“Give me your car keys. Now!” he seethes as he reaches my door.
“No—” I start, but he reaches in, shuts off the engine, and steals my keys. “Hey.” I move to snatch them from him, but he stuffs them into his pocket and strides away toward the bar door.
I dive out of the car and rush after him. “Dad, we don’t have time for this shit. It’s already going to be dark by the time we get to Honeyton.”
“Well, you should’ve thought about that before you drove like a goddamn lunatic.” He jerks the door to the bar open. “Seriously, what were you thinking? Especially with your sisters in the car.”
“I was thinking that I needed to get here before you went inside,” I snap. “Because, I knew, if you did, you’d be in there all night and we’d be stuck out in the car, waiting for your drunk-ass to stumble out.” This isn’t the first time I’ve lost my cool with him, and it won’t be the last.
His face reddens. “I think you’re forgetting who the parent is.”
“What parent?” I’m fuming mad. Mad at him for being a drunk. For being such a shitty father. For pretending he has the right to scold me now when he doesn’t give a shit about anything we do. Mad because I had to pawn my necklace. Mad, mad, mad. I’m so mad all the time that I can barely stand it. “Because all I see is a drunk deadbeat who can’t even take care of his kids.”
He smacks me across the face, shocking both him and me. With all the terrible things my father has done over the years, he has never hit me until now. “I’m sorry,” he sputters as I place my palm to my throbbing cheek, my eyes wide. Then he bails into the bar.
Shaking my head, I spin around and storm back to the car. “What an asshole!”
“Holy shit, I can’t believe he hit you,” Bailey whispers with wide eyes.
Payton’s eyes are equally as large, but Londyn appears shockingly pissed off.
“We should leave his ass here.” She shakes her head. “Take the truck and ditch him.”
The idea does sound enticing, but he’s our legal guardian and none of us are eighteen. Even though I hate it, we need him around.
I roll my window down all the way. “We’ll give him an hour to cool off, and then I’ll go in and get him.”
Londyn shakes her head while staring at my cheek. “I can’t believe he hit you.”
Me neither. And I’m not sure what hurts worse—my face, my pride, or my heart.
3
HADLEY
After sitting outside the bar for almost an hour, our dad stumbles out, drunk off his ass. When I refuse to hotwire his truck again, he finally lets Londyn drive his truck. I feel bad for her being stuck in the car with his smelly ass and offer to drive with him instead, but Londyn refuses to allow it. Since my cheek currently has a bright red handprint on it, I don’t put up much of an argument.
Five hours into the drive and after Dad sobers up, we pull over and Londyn climbs back into the Chevelle. Everything is going decently until we enter the town of Honeyton, our new, temporary place of residence.
Somewhere along the main street and the turn off to our neighborhood, Dad pulls over. Since we don’t notice right away, we’re unsure where he went. My bet is the first bar he spotted.
Luckily, I have the new address entered into the GPS on my phone. Unfortunately, I have no clue how the hell we’re supposed to get the keys from the landlord, or if Dad’s even signed the lease yet. He found the house online, that much I know. Other than that, he hasn’t given me any more info other than the address. Not that I haven’t tried. He always just dismisses me or gives some vague answer, probably because he’s either doing something or has done something I won’t approve of.
That’s my dad for you.
Yeah, did I forget to mention that he does some pretty shady stuff, pulling off scams and screwing people over? Not that he ever tells me about it. I just hear stuff through gossip or read about it on his police report when I bail him out of jail.
I wonder how long we’ll be here before he gets arrested?
Sighing heavily at that thought, I pull up into the gravel driveway of the address currently typed into the GPS. The sun is starting to set, the sky greying. Even if Dad arrives in the next five minutes, we’re going to be trying to move stuff in while it’s dark.
“Well, I think this one is the winner.” Sarcasm drips from Bailey’s tone as she takes in the narrow, two-story home in front of us.
The wraparound porch is starting to collapse, the front door is cracked, and one of the windows is boarded up. It does have a garage at the end of the driveway. Or, well, more like a shack with a garage door.
“The winner of what exactly?” Payton slants forward in the back seat to get a better look. “The shittiest house in the neighborhood?”
“Actually, I was going to go with the shittiest house we’ve ever lived in,” Bailey clarifies. “The house next door is much shittier.”
Payton’s gaze drifts to the two-story home beside ours. It shares similarities to ours, only with more boarded up windows and a shit ton of rusted cars decorating the backyard. Some of the cars don’t look half bad, if they had some work done to them.
“Doesn’t really matter how shitty it is anyway,” Bailey adds as she gathers her guitar and bag. “We’ll probably live here for like, what? Maybe six months tops?”
“How did Dad even find this town?” Payton leans back and scribbles something in a notebook. “It’s out in the middle of freakin’ nowhere. Seriously, did you guys see the population sign?”
“We’ve lived in small towns before,” I remind them as I check my phone for missed messages.
Crap. He hasn’t replied to my texts yet.
Frustrated, I send him another, asking how I’m supposed to get into this place and if he needs to be here to sign a lease. After a couple minutes tick by and he doesn’t reply, I shove open the door.
“I’m going to take a look around,” I tell my sisters as I hop out of the car.
I hike up the gravel driveway, hoping I can find either a letter from the landlord or an old rental sign that hopefully has a phone number.
The more I walk around, the more my face throbs. I took some painkillers earlier and pressed a cold bottle of soda to my cheek for a while, but it still hurts and looks just as bad. In a couple days, I’ll probably have a bruise.
“Goddamn, stupid, dickless asshole,” I chew my dad out as I trot up the steps to the side door.
“Well, hello to you, too.”
The voice comes from out of nowhere and startles the crap out of me. I spin around and nearly trip over my untied laces. I grab the wooden railing for support and end up getting slivers in my palms, but at least I manage to stop myself from falling on my ass.
Sweeping my hair out of my face, I glance around to see who the culprit is who almost made me fall on my face. The instant I spot him, I know I’m about to have trouble on my hands.
He’s standing on the other side of the fence that divides the yard between the house next door and ours. He looks around my age, is tall, lean, with blond hair, and one of the prettiest faces I’ve ever seen. Which yes, is cliché and makes me sound stupidly girlie, but it’s the truth. He’s also sporting an I-think-I’m-the-shit smirk, or a smirk I like to refer to as “a douchebag stamp.”