AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Lowering onto the toilet lid, Rena’s mismatched blue and green eyes squinted up at her. “I didn’t think you’d want to hear from me.”
Angel scoffed as she retrieved supplies and laid them out on the counter. “So you thought you’d just break and enter instead?” Pouring peroxide onto a washcloth, she grimaced at the mess she’d caused. Rena’s right cheek was split open just below her eye, blood staining her fair skin all the way down the side of her face and neck. She was going to have one hell of a bruise. “This is going to sting,” she informed her as she pressed the towel over the gash.
Rena winced. “Damn, you got one hell of a right hook, sis. I guess I kind of deserved that, huh?”
“Kind of?” Angel smirked as she tore open a wide bandage and started patching her up.
“I should have called first,” Rena admitted. “I just wasn’t sure…so I figured…well, surprise!”
Angel shook her head as she dropped the empty wrappers into the trash and cleared the counter. “You were always good at those.”
Theirs hadn’t been a happy childhood—no guidance, no parental figures to offer support or warmth or anything like that. They’d practically raised each other while their mother chose to split her time between a bottle of Jack and her many boyfriends.
Neither one of them were perfect, hadn’t gone on to make much of themselves after high school, but whereas Angel had chosen to keep her nose clean, Rena had gotten herself into more than her fair share of trouble. By the time she was a teenager, she’d spent more time in juvie than she had in school.
Angel had always tried her best to look out for her little sister, but the day she turned eighteen, Rena was in lockup on an aiding and abetting charge. So Angel had no choice but to move forward with her life, refusing to stay under their mother’s roof another day.
She’d moved all over the country, bouncing from one place and job to another, always doing her best to keep in contact with her sister. At some point, though, she’d lost track of her.
Now she was back…and Angel was asking herself why.
“Why do you look like you’ve been digging through a dumpster?” Rena asked as they left the bathroom.
It was then Angel remembered why she’d come home in the first place. She had errands to run, but Kade had trashed every inch of her with motor oil. Man, she loved the smell of it on his skin. Loved even more that she’d carried that smell home with her. She hadn’t had a chance to look at herself in the mirror yet, but she could just imagine what her sister was seeing.
“A story for another day,” she said, brushing the topic aside.
Leading the way into the kitchen, Angel indicated for her sister to take a seat at the little table in the corner while she got them each a glass of ice water.
“So what kind of trouble are you in this time?” she asked.
Rena looked appropriately shocked. “What, I have to be in trouble in order to visit my big sister?”
Angel shot her a look. “Yes.” In all their years, the pattern hadn’t changed. Why would it now?
Tilting her head in concession, Rena said, “I may or may not have skipped my probation hearing and now have a warrant.”
“Rena!”
“It’s not my fault! I was going to go, but then something came up, and I missed it. That damn judge is just such a ballbuster. He never gives an inch.”
“Maybe because you practically live in his courtroom and it’shis job?” Angel ran a hand through her hair. “Jesus, Rena, when are you going to get your shit together?”
Rena glared. “Oh yeah, right. As if you have your life all neat and tidy.”
Angel resented that. “At least I have a steady job, a car, and a roof over my head. And I sure as hell don’t have to worry about the police knocking on my door. Actually, I probably do now that you’re here,” she amended. Great, just another thing for her to worry about. “Why can’t you ever just be normal?”
“Normal is overrated,” Rena grumbled. She dipped a finger in her glass, chasing around a piece of ice.
“Don’t you think it would be nice to not have to constantly look over your shoulder for once?”
“Sure. I mean, of course it would be. But that’s just not how the cards were dealt.”
“We may have been dealt a shitty hand, but that doesn’t mean you had to play it.”
Honestly, she wasn’t even sure why she bothered. Trying to talk some sense into her sister was about as effective as beating her head against a brick wall. She’d done it too many times over the years to count, and look where she was now—still walking on the wrong side of the law.
“You can’t spend your whole life doing this, you know. One day, you’re going to burn all your bridges, and you’re going to be too old to start over.”
