AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Twenty-Two
The ride home took over an hour. Finally, I transferred onto the final bus, which brought me back to the decrepit little neighborhood my father’s actions—real or not—had forced Mom and me into. I didn’t expect the bitterness to settle in, acrid in my core, but it was there.
I had spent weeks rolling with the punches, adjusting and readjusting and making the best of a shitty situation, but something about seeing my dad had seemed to put everything back to square one. He seemed utterly convinced that the trial was a sham, that he’d been set up by someone, intentionally sabotaged, but his reassurances that he’d be out soon rang false somehow. Even if he really was innocent, even if evidence had been manufactured against him, he obviously hadn’t found a way to prove that or he would’ve been released before his case even went to trial.
The bus trundled away after I stepped off in my neighborhood, and I dragged my feet as I headed toward the house. Tears welled in my eyes as I walked, and I blinked them back over and over again until my eyes stung. I didn’t know what to do about any of this, but I couldn’t bare to force myself through the front door of our new home, to fix another badly prepared hot meal, and then go to bed just to do it all again the next day.
The car was in the driveway when I got back.
At least Mom’s home.
I didn’t go inside though. I stared up at the rundown little house, then turned to look across the street. Bishop’s house was just across the way, and I was pretty sure his foster parents weren’t home.
My feet moved before my brain made any kind of conscious decision. I didn’t even know what propelled me forward. Just a sense that I needed to do something—and I knew Bishop was a person who could get things done or at least point me in the right direction. When I reached his sagging front stoop, I knocked on the door, three hard raps that I knew would get his attention.
“Who the fuck—”
He yanked open the door, irritation clear in his voice, then paused when he saw it was me. I must’ve caught him in the middle of changing clothes, or maybe he’d been working out. He didn’t have a shirt on, and his hair was disheveled. I’d seen him shirtless a few times before, but the sight of it still caught me by surprise. All of the Lost Boys were so purely, darkly masculine. His skin was lightly tanned, and it covered muscles that bunched and flexed as he moved, reaching up to run a hand through his slightly damp mess of hair. A little water droplet ran down his neck and over the broad plane of his pec, and I had the most insane urge to dart forward and lick it off.
Shit. Get it together, Cora.
My heart thudded hard as I pulled my gaze from his torso to look him in the eye, a slight flush to my face.
“Hey, Bishop. Can—can we talk?”
He stared down at me for a moment, his head cocked slightly to one side and his hazel eyes narrowed, as if wondering what I was doing here, what I could possibly have come to bother him with.
This wasn’t part of our arrangement, I knew that. Our deal gave them control over my life, the right to step into my house uninvited at any time, the ability to demand what they wanted from me and get it. But the opposite wasn’t true—it wasn’t a two-way street, so I was out-of-bounds asking him for this.
I was bracing for the door to slam in my face when Bishop surprised me by stepping aside without question, leading me deeper into the house.
It was a dimly lit space, clean in a sparse way—there was just enough furniture that it didn’t look like the house had been completely abandoned. I was pretty sure his foster parents were barely ever home, and I wondered if he knew where they went but figured it was better not to ask.
We could compare absentee parent stories later. That wasn’t what I’d come for today, and I didn’t want to waste the hospitality he was showing me.
He led me into his bedroom, and I tried not to breathe too deeply as we passed through the door. Not because the room smelled bad, but because it smelled like Bishop, and I liked that aroma way too much. The faint, woodsy scent of his cologne teased my nostrils, bringing with it an almost instantaneous reaction in my body.
I cleared my throat, stepping forward quickly to sit on his bed as he lingered in the doorframe, crossing his arms over his chest and staring at me with an expectant gaze.
God, I wish he’d put a shirt on.
Between trying not to look at him and trying not to smell him, I was likely to pass out before I could even voice the questions I’d come here to ask.
“Didn’t expect you’d be coming over here,” he said. He fidgeted a little, the muscles of his biceps flexing as he shoved his hands in his pockets. Was he nervous too?
No. Of course he isn’t.
“Yeah. I, uh, just came back from seeing my father. In prison.” Ugh. Why did I feel the need to tack that little bit on at the end? He already knows my father’s in prison…
“Yeah? How’d that go?” He leaned forward a little, asking the question so earnestly that I almost forgot to answer. I hadn’t expected that tone in his voice, something almost l
ike sympathy.
“It… went.” I sighed, lifting my shoulders in a small shrug. “To be honest, I almost don’t know why I went. We’d had this visitation day set up for a long time, and I hadn’t seen him since he was taken away. But, I mean, it isn’t like we had a lot to talk about.”
“Well, he’s your dad.” Bishop shrugged too, still watching me carefully. “Didn’t you talk about how school was going or check in on each other or your mom or something?”
“Sort of.” I bit my lip. “It was very barebones.”
