually not violent but he’d love five minutes alone with the asshole that would do this to his own son. He took a deep breath and said, “We had some questions about the torque.” Beau laughed and the two friends took seats on either side of him and they all waited together. None of them mentioned what happened to him and none of them would, but Conrad would make damned sure Beau was sleeping on their couch tonight.

Samantha watched out the window of the truck as Pasadena rolled past. She’d never been out of Arizona so when they were on the freeway through part of Los Angeles she’d felt a bit overwhelmed. Pasadena at least looked less intimidating. The houses are nice but not huge and most of the lawns are neatly manicured. Things were definitely greener here than in Arizona. Where they had gravel and Joshua trees in their front yards, these people had green lawns and flower bushes.

The trip had been slightly awkward. Aaron slept most of the way. Sam had pushed him into a cold shower and made him drink several cups of coffee before Luke showed up. She didn’t know what it was her brother was on, but it had kicked his butt. He stayed awake long enough to help them load the truck and then he’d climbed in the back seat and passed out again. Luke hadn’t asked why he was so tired. Samantha had a feeling Luke knew a druggie when he saw one, but he didn’t say anything. He spent most of the drive singing along with the radio, sitting quietly, or asking Samantha questions about herself. She opened up about the racing and the Mustang, but she wasn’t ready to give him anything more personal than that.

He turned off on one of the quiet, green little streets and into a driveway that was about twenty feet long. They pulled up in front of a double garage attached to a grey stone house with white trim and big double oak doors. There was a large shop that sat back behind the house and Samantha could see several classic cars parked around the outside of it. Luke put the truck in reverse and backed it up until the trailer was parked in front of the shop. He killed the engine and looked at his daughter. “This is home,” he said.

“Thank you for doing this.” She looked over her shoulder at her brother and said, “He’s had a really rough go of it.”

Luke nodded. “So have you, partially thanks to me. So you don’t have to keep thanking me. I’m only doing what I should have a long time ago.”

“I found the letters you wrote me on the day Mom died. I owe you an apology for not believing you that day three years ago. I’m sorry.”

“Samantha, you don’t owe me an apology, I’m the one who owe you one. I cheated on your mother, did she tell you that?”

“Yeah, she was bitter about it to say the least.”

He cringed slightly and said, “She had every right to be. I felt trapped in a marriage that I was miserable in. I’m telling you this by way of explanation, not as an excuse, okay?” Sam nodded and he went on. “Your mother was very needy and very jealous. She drank even back then, way too much. What I should have done was to try and get her some help, but I was young and immature…I failed her. I cheated on her and then I finally admitted it six months after you were born because the guilt was killing me. She told me she could forgive me, but she didn’t trust me after that…with good reason. It was constant fighting and phone calls at work and accusations. Her drinking got worse since she wasn’t pregnant. I filed for divorce when you were a year old and I told her I wanted joint custody. Before we went to court she took off with you and for the next two years I followed her around trying to see you. Since there was no court order in place she wasn’t technically kidnapping you. The ball was in my court to do something at that point.”

“And then she married Darren,” Sam said.

“Yeah, and for a while they completely disappeared off the grid. I lost track of all of you for a few years. I finally found you again but Lacey wouldn’t let me see you.”

“All that time I thought it was you.”

“Well, technically it was. I could have filed for custody with the court at that point, but I just couldn’t stand the thought of taking you from your mother. I swear to you I didn’t know Darren was such a monster. I knew he was an asshole, but if I had suspected he was mistreating you or laying a hand on you…”

“He used Aaron as his punching bag. I never had it as hard as he did…or Mom.”

“What about that scar over your eye?”

Sam automatically reached up and pulled her long bangs down over her right eye. She kept her almost jet black hair cut in a long shaggy bob around her face with her bangs almost completely covering her right eye for that reason. She hadn’t realized she’d brushed them aside somewhere along the way from Arizona. She had a big, ugly scar that ran from the top of her forehead through her eyebrow and to the top of her eyelid. “He tried to rape me,” she said. Luke closed his eyes for a second and when he opened them he had tears in them.

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay; it’s not your fault. Mom knew that he was a monster. She should have left, or told you. Besides, I broke a glass vase over his head that day. The scar on my eyebrow is minor compared to the ones on his skull underneath his hair line.”

Luke shook his head but he looked like he was trying not to smile. “You turned out damned good for a girl who raised herself.”

“I get by,” she said. “So, are you going to help me fix my engine?”

He laughed and pulled open his door. “I just might be willing to do that. Are you going to race if I do?”

She smiled. “I’m going to race whether you do or not.”

Luke laughed again. “Let’s get this car unloaded and then we’ll see if we can wake that brother of yours up. We need to sit down and lay out some house rules.”

**

Two hours later they all sat around the dining room table. The house was big and roomy and Luke had shown both her and Aaron to their own rooms. The rooms were huge and furnished nicely. None of it was fancy, it was just warm and homey, but if you looked closely at the labels you could see that it was done with money. “Did you decorate this house yourself?” Sam asked Luke when he sat down at the table.

He smiled. “No, decorating isn’t in my repertoire. I was married and my wife had an eye for decorating. She did a great job, so I haven’t changed anything.”

“You were married? That means you’re divorced?”

“After your mother and I split up I married the woman I was cheating with. She was younger than me and it took living together for me to realize we didn’t have a lot in common. I didn’t want to have a second divorce before I was thirty though, so I tried sticking it out. She cheated on me with a co-worker who was her age. She left me for him and she was the one that filed for divorce. After that I had a lot more sympathy for your mother. I at least knew how she felt.”

“I’m sorry. So, she’s the one that decorated the house?”

“No, I was married again about four years ago. This past year she died.”

“Jeez, sorry again,” Sam said.

“Yeah, me too. She was a good woman, but haunted by something that happened to her that she just couldn’t get over. She killed herself several months ago.” Sam cringed but before she could say she was sorry again Luke looked at Aaron and said, “You awake, kid?” Aaron nodded.

“Speak!” Samantha told him.

Aaron glared at her but then he said, “Yeah, I’m awake, sir.”

“Good. I don’t know what you’re on but here are my rules. Once whatever you’re using is out of your system you won’t use anything else, again. If you need help doing that I’ll pay for rehab. If you refuse the help and continue to use, I’ll check you into rehab against your will as your guardian. I know you were dealt a really shitty hand, but that just means you have to work harder to succeed…not that you can’t. Do we understand each other?” Aaron was looking at Luke like he was having a hard time processing what he was saying. Samantha kicked him underneath the table.

He grit his teeth in his sister’s direction and then turning back to Luke he said, “Yes, we understand each other.”

Luke just casually smiled and said, “That’s good. I’m going to give you a job at the parts store nearest here for the summer. That might curb some of the temptation to hang out on the streets and get into trouble. Social services will be checking in with us every so often, we have to look like we’re making this work or they’ll send you back to Arizona.”

“Okay sir,” Aaron said. Sam saw Luke’s lips twitch.

“You don’t have to call me sir. Luke will do.”

“Yes sir.”

Samantha listened and watched to the exchange slightly amused and still slightly amazed that Luke was willing to take this on. If he wasn’t careful, she might just begin to like him. Luke ordered pizza and the trio had dinner together before Luke turned in for the night. It was almost eleven o’clock when Sam went to her room. She looked in on Aaron on her way by. He was sitting on the edge of his bed playing video games on a system that looked brand new and a 42 inch flat screen TV. He looked content, if not happy. She went through the motions of getting into bed, but an hour later she was not only still awake, but up pacing her large, new room.

She had run the entire gamut of emotions through her system the past month and she was truly exhausted. Tonight she was trying to feel the peace that she knew she was supposed to feel at this point, but it was elusive. She was sure that was only because she’d never actually had that. As a young girl it used to be what she wished for when other little girls were wishing for Barbie dolls and bicycles. She just wanted to feel peace in her heart and in her soul and most especially know it in her life. She was still grieving for her mother, but Darren was finally out of the picture and Luke had stepped up to be far beyond who and what she expected. She had a very nice roof over her head and everything else she could possibly need…yet she still stood here and wondered what was going to happen next. As wrong as that was, it was her life and she didn’t know how to change it.

**

Sam woke up the next morning to the sound of her phone ringing. She looked at the face and realized it was Troy’s friend Shawn calling her. She sat up and tried to shake off the sleep as she put the phone to her ear and said, “Hey, this is Sam.”

There was a slight chuckle and then a man’s voice. “Hi Sam, this is Shawn Linken, I’m Troy’s friend.”

“Yeah, I was going to call you today actually.”

“We have a race tonight so I thought I’d call you early and see if you wanted to come out. That way you can meet everyone at once and take a look at how we do things.”

“Yeah, I’d like that a lot, thanks. Where should I meet you?”

“I can pick you up if you want. I’ll be heading out around ten.”

“Okay…” Samantha thought Luke was okay with her racing but she wasn’t sure how he’d feel about her inviting people to come by so soon. She remembered seeing a coffee shop on the corner on their way here yesterday but she didn’t even know the name of the street they lived on, much less the one on that corner. “Can I text you the address to pick me up in just a bit?”

“Sure. I’ll see you tonight.”

Sam was wide awake and actually excited when she hung up. She looked at the time and couldn’t believe it was already after nine. She hadn’t meant to sleep in. She took a quick shower and then went out to the kitchen. It was odd being in a strange house, especially such a big one. In their old house you always knew when someone else was home. The doors and the floor boards squeaked and the walls were thin enough to hear through and the rooms were small. You could hide a small army in this place and probably never know that they were here, she thought.