BAD BOY JAX

Chapter 4

I follow again when he makes an about-face and he back to the car. I don’t expect him to help unload the boxes, but he does. It doesn’t take us long to lug everything into the house. We put Whitney’s and Julian’s stuff in her room upstairs and mine in the den. There’s no conversation. This is definitely going to be an interesting living situation—not in a good way.

I’m moving boxes to the corner of my room to clear space when Gus reappears. Without a word, he hands me an air mattress and leaves me to figure out how to inflate it. I have no clue why Whitney would want to come back and live with a father who obviously doesn’t want her here.

My dad is the opposite of Whitney’s. When I was younger and my dad came home on leave, he was all smiles the second he saw us. He’d hug me and my mom so tight we’d pretend we couldn’t breathe.

Whitney’s dad didn’t even hug her, when I know they haven’t seen each other for years. Hell, they didn’t even bother to shake hands or pat each other on the back. And he hardly acknowledged his own grandson.

I shove my suitcase behind the door and take in my new room. Faded wood paneling is on the walls. Boxes are scattered everywhere. There’s an old fireplace in the corner that looks like it hasn’t been used since the Civil War. At least there are two windows to keep the place filled with light. This place doesn’t feel like home—not by a long shot. It doesn’t remind me of Ironlakes, either, surrounded by friends. I remind myself I’m here because I have to be.

Suddenly this house feels like it’s suffocating me.

I head to the backyard. It’s hot and the sun is shining, so I strip off my shirt and tuck it into the waistband of my jeans. The grass is so tall I wonder if it’s ever been mowed. I walk through a small garden of weeds to a big wooden shed. The paint is chipping, obviously having been neglected for years. An old padlock on the latch is open, so I push back the door. Rusty garden tools hang on wall hooks, spray-paint cans and bags of weed killer are scattered on the workbench, and little metal buckets crowd the floor. I kick a bucket aside, then pick up a second one, thinking about everything that’s changed in the past two years.

I swear under my breath and whip the bucket across the shed, the sound of the metal hitting the wall echoing in the small space.

“Stop or I’m calling the police!” demands a girl’s voice from behind me.

I turn to find a hot chick about my age with blond hair in one long braid snaking down her chest. She’s blocking the doorway and holding a rusty pitchfork. She looks like she’s ready to stab me to death, which lessens her hotness factor, but not by much.

“Who’re you?” I ask, taking in her black T-shirt and matching hoodie. If she weren’t threatening to stab me, I could imagine her being one of those sexy warrior girls in a video game or action flick. And while it’d be damn cool to fight her in a video game, in real life that’s never gonna happen.

Next to her is a monstrosity of a dog with short gray hair and gunmetal eyes that match hers. The beast barks at me as if I’m fresh meat and he hasn’t eaten in months. Streams of drool fly from his mouth with each bark.

“Quiet, Falkor!” the warrior girl orders. The beast goes silent, but his lip twitches in a menacing snarl as he stands next to her like a soldier, prepared to pounce at her command. “You thugs from Fairfield think you can come here and—”

I hold up a hand, halting her tirade for the moment. Me, a thug? That’s hilarious. This girl’s thug radar is way off. I don’t think I’ve ever been called a thug before. “I hate to break the news to you, sweetheart, but I’ve got no clue where Fairfield is.”

“Yeah, right. I’m not stupid. And I’m not your sweetheart. I don’t even fall for that really bad fake southern accent.” Rustling in the garden captures her dog’s attention. He abandons his post and leaps toward some unlucky critter. “Falkor, come back here!” she orders, but the beast ignores her.

“Put the pitchfork down, honey.” I take a step closer to her and the exit.

“Not on your life. I’m warning you . . . take one step closer and I’ll stab you.” One glance at her shaking hands tells me she doesn’t have the nerve to go through with her threat.

I put my hands up in mock surrender.

I wish this girl had an on/off switch so I could permanently shut her down. I’m standing directly in front of her now, the points of the pitchfork an inch away from my chest. “You really don’t want to stab me,” I tell her.

“Yes, I think I do.” The warrior girl blinks her fierce eyes. For a second I’m sure she’s about to lower her weapon, until I hear something creak behind me. As I glance over my shoulder, a bracket holding a bunch of tools on the wall crashes to the ground. The sound startles the girl and she drops the pitchfork. On my foot.

What the—

She stares at the pointed tine sticking out of my left shoe and her mouth opens in shock. Before I know it, she backs up and slams the door shut. I’m swallowed by darkness as I hear the padlock snap into place. Two thoughts cross my mind: she thinks I’m a thug and I think she’s a wackjob.

One of us is right, and it’s not her.

Skylar

I can’t believe I just stabbed someone! A thug from Fairfield I’ve never seen before. He’s too cute for his own good, and he’s tall, with shaggy brown hair peeking out from a knit cap. If that isn’t bad enough, he isn’t wearing a shirt and is totally ripped. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he was posing for a magazine spread. Did he actually think he’d get away with vandalizing our property with those old spray-paint cans he was hovering over? Those jerks from Fairfield are always causing trouble on our side of town. Jet’s warning is still fresh in my mind. I was voted captain and became a target as soon as word got out.

I run as fast as I can toward my house, refusing to panic but not doing a great job.

Heart pounding, I burst through the front door, desperate to find my dad. But what I find in the kitchen steals my attention like a thief in the night. A woman, a stranger, dressed in a red sundress, stands before me, grinning from ear to ear. My thoughts scatter like puzzle pieces, trying to make sense of the surreal scene. Is she here to rob us? As she speaks, the pieces slowly fit together, revealing a shocking truth.

“Dad!” I yell as I rush inside, hoping he’s home and not at work. “There’s a guy in the . . .”

My voice trails off as I catch a glimpse of a strange woman in our kitchen standing in front of the open refrigerator. She’s wearing a red sundress and big red earrings to match. I think she’s about to steal our food, but when she smiles brightly and says, “Hi! Wow, my baby sister’s all grown up!” my mind focuses and I’m stunned.

The woman standing ten feet away from me isn’t a food burglar. She’s my sister, Fay. In the flesh. I recognize her now . . . an older and bigger version of the eighteen-year-old who left when I was in fifth grade.

“Umm . . . hi,” I say, dumbfounded.

My dad said Fay was coming to stay with us for a little while. I didn’t believe it, because my sister hasn’t called or written or e-mailed or texted me since she left when I was ten. Not even to tell me she’d had a son with her ex-boyfriend Nick, or that she’d recently married some random Navy guy. I found that out when I ran into an old friend of hers.

I haven’t seen my sister in seven years. With her bright and cheery “hi,” she’s acting like it was yesterday.

“Where’s Dad?” I ask, postponing our reunion because there’s an intruder in the shed with a pitchfork sticking out of his foot.

“I think he went to work or something.”

“Oh no. That’s not good.” I bite my bottom lip as I worry about the boy in the shed. Will I be arrested? Coach Dieter won’t be happy to find out that within an hour of being voted captain I stabbed someone. Forget maintaining a 3.0 or higher GPA. Stabbing people in the foot isn’t exactly role-model material, but I have a good excuse. I was defending my house . . . or, more precisely, my shed. What am I supposed to do? Should I call the police or ambulance . . . or both?

“What’s going on?” Fay asks.

“Umm . . . there’s a little situation out back.” I cringe at the thought of what I just did.

“Like what?”

“I locked a football player from Fairfield High in our shed. They’re animals,” I explain quickly as I gesture toward the backyard. “I told him to leave, but he wouldn’t. I didn’t mean to stab him.”

My sister’s eyes go wide. “Stab him? Oh, my gosh. Umm. Umm. Umm. What should we do? Umm . . . I got it!” she says frantically. “Jaxon will help!” My sister slams the refrigerator door and hurries toward the den, yelling, “Jaxon!”

“Who’s Jaxon?”

Finding nobody in the den, she runs to the living room, her long bleached blond hair flying behind her. “Jaxon, you in here?”

“Who’s Jaxon?” I ask again. I thought her husband’s name was Steve. Supposedly he’s deployed and wasn’t due back for a while. Did Fay dump him and already move on to a new guy? I wouldn’t put it past her. My sister was never known as the stable type.

“Jaxon’s my stepson, Skylar.” I follow as she he upstairs calling, “Jaxon, we need your help! Where are you?”

Stepson? What is she talking about? She’s got a son named Julian, but I hadn’t heard about another kid. “You have a stepson?”

“Yes. He’s Steve’s son.”

“How is Steve’s little kid gonna help us, Fay?”

Fay whips around to face me with furrowed brows. “Jaxon’s not a little kid, Skylar. He’s seventeen.”

Seventeen? My age?

I get a sinking feeling in the pit of my Stomach No, he couldn’t be. But what if he is?

“Is he tall . . . with blue eyes, a southern accent, and a knit cap?” I ask, my heart beating so fast I wonder if it’s going to burst out of my chest.

My sister’s eyes go wider. We both realize my horrific mistake and race to the shed. I get there first. Falkor barks like crazy, his long tail wagging back and forth excitedly.

Fay pounds on the door. “Jaxon, it’s me, Fay. Please tell me you’re, like, not bleeding to death.”

“Not yet,” comes the guy’s muffled voice from inside the shed.

Fay yanks on the padlock. “Skylar, we need the key.”

Umm . . . “Key?”

More wide-eyed stares. “Yeah, key. You know, those oddly shaped metal things you use to unlock stuff. Where is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ve got to be kiddin’ me,” Jaxon moans.

“Don’t worry, Jaxon. We’ll get you out in a jiffy,” Fay cries out. “Skylar, where does Dad keep those big sharp cutters?”

“In the shed,” I answer weakly.

Fay picks up a rock and starts slamming it against the padlock, as if that will somehow magically unlock the thing.

“I can break the door down if you want me to,” Jaxon yells through the door, “but I can’t guarantee the roof won’t collapse.”

“No!” I yell. I don’t want to be responsible for Fay’s stepson being stabbed in the foot and the shed collapsing on him. He could get crushed. There are too many sharp tools inside, ones that could cut off really important body parts. I rack my brain, trying to think of where the key might be. That door hasn’t been locked in years.

“Wait!” I call out. Fay stops her rock assault. “Let me think a minute.”

I ignore the frustrated snort from inside the shed.

I get an idea. “Jaxon, see if you can find a watering can in the shed. My dad used to hide a spare key in there. If you find it, you can push it through one of the slats. I know it’s dark, but—”

“I’ll use my cell phone light.” I hear Jaxon rummaging through the shed. “Found it.”

I never thought those words would make me so happy.

Jaxon pushes the key through a gap in the slats. Fay unlocks the padlock and opens the door as I peek around her at her stepson. Jaxon and his abs are leaning against the workbench. He looks relaxed and maybe a little irritated, but he’s definitely not bleeding to death.

“Jaxon, this is my sister, Skylar,” Fay says as she rushes up to the guy. “Your, um, step-aunt. Isn’t it funny that you guys are the same age?”

“Hilarious.” He shakes his head like he can’t believe he’s in this situation. He’s not the only one.

Fay glances down at the pitchfork lying next to him, then stares at his feet. There’s a hole in his left shoe.

“O’migod,” she says, eyeing the hole. “You really did stab him!” She kneels down like a concerned mother hen and examines his shoe.

“Not on purpose,” I say.

“At least she’s got bad aim,” Jaxon says in a sexy drawl. “It just grazed my toe.”

Fay gnaws on her lip. “What about lockjaw? Julian’s pediatrician said you could die if you’re cut from something rusty.”

“Don’t worry, little guy,” Jaxon says to someone behind me. “I had a tetanus booster last year.”

Little guy? I turn around to see who he’s talking to. An adorable little boy with blond hair has joined us, obviously my nephew, Julian. He stares at the hole in Jaxon’s shoe, then looks up at me with fear, as if I’m the Grim Reaper here to collect humans on earth and bring them back to Hell with me.

Fay pats her son’s head. “Skylar, this is Julian. Julian, meet your auntie Skylar.”

Julian won’t even look in my direction. Instead, he looks up at Jaxon as if he’s his hero for life.

“Don’t be afraid of her,” Jaxon tells Julian. “Your aunt’s not mean. She’s just crazy.”

Jaxon

I manage to stay away from Skylar the rest of the day, hoping to avoid the crazy warrior girl who locked me in the shed. Apparently she doesn’t feel the need to avoid me, though, because as I’m talking to my old roommate, tom, on my cell and giving him props for managing to stuff my suitcase with random poker chips as a good-bye prank, she stomps into the den without knocking or an invitation. Her guardian watchdog tags along.

“I have a bone to pick with you.” She crosses her arms on her chest. Her dog flops down on the floor next to her. I bet if he could cross his front legs on his chest to imitate her, he would.

I raise an eyebrow, amused. “tom, I’ll call you back.” I slide my cell into my pocket, lean against the wall, and prop my feet up on the box labeled WINTER CLOTHES I’m using as a mock coffee table. “What bone do you want to pick?”