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And that sucked.
She didn’t see Josh at the Andersons anymore, and she knew he stayed away because of her. He was already pretty much a loner, and it almost broke her he
art that he was avoiding his friends because of her.
Soon, her sixteenth birthday was just days away. Her mother had wanted to throw her a sweet sixteen party, but that was absolutely the last thing that Hannah wanted. In fact, it horrified her completely. Who wanted a party when no one would show up? Maybe if she dwelled on it, she’d be sad. But she just couldn’t work up enough energy to care. All she thought about was schoolwork and Josh. That was an incredibly sad tribute to her boring life, but that’s the way it was.
That’s the way it always was. She thought about Josh, but she rarely saw him.
And when she did see him, the feelings he induced almost paralyzed her with need.
She was studying at a small table in the school library next to one of the sweetest, geekiest boys in the town. Steven was a junior, and he helped her with her advanced trigonometry. He was incredibly brilliant, and Hannah recognized that someday, he’d be one of those people who moved away from Redwood Falls and struck it rich somewhere like Dallas or Houston or Seattle by being involved with a start-up technology company. The guy had a lot of potential, but Hannah wasn’t interested in any guys but one. So as Steven sat beside her, she didn’t think anything of it, until she looked up from her notebook and saw Josh standing a few feet away, watching her with an arrested expression on his face.
For a few seconds he stood completely still and stared at her, his feet glued to the floor and his gaze fixated on her. Her breath seized up in her lungs as his eyes dropped to her lips and then slowly, to her breasts. The look on his face was exquisitely intoxicating as his features revealed a look of such intense hunger that it took her breath away. Her muscles tightened, a thousand butterflies going crazy in her stomach and she barely managed to take in enough oxygen to sustain her. She licked her lips and his eyes found hers again, his nostrils flaring. And then he glanced to her right and as his eyes fell on the boy she was sitting with, he visibly stiffened.
Steven, her study partner, must have felt the tension take hold of her because he glanced up from his math book and his gaze travelled in the direction she was looking. His shoulders jerked and he swallowed hard, as he no doubt realized that he was the reason Josh Turner stood glaring in their direction.
Josh stood erect with his shoulders squared as his eyes moved away from Steven, back to Hannah and then slowly, back to Steven again. His fists clenched and his mouth flattened as his gaze narrowed on the younger boy. There was a harsh, distinctive hardening of Josh’s green eyes and Hannah was quietly alarmed as his stance seemed to grow as he drew breath into his lungs, his chest and arms tensing in an aggressive manner. There was no question that he was pissed, even though he seemed to be trying to control it. The facial scars that always gave him an air of menace stood out more prominently than usual as his face filled with heat.
Not a word was spoken, but Hannah could almost feel the cold sweat break out on Steven. Josh never moved a step, never said a word, just stood and silently waited, his hostility more than apparent.
Steven received the silent message, and stood up with haste and left the room.
Josh’s eyes stayed on Steven until the door shut behind the other boy and then his gaze slid back to Hannah. Almost immediately, his posture relaxed as his eyes drank her in once again. His expression visibly softened, and even though she knew she should be upset by his display of ownership, she wasn’t. Her insides were like marshmallows, and since she couldn’t date him, touch him, or even talk to him, this was the only source of communication she had with him. His display of jealousy was like a balm washing through her.
Hannah had about ten sweet seconds of his eyes devouring her, his attention focused solely on her, and during those seconds, the realization came to her that this wasn’t just a high school crush for her. She wasn’t merely infatuated with him; this was an emotion deep in her soul that she was very much afraid would never go away.
****
Hannah’s birthday fell on a Thursday and when the bus dropped her off in front of her house, she immediately saw by the vehicles in the driveway that both Zachary and her parents were at home. Although she was pleased about finally turning sixteen, the only thing Hannah really cared about was turning seventeen, and the promise that Josh had made to her. She walked into the house to a loud chorus of ‘happy birthday’ and a bunch of ‘sweet sixteen’ nonsense. But she smiled and hugged her family. Zachary stood in the corner of the room and smiled at her, and after she’d opened the presents he’d gotten for her, a tiny, delicate diamond necklace and the latest cellular phone she’d been wanting, her mother started babbling and grabbed her hand and began leading her out the back door, with Zach and her father trailing behind.
Behind the house sat a gleaming, expensive-looking red car and as her mom stood next to it with a silly smile on her face, her father held out the keys for her. Hannah glanced at her smiling parents and then to Zach and then back again. “No way.”
“Way, sweetheart,” her father replied.
“Y’all got me a car?”
“Sure did. You want to take it for a drive?”
Zach spoke up, “I’ll go with you, squirt. You don’t want your mommy and daddy going for your first spin with you, do you?” he teased.
She glanced again at her parents. “It’s okay?”
“Sure. Just buckle up and be careful.”
As she got in the driver’s seat and Zach walked around to the passenger’s side, Hannah knew she should be feeling some serious excitement. But all she could think about was that the car would only make the kids at school even more jealous. But she didn’t ever want her parents to know how she felt, so she buckled up and smiled at Zach. “Okay, wow. Are you ready?”
“Yep.”
Hannah sighed. “They shouldn’t have spent so much.”
“They have no idea what you’re going through at school. You’re not going to tell them?”
Hannah shook her head. “Nope, I’m not. And don’t you tell them, either.” She adjusted the rear-view mirror and smiled over at her brother. “Are you ready for this?”
He smiled back. “You bet.”
Hannah carefully accelerated and took off, for the moment, forgetting about what all the other kids would think.
Chapter Eight
On Friday night, Josh sat beside his Uncle David in the waiting room outside Sheriff Thompson’s office. His elbows rested on his knees, and his head was buried in his hands, wanting only to hide not only from the looks they were receiving, but from the dead, frozen feeling in his gut. They were holding his father inside one of the jail cells, and Josh didn’t even try to count how many times this had happened or how he felt about it.
His uncle had given up on bailing Chris Turner out of jail several years before, and now only came in when the sheriff called to say that he’d been detained once again. Usually for drunk and disorderly, but there had been instances of driving while intoxicated and resisting arrest.
If it weren’t for his Uncle David insisting on coming here, Josh wouldn’t be here at all. His uncle never expected Josh to accompany him, and if it were up to Josh, his father could rot in jail for all he cared. But at eighteen, Josh felt like he needed to man-up and at least stand beside his uncle when he went to see the sheriff. Usually all his uncle did was apologize for whatever Chris had done, and then he’d shake the sheriff’s hand and listen as the lawman told them time and time again that it wasn’t their fault.
Josh ran his hand over his forehead again. He was having the week from hell, and now this. How much damn worse could his life get? All he wanted to do was go home, shut himself away in his room and sleep for a solid twenty-four hours. Maybe sleep would let him escape from the pure hell his week had been.
First, he’d found out that Katie was still having nightmares about the rape. She wouldn’t talk to his aunt about it, she wouldn’t go see the school counselor about it, hell, she wouldn’t even talk to him about it. He only found out because he’d gotten up in the middle of the night to use the
bathroom and heard her muffled crying from behind her bedroom door. He’d knocked and questioned her, and she’d panicked and made him promise again not to tell her parents. Shit.
And then, yesterday at school, Josh had heard rumors about Hannah’s birthday present. He felt damn guilty for having such an emotional reaction to a car when Katie was going through very real trauma, but it was just one more thing that made his life suck. Hannah got a new freakin’ car. Brand new. A red Audi. An Audi, for Christ’s sake. So now the girl he wanted was driving a fifty thousand dollar car, while he was driving a five hundred dollar truck. Yeah, that would work, sure.
Josh knocked his fist against his mouth in frustration as bitter sarcasm played out in his brain. He had so much to offer Hannah. Shit, after all, his family owned an entire section of land. Absolutely they did, six hundred and forty acres. Just awesome. Compare that shit to the sixty thousand acres that her dad owned, mortgage-free or so town gossip said, and he and Hannah were about even. Right.
And Josh for sure couldn’t forget about Hannah’s stunning, freakin’ beauty. He’d never seen a prettier girl. And look at him… just fucking look at him. Scars riddled his face and body. Scars from cigarettes being extinguished on his body. On his face. Yeah, maybe there might have been a chance at one time that he’d turn out good-looking. But his wonderful father had robbed him of that by holding down a burning cigarette on his face until it branded him.
And why not compare Hannah’s father to his while Josh was at it? Hannah’s father … the richest, most influential man in the county. And his father … the town drunk in the jail cell.
Holy fucking hell. Could his life get any worse?
Sure it could. Because he had his orders from Ava. If he didn’t show up at the Andersons’ house tomorrow night for Hannah’s surprise birthday party, then he would be the lowest life form imaginable. She’d send her brother out to find him, and Ava had made it plain that Ty would damn well do this favor for her because she owned dirt on him. Yeah. Josh knew what kind of shit Ty could come up with and he could well imagine how much of it Ava knew about.
