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  Johnson along with a few other players stopped as well and hung back until Mackie was back in line with them again.

  I felt a sense of relief wash over me as Johnson hung back to walk with me.

  “Hello, Johnson,” I called softly. “Have you seen your uncle lately?”

  He gave me a droll look. “Before or after he kicked our asses during practice?”

  I felt my lips twitch.

  “Uhhh,” I hesitated. “Was it bad?”

  “We ran two miles, then did a thousand burpees. Do you know how long that took us?” He paused, looking at me with a sense of exhaustion about him.

  I was scared to ask what a burpee was.

  But I did it anyway.

  He looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “You don’t know what a burpee is?”

  I shook my head.

  Then he surprised the ever-loving crap out of me by dropping into a push-up position on the ground, doing a push-up, then snapping up into a squat position before jumping in the air.

  “That,” he winced, “is a burpee. You’re lucky I was able to get up from doing it. I burned a thousand and two calories during that workout. That means I can have four hamburgers for dinner and it won’t matter.”

  I laughed, which was when I looked up and spotted Ezra leaning against my car.

  I also spotted Mackie’s glare over his shoulder moments after that that wiped the smile straight off my face.

  A shiver slid down my spine, and I wondered what it was that I’d ever done to the kid.

  I’d never sent him to the principal, and I’d never said a word to him except to call his name on the roster during our sex-ed class to make sure he was in attendance.

  I groaned inwardly.

  “Bye, Uncle Ezra,” Johnson called as he passed. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  Ezra snorted. “Says the person that does stupid shit all the freakin’ time.”

  He flipped Ezra off before walking to Ezra’s truck that had a crack in the windshield—just like mine did—only on a much smaller scale.

  As we’d left the night of the storm, it became apparent quickly that the loud bang we’d heard outside of Ezra’s bathroom window had been a tree limb falling down on top of Ezra’s truck.

  That’d been nothing compared to mine—which was a metal sign falling from the bleachers above where my car had been parked, impaling it.

  In fact, the metal sign was still there because neither Ezra nor I could get it out. Though Ezra did manage to cut the majority of the pole off the sign.

  He’d tried to take me home, but I’d refused, saying my car was perfectly functional.

  He’d reluctantly agreed since Grady had been repairing damage to their garage as we’d been leaving.

  The impaled sign was on the very right side of my windshield, completely out of my viewing space, and the only thing, cosmetically, wrong with the entire windshield. There weren’t even any cracks branching off of the impaled object.

  Tomorrow I’d be taking it to a body shop, but until then, I was stuck with it.

  The funny thing was, the sign said ‘violators will be towed.’

  I felt a blush hit my face the moment that Ezra and I were alone.

  He took it in, and immediately grinned as he caught sight of me.

  “Hey,” I whispered, feeling like I’d swallowed a chili pepper.

  Ezra grinned. “Hey yourself. What are you doing here so late?”

  I grimaced. “Grading papers and inputting them online. I was going to put it all in last night, but since we didn’t have power, I had to do it in the library with about eight other teachers trying to accomplish the same thing. Luckily, the cafeteria loaned out their generator for the night.”

  Ezra grunted. “The power company estimates the power being back on tomorrow morning.” He looked at me, letting his eyes trail lazily down my body. “Are you busy? Do you want to get some dinner with me?”

  I felt butterflies take flight in my belly.

  “I…can’t,” I whispered. “I made arrangements to have dinner with my folks tonight because I still don’t have power. You’re more than welcome to go with me.”

  He blinked. Then he grinned. “I wouldn’t mind. We don’t have power, either.”

  It was my turn to blink then.

  “You…wouldn’t mind?” I asked, flabbergasted. “Are you sure? My family is pretty crazy.”

  Crazy didn’t even begin to cover it.

  Ezra chuckled. “Have you met mine?”

  I didn’t reply. “You know where they live?”

  He nodded.

  “You can meet me there at six. I have to go home and change first, or my mother will bitch and complain that I’m trying to ruin my work clothes as if she was still the one paying for them—which she’s not,” I hurried to add.

  “How about we both go change, and I pick you up at your place at five forty-five?” he offered.

  I licked my suddenly dry lips. “I’d like that.”

  It was only when I was halfway home that I realized he’d never asked where I lived.

  I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

  Ezra was intense. Him knowing where to find me almost sent me into a panic attack.

  Not because I didn’t want him to find me…but because I did.

  Chapter 9

  I’m not trying to be difficult. It just comes naturally.

  -Text from Raleigh to Ezra

  Ezra

  Raleigh and I arrived at five minutes to six, and the look on her parents’ faces was enough to make me want to laugh.

  But I didn’t.

  Instead, I offered my hand to Mr. Crusie, followed shortly by Ms. Crusie.

  Apparently, they knew exactly who I was, even though I didn’t know them—at least not as well as they knew me.

  I’d, of course, seen them around town. Other than a ‘hello, how are you,’ I really hadn’t had much interaction with either of them.

  “Mother,” Raleigh hissed. “Seriously, stop staring at him like you want to munch on his Cheerios.”

  “Whose Cheerios are we wanting to munch on?” A man about ten years older than me pulled the door open. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “Croft!” Ms. Crusie snarled, slapping Croft, who I assumed was Raleigh’s brother, on the stomach.

  He ‘ooofed’ as he doubled over and sent his mother a glare. “What was that for?”

  “You know exactly what that was for, Croft Crusie,” she snapped. “Go inside before I kick your ass.”

  I bit my lip to keep my laugh inside.

  Raleigh didn’t have the same compunction. She bent over, holding her stomach and started to wheeze as she attempted to say between guffaws, “She’ll kick your ass. Watch out, Croft. Momma’s gonna kick yo’ ass!”

  “That ass kicking doesn’t stop with boys, darlin’,” Ms. Crusie explained darkly. “Keep sayin’ ass and find out where it gets you.”

  Raleigh stood straight, wiping away tears, a full smile still taking up the majority of her face.

  Her eyes were on her mom, but mine were on her.

  She was beautiful. How had I missed this for so long?

  I felt like a dumbass. A really big, clueless dumbass that didn’t know what was right in front of his face until it hit him square in the jaw.

  “Let’s go inside,” Mr. Crusie suggested. “And you can call me Gates. This is Merida.”

  I nodded and followed them all inside, blinking momentarily at the décor.

  “Umm,” I hesitated. “Well, I’m guessing you like chickens?”

  Gates murmured, “Merida loves chickens. There’s a difference.”

  “Oh, hush.” Merida sighed. “It’s not a bad thing to love chickens. And it’s certainly not a bad thing to want more.”

  “You have over fifty…and we’re in the city. Trust me when I say that we’re gonna get busted one day for hav
in’ them, and when we do, you’re gonna have to get rid of them.”

  Merida shook her head. “We’d move before I allowed that to happen.”

  I had no doubt in my mind that she would if push came to shove.

  “What kinds of chickens?” I asked. “My sister wants a Polish. The ones with the crazy hair.”

  I put my hand up over my head, mimicking the way that the feathers were on the top of a Polish’s head.

  Merida laughed, and Raleigh looked at me like I’d just broken through some imaginary wall I hadn’t known was erected.

  She wanted me to like her parents…and she was happy that they liked me back.

  Well, her mom did anyway. Her father and Croft were still up for debate.

  “Honey.” Merida took her daughter’s hand. “Help me serve up dinner. Boys, y’all go get the drinks that you want from the garage and then meet at the table. Got it? Good.”

  She left before any of us nodded our consent, and we were all left staring at each other, a little dumbfounded at her sudden departure.

  “Now!” Merida called from somewhere beyond the living room we were standing in—my guess was the kitchen.

  Raleigh sighed, looking between me and her brother, then to her father, and back again.

  “Don’t do anything stupid.” Raleigh looked first at her father, then to her brother.

  With that, she left, leaving me alone with two men who didn’t look anywhere near as accepting of me as they’d been when Raleigh had been standing there.

  “So…” Croft started. “You finally decided to give her the time of day?”

  I tilted my head. “I what?”

  His eyes narrowed, and he opened his mouth to say something before Gates slammed his hand on Croft’s shoulder.

  Just when I was about to ask ‘what’ a second time, Camryn, another teacher from the school that Raleigh and I worked at, came bustling in, a frazzled look on her face.

  “Hi, Gates. Douche. Ezra,” Camryn said on her way past.

  I followed her whirlwind, then turned to face ‘douche.’

  “Douche?” I asked carefully.

  Gates started to laugh. “Seems my children suck at seeing what’s right in front of their eyes.”

  With that cryptic statement, Gates walked away calling out for me to follow. “Come on. I have good beer.”

  I followed, because who the hell wouldn’t want good beer? Especially amongst this crowd.

  It was two hours later, when dinner was consumed, and I was forced to the back porch with Croft and Gates once again, when it happened.

  Camryn, who I learned was Raleigh’s best friend, and Merida, along with Raleigh, were in the kitchen cleaning dishes, then bringing dessert out.

  I, on the other hand, was outside even though I wanted to be inside to help them clean. But, when I’d made that attempt, Raleigh had shaken her head and ushered me into the back yard, which was where I now found myself.

  “So…how did you and my baby sister start being a thing?” Croft questioned.

  I shrugged. “I saw her a bit at school this year, and she took over my sex-ed class…”

  “She took over your sex-ed class?” Croft’s voice rose. “Isn’t that a seniors’ class?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

  “Same high school, bro. And I’m not that old.” He paused. “But Raleigh doesn’t teach seniors. That was the agreement.”

  I didn’t have any idea what he was speaking of. “Agreement?”

  “Yeah,” he looked at me. “When Raleigh started working for Gun Barrel ISD, part of the agreement when she signed on was that she wouldn’t be assigned any age levels over freshman.” He looked at me like I was crazy. “I don’t…why would they do that to her knowing that she has panic attacks?”

  My stomach dropped. “Panic attacks?”

  I’d heard nothing of any panic attacks. Not from the principal that I’d addressed it with to find help with my class, and not from Raleigh.

  “Yeah. When she was attacked while being a student teacher during her schooling, she suffered some PTSD. Now, any time she gets close to the bigger boys, she kind of freezes up. Hyperventilates. That’s why we’re really careful about her being at sporting events. If she does go, one of us is always with her.”

  I felt bile rising up the back of my throat.

  “I don’t…I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I admitted. “She never…”

  The sheer horror of what he was insinuating made me want to vomit.

  “She never told you,” Gates supplied, sounding just as miffed as Croft.

  And, if what I was understanding was true, he had a reason to be.

  The more I sat there and thought about it, the more that it made sense.

  A sick sort of sense that made me want to throw up the good food I’d just consumed.

  “Shit,” I said, running my hands through my hair. “She told me that she was okay with it.”

  “More like, she told you what everyone wanted to hear,” Croft grumbled. “What do you want to bet that they threatened her job?”

  I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to be partially responsible for what she’d gone through, either.

  I closed my eyes. “What happened?”

  That was when the two men took ten painstaking minutes to explain what had happened to Raleigh, and why she was the way she was.

  And now everything became clear.

  Why she became antsy when she was around the baseball team. Why she avoided sporting games—because most of them were with large, rowdy boys that were the very thing that scared her.

  And, to make matters worse, she’d been terrified to do a class with seniors, and I’d been the one to make it happen.

  “Fuck,” I groaned.

  Before we could talk any more about it, though, the door opened and Camryn walked out, followed shortly by Merida.

  Raleigh was the last one out, and she smiled at me as she took a step over the threshold.

  In her hand was a bottle of beer for me, and a can of Dr. Pepper for her.

  She’d just made it to where she was reaching back for the doorknob when she tripped on air and went flying.

  I saw what was about to happen about two seconds before it actually did, but I could do nothing to stop it.

  She went down face first.

  The bottle of beer fell with a crash against the concrete, and she landed directly on top of it.

  We were all up and out of our chairs, and I was lifting Raleigh to her feet, when we saw the blood.

  “Shit,” Raleigh whined. “I was supposed to run tomorrow!”

  “Raleigh,” her father said, sounding amused. “You don’t run.”

  I bit my lip and reached for a beach towel that’d been resting along the back of the chair I’d taken up residence in and pressed it against her bleeding thigh—perilously close to other more pleasant things.

  She blushed profusely when my big hand got close to other parts of her anatomy, but she didn’t complain or pull away.

  “I was going to go run with Ezra,” she explained. “But this is going to need stitches.”

  I pulled the towel away from her leg and nodded my head.

  She was going to need stitches.

  Shit.

  “Not it,” Camryn, Croft, and Gates said at the same time.

  Merida sighed. “Y’all suck.”

  Raleigh scowled.

  “What?” I asked her, likely sounding confused. “Does it hurt?”

  She shrugged. “It doesn’t feel all that great, no. But that wasn’t what I was grimacing about.”

  “Then what were you grimacing about?” I asked.

  She gestured to the group at her back.

  Merida was already heading inside.

  She came back moments later with her purse slung over her shoulder and an impatient look on her face.

  “I’ll take her,” I sa
id, standing up. “Hold that there so you don’t lose half your body weight in blood.”

  She was so freakin’ small that it wouldn’t take much for her to get to the point where she was woozy, that was for sure.

  Merida beamed at me. “We normally take her to the doc in town. We’ll give him a call and tell him that you’re on the way.”

  With that, they practically ushered us out of their house.

  Moments later, when we were safely in the truck, I looked over at Raleigh, who didn’t look amused.

  “Do they always do that?” I wondered as I started the truck up.

  Raleigh shrugged. “I get hurt a lot. I go to the doctor at least twice a year for doing stupid things like I just did. It’s understandable that they don’t want to take me.”

  I didn’t agree.

  But that was just me.

  If she was ever in need, it’d never get old taking care of her.

  The more I got to know the woman by my side, the more I realized what a fool I’d been for not paying attention to her.

  “Where to, darlin’?” I purred.

  She narrowed her eyes on me. “You can just take me home. I’ll drive myself. This really isn’t a big deal, I promise.”

  I ignored her promise and headed into town, grinning widely when she sighed deeply in the seat next to me.

  When she didn’t look at me for the next ten minutes, I’d thought it was due to me not taking her home so she could drive herself.

  Turns out, as we pulled into the parking lot of the one and only clinic in town, it was due to the fact that she was embarrassed that I’d witnessed yet another faux pas on her part.

  “Listen.” She turned in the seat and looked at me. “I’m a mess. I have accidents happen every day. I’m scared of the dark. I trip over air. I break at least one bone a year, and honestly? I’m not really sure why you’re even still with me.”

  My brow rose at her admission.

  “And you’re deathly afraid of working with seniors,” I started, watching her eyes go wide.

  The stillness of her body had her father and brother’s points hammered home. She was deathly afraid. She’d also been victimized, and the last nail was hammered home.

  “H-how did you know that?” She licked her lips, drawing my attention to that succulent mouth of hers. That mouth I hadn’t tasted in well over three days, and it was driving me wild.