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CHAPTER ONE
Katy
Please don’t think I’m trashy.
Please don’t judge me.
I live in a trailer park, but life is so much more complicated than that. Because things happen unexpectedly and my story is one for the ages, I admit.
It started when I moved into Brent Larson’s home, my own having no heat or electricity.
“Hey,” I murmured as Brent strode in the door after work one day. I stood at the sink, finishing up some dishes, and it was all very homey, very comfortable. Besides, I could tell the big man was tired. I could see it in his eyes, the faint lines of weariness bracketing his deep blue gaze, the deep breaths as his wide chest inhaled. But he never failed to shoot a smile my way.
“Hey there baby,” he said with a lazy grin, putting his lunchbox on the table. Brent was an ironworker with the local union and had the body to prove it, all sculpted muscle, tall, thick and perfectly proportioned. “How’s your day been, little girl?”
I melted a little inside although I tried not to show it. I could literally smell him in the kitchen, the clean scent of honest sweat, all man, musky and tantalizing, and it made my insides tremble, my interior drip.
“Not bad,” I whispered, then cleared my throat awkwardly. “Not bad,” I said a little louder, trying to act normal despite the fact that my cheeks were flushing pink. Oh god, how could this be happening? This was my guardian for crying out loud, the man who’d looked over me for the last year, giving me a place to live. And yet here I was creaming a little, blushing in his presence.
But my life has been crazy lately, so maybe all the excitement put me over the edge. Because, you see, I have an insane mom. And I don’t mean it as a figure of speech, I mean it in the medical sense. We live in a trailer park, the mobile homes so close to one another that everyone knows everyone else’s business. And my mom, Tina, is pretty hard to miss. She’s been a mess for as long as I can remember, sobbing uncontrollably at nothing, keeping pet rabbits in our home despite the fact that we had about one hundred and fifty square feet between the two of us, not brushing her hair so that it stuck straight up, her make-up garish like a clown.
So yeah, it was pretty obvious that I was in a shaky family situation with no supervision. And after a couple years of Tina’s hysterical outbreaks, Brent finally stepped in, my savior, my safety net. My mom had a really bad outburst where ambulances came screaming, a load of paramedics descending on the hysterically crying woman, literally strapping her to the gurney before shipping her off. It happened so fast that I didn’t know what to think, pure numbness creeping over my mind. So I was shivering barefoot outside in the cold night air, wearing nothing but a thin night shirt when Brent Larson came by, taking a long look at me, his blue eyes sweeping, missing nothing.
“You okay?” he asked gruffly, looking away. I’d felt his gaze trail over my curves before glancing away guiltily, like he wasn’t supposed to be sizing up a teen girl.
But I couldn’t absorb it at the time. I was too stunned, shocked by the turn of events and completely mute. On the one hand, Tina’s breakdown wasn’t exactly new, we’d been to this rodeo before. It’s just that this time the paramedics told me she wouldn’t be back, Tina needed to be put under long-term observation, so I was shocked, paralyzed, unsure of my next move. God knows I could take care of myself, but at the same time, things had reached titanic proportions and my mom needed serious professional help.
So I said nothing, staring back at him, brown eyes wide.
Brent cleared his throat again.
“Listen, why don’t you come over to my place?” he asked gruffly, still not meeting my eyes. “I’ve got heat and hot water, it’s a place to crash for the night.”
And after a pause, I nodded silently, trailing him with slow steps across the park to his mobile home. Because yeah, our trailer was cold, dark and freezing, my mom was behind on the bills, her monthly disability check hadn’t come yet. We still had running water, thank god, but the nights were bitter and I wasn’t looking forward to another sleepless one huddled under a pile of blankets, shivering so hard that my teeth chattered, goose bumps that never went away.
So Brent’s offer was a godsend, manna from heaven. If nothing else, I could at least be warm for once, sleep as well as I could before the shit really hit the fan and I had to figure something out.
