I shrug. “No idea. This your room?” I lean my head in to scan the messy space, trying to distract her.
She nods and steps back in what I interpret as an invitation. I enter slowly, almost reverently, taking in as much as I can without revealing my snooping.
“Cool. You a big Night Shifts Black fan?” I ask, motioning toward one of the posters on the wall.
“They’re okay,” she says.
I nod, about to recite one of the random facts I know about them when another image catches my eye.
“I love that photo of Genevieve,” I say with a warm smile. Approaching the eight-by-ten promotional shot, I’m surprised to see it’s autographed. She must have gotten this at one of Gen’s shows. “It’s signed too.”
“Yeah, we saw her for my tenth birthday,” she says quietly. Her voice cracks, and I suck in a breath to control my reaction.
We.
Beside the glamor shot of Genevieve is a smaller, candid photo of a young blond girl and older woman who looks just like her. Wait… I can’t stop my eyes from darting back to Naomi in shock. She looks nothing like the girl in the photo. The hair, the clothes, the attitude—if not for context and her large green eyes, I never would have guessed this was her.
“You and your mom?” I ask, trying to keep my voice steady. I study her as she pulls the photo from the wall. She stares at it for a long time, head bent so I can’t see her face. But when her sleeve slides across her eyes, I notice the wet patch on the fabric.
“She took me, yeah,” she whispers. “Right before…”
Oh my gosh. My heart lurches in my chest as the girl traces their silhouettes in the photo. Slowly, her black fingernail runs over two blond angels grinning back from a different life.
After a long silence, she shoves her sleeve over her face again and quickly returns the photo to its place of honor above her bed. A thousand questions rush to my tongue, but I manage to hold them off. The most important one has just been answered.
“She looks like she was a great mom.”
Her teeth sink into her lower lip as she nods. Her eyes well and she blinks back a fresh surge of tears. “Can we just watch a movie now?” she asks through a thin, cracked voice.
My own eyes burn as they graze the photo again. I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t stop my arm from circling her small shoulders. She’s surprisingly delicate, soft in a way I don’t expect. Squeezing, I lead her back toward the door.
“Absolutely. Nothing above PG-13, though. I can’t handle it.”
CHAPTER 5
JULIAN
I stare at the cluster of teens and young adults through my windshield. Danny P’s address took me to a parking lot behind a shady, rundown apartment building just under twenty minutes from our home. How would Naomi have gotten here? I shudder at the thought of her getting into a vehicle with one of these losers.
How do I know they’re losers? Because I was one of them once. Would probably still be if music hadn’t saved my life—if Ashley hadn’t forced me to find it. I recognize the half-empty liquor bottles scattered around the pavement and draped in hands too young to procure it legally. The glare of lit cigarettes and shared joints flickers back at me, blinding me with a past I try to forget as much as possible.
I also recognize the stringy blue hair of “Danny P.”
He looks even older and more menacing in person, probably because there’s no filter or staged photo hiding the real-life threat. What did he have planned for my niece tonight? Even the best-case scenario makes my stomach churn. She and I are having a long talk when I get back.
If I get back. There are a lot of them, more than I planned for when I decided to do this, but I know from experience how this story plays out if I don’t put an end to it here and now.
The conversation and laughter stills as I approach, the guy I identified as Danny P stepping forward to confront me. He must be the alpha of the group. Are these other hurting kids he seduced and recruited for his little kingdom of outcasts? I shove any lingering fear from my face and square my shoulders.
“You need something?” Danny asks, approaching me with a hostile look. His acne scars and patched attempt at facial hair become visible as he closes in. He’s also taller than I expect, almost my height, but I have about thirty pounds of muscle on him. And at least fifty IQ points.
“You Danny P?” I ask, lifting a brow.
“Who’s asking?”
“Me. I’m asking. You Danny P?”
The dude sniffs and shrugs. “Maybe.”
I nod and step closer. “I see. So maybe you’re the asshole who’s harassing an eleven-year-old girl?”
He straightens, a flash of concern flitting across his features before he covers it with more bravado. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“No, I bet you don’t. But the cops will if you so much as message Naomi Hayes again, got it?”
He smirks and crosses his arms. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice his friends closing in as well.
“The cops. Sure, call ‘em,” he snorts out. “I ain’t done nothin’ illegal so…” He lifts his arms in a smug challenge. “For the record your daughter thinks she’s in love with me.”
My already short fuse ignites. “I never said that’s why they’d be involved,” I growl, shoving him hard.
He curses at the impact, staggering several feet before charging back and swinging a fist at my face. I could laugh at how predictable he is, all of them, when the others come rushing forward in a cowardly display of force. Alone, they’d never be so brave.
I duck to avoid Danny P’s first blow, easily absorbing the second in my ribs. It stings, but I can tell by the way he shakes his fist, it hurt him more. Is this his first real fight? He’s used to preying on children. What’s he gonna do with a real opponent?
Not much, apparently. He’s lucky he’s got backup. He wouldn’t have lasted two minutes with me, and I don’t trust my rage to show mercy at the moment.
But he’s not alone.
I land a devastating hit of my own that sends him reeling to the pavement before his friends jump in to even the odds. This is where Naomi has turned for comfort? For family? I scan the cold, lost faces around me. This is her future if I don’t change it.
Too bad I only have a split-second to enjoy my epiphany.
I don’t know why they stop. I managed to do plenty of damage before sheer numbers overwhelmed me and got me on the ground. I’ve been in enough fights to know once you’re on the ground, it’s over. But no matter how hard I fought to get back up, I couldn’t gain the edge. And once the knife came out, I knew I was dead. Except, he didn’t use it.
Instead of shoving it through my ribs, bloody and bruised Danny P slashed a couple superficial warnings and took off, his stunned friends following close behind.
I roll to my back, staring up at the night sky blurred by a distant parking lot light. Should I have approached this situation differently? Probably. Definitely. But it wouldn’t have been as effective.
Because my instinct guessed right, and among everything else, I also recognized the look in Danny P’s eyes as he stared at the bloody blade in his hands and backed away. Fear. The kid is anger disguising an innate fear that he’s not enough, and deep down, he probably wishes he had a “dad” who’d risk his life to protect him from threats like him. Naomi is too much of a liability now. He’ll leave her alone. We both know that in a strange way, he didn’t win this round. I won it the second I showed up and proved his eleven-year-old mark comes with a twenty-five-year-old headache he doesn’t want.