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He muttered something beyond the phone, and a short while later my sister was there.
“Rhys, what are you doing calling this late?”
I didn’t mince words and told her the complete story. “I need your help.”
I didn’t know what was compelling me to help this woman, and I also didn’t know why it was so urgent that I do so now, at ten o’clock at night. All I knew was that I couldn’t leave things the way they were and live with myself.
I immediately started to explain what had happened.
“What kind is it?”
I turned on the flashlight app on my phone and shined it on the side of the device. Once I read it to her, I put it back to my ear.
“I think we might have one in stock…” she muttered. “Can I do it in the morni—”
I didn’t even let her finish before I interrupted her.
“No, tonight,” I said. “Preferably by morning. I don’t want her to go a single second longer than she needs to without it.”
That was when I heard the hard, thumping music start up again.
The two assholes that I’d herded out of my house—rookies that’d been on the guest list but I’d revoked when they’d turned that bullshit on—started up again.
“What is all that noise?”
Fuckers obviously didn’t take the hint of me kicking them out.
I turned and tossed a ‘fix it’ look at Colder, who immediately made some hand signals toward another man that was standing on the opposite side of the three-foot dividing fence.
The sound was cut off moments later.
I sighed at my sister’s aggravated words.
My sister had to be up in less than six hours for her job, even though she was currently working from her bedroom due to being on bedrest. She wouldn’t take too kindly to me waking her up like this. I’d pay for it later, but she understood more than most the imperative nature of my request.
“How did you break it?” she asked.
“Fucking Colder stepped on it after she dropped it,” I muttered. “Startled her, and she dropped it on the ground. He didn’t do it on purpose or anything, but still.”
She grunted. “Gonna cost you, buddy.”
I didn’t doubt it.
Not in the least.
“Wouldn’t think the same of you if it didn’t,” I countered. “Night, sis. Love you.”
My sister muttered something under her breath and hung up, leaving me smiling.
Looking one final time at the door, I left.
That night, I dreamed.
I dreamed about a tiny woman, who was deaf, staying in a house by herself who should have a man with her to protect her. Someone like me.
It sucked.Chapter 3Every time you clog a toilet, you’ve exceeded someone’s expectations.
-Henley to Alana
Henley
“Yo, sis!” Alana likely called.
Not that I could hear her. I read her lips, though.
“Hey,” I replied.
She stopped cold and turned to me, her eyes narrowing on my face.
“Why aren’t you wearing your speech processor?” she asked at the same time she was signing.
When I was a young child faced with life forever deaf, my mother had started me on the track of learning to sign. When I’d gotten my cochlear implant done, I’d continued learning to sign, even though the majority of the time I wouldn’t need it as long as I had the transmitter and speech processor on.
My mother was the type of woman who was always prepared, though. Which meant that I learned whether I needed it or not, and so did everyone in my family. My brother, my sister, my father, and some of our aunts and cousins.
Well, the aunts and cousins had done it by choice since we’d all started, my mom hadn’t made them do it like she had my siblings.
“I went outside last night to demand our new neighbor turn off his loud radio so he wouldn’t wake Autumn, who is still sleeping and fever free, by the way, when I was jostled and fell. The bush I fell behind yanked it off, and when I picked it back up, I dropped it again when some man startled me. Then he stepped on it.”
I wouldn’t be telling her the entire truth. My sister was protective of me. If she knew that a man had manhandled me last night, she would go freakin’ berserk, storm over there, and likely receive the same treatment as I had.
And since I didn’t want that, I chose not to tell her at all.
Alana’s face fell. “You just got that one.”
I nodded, feeling the agony all over again.
“But…” she paused. “Should we call Tyler?”
Tyler was my big brother, and other than kicking the guy’s ass who broke it, there really wasn’t much he could do.
She stopped and turned toward the door, walking swiftly.
The doorbell must have rung, or someone had knocked, because she wouldn’t have cut off in the middle of our conversation like that if there hadn’t been something to interrupt her.
