Vic let out a laugh. "Don't deny it. You're about as much as her uncle as Joel is."
Joel cocked his head and thought about that before grinning at the man. "Then, by that logic, you are too."
Hayden smiled as Vic's laughter immediately stopped.
Holding up his hands, Vic shook his head. "I'm not involved in whatever the hell y’all are doing. I don't have time for orphans or lost little girls. I got enough shit going on with my family," he grumbled.
Hayden shrugged. "Yeah, just wait until you meet her."
Hitting the switch to the gate, Hayden watched as it slowly closed. He could barely keep his eyes open, he was so fucking tired. One after the other, he and Joel shut off their bikes. Quiet nothingness of the morning surrounded them. Their building was one of the only buildings that had a fenced-in partition in the back. And being on the end of the street allowed them to expand it even further to the side without encroaching on another neighbor's space. The old row of buildings was designed rather strangely. Each building had a back door, but there was no alley. Only a man-made dirt road cutting across the open field behind the buildings where delivery trucks made their own way to the back. Since the café didn't require a lot of delivered supplies, their building was the only one with a back yard of sorts.
"I didn't think that last game would ever fucking end," Joel grumbled as he pushed his key into the back door.
Hayden could only make a sound of agreement under his breath. It had come down to Fred and Joel in the backroom poker game. The stakes and the tension between the two men had been so high it left them both drained.
Their footsteps echoed in the café's kitchen as they walked through. Stopping at the door to the upstairs, Joel unlocked it and looked up the dark stairwell. "Well, our place isn't burned down, so there's another sign she isn't like that travesty of a woman, Jennifer."
"Mmm," Hayden closed the door behind them and flicked on the hall lights as Joel made his way up to the top. "We haven't gone inside yet," Hayden pointed out.
With care he normally didn't have when coming home, Joel opened the door to the second floor and quietly stepped inside, his heavy boots making very little sound across the hardwood floor. They both stood in silence in the kitchen next to the second set of stairs and looked up. The third floor was dark.
"It's quiet," Joel whispered.
"She's probably asleep. It's early as fuck," Hayden reminded him, still keeping his eyes on the dark third-floor landing.
Joel ran a considering hand slowly over his golden beard. "Maybe. Maybe not."
Hayden looked at him in question. "You really think she could be like her mother?"
Blowing out a frustrating breath, Joel stepped back and turned to scan the living and kitchen area. His eyes darted all over the place, but Hayden could see the man's thoughts churning.
"I swear, man, if you'd only met Jennifer," Joel sighed. "Then you would know how fucking crazy it is that her daughter somehow escaped all of that poison and turned out like that," he said, flinging an angry hand toward the third floor.
"Well, I've met her daughter, and besides that prissy little stuck-up attitude she's got, she seems different."
"Very different." Joel paced the room and stopped at the curtainless windows staring out onto the street below where the golden light of the morning sun touched down. "Like she showed up every day on time for her shift at the café different," he continued. "No missing money, no talking shit to the customers, hell, she didn't even flirt with any of them. If anything, they flirted with her—and she doesn’t respond to them. God, it's like the Twilight Zone. Jennifer would flirt with a tree if she knew she could get something from it or get attention. But this girl…this girl is…"
"Different," Hayden supplied dryly.
Joel only nodded.
Looking back up to the darkness of the third floor, a thought entered his head. What if she wasn't there? What if she split the moment they left?
As if reading his turning thoughts, Joel stepped up next to him. "It's not like we can open the door and check if she's still there."
Hayden frowned in thought. "She no doubt has it barricaded."
She had to be here. Where else could she go? Herman would have called them the moment she showed back up, and they knew she didn't have a lot of money. She was here, Hayden assured himself. She had no choice.
"And someone locked her in, so it's not like she could've run unless she took the fire escape," Joel threw him a smirk.
Hayden gave an unapologetic shrug. "I checked when we pulled in. The fire escape hasn't been used, or it would have been pulled down. Once down, it won't retract unless you're at the top to pull it back up."
"So, then she's here all tucked away in Vic's bed," Joel said with a yawn. "Well, I'm dead, so good night."
He watched Joel lumber to his room before looking back up at the dark landing. Hayden could imagine her beautiful face with that uppity little expression she always wore, sleeping beneath the thick quilts. He should be much more annoyed that there was some strange kid in their house to deal with. But all he could think about was her stern face that day as they spied on her at the grocery store. She had worn an expression that told anyone and everyone around her not to fuck with her. Or the memory of her hands clutching onto his shirt as he took her from the motel earlier that evening.
He let out a deep breath and turned to go back to his room. She was here now, for better or worse.
