Page 28 of Touch

The question knocks Love’s concentration off course. For a moment, she thinks the stepfather means her.

Andrew glances up from his plate. “Woman?”

The lethargic bastard scoffs, picks up his fork, and aims the prongs at Andrew. “Last night, when you got home. Who was the blonde walking with you?”

Holly. Love had just found out they’re the next match, but she hadn’t stayed behind to see what happened after the female caught up to Andrew in the park. Holly must have accompanied him back to his house. A promising start for them.

Love’s shoulders collapse beneath an unknown weight. If her wings were free, they would sag and curl in on themselves.

Andrew’s posture relaxes. “She’s a neighbor.”

“That ‘neighbor’ got anything to do with the shiner you’re wearing?” the man drawls. “Or maybe the dried blood that was coating your knuckles?”

“She walked home with me, then I drove her back to her place.”

“Women don’t walk to a man’s house, much less hitch a ride after, unless they’ve got an ulterior motive.”

“Christ’s sake,” Andrew mutters while tossing down his fork.

“What happened?” The relative goads, his voice as slippery as oil. “You played the hero?”

Andrew shoves back his chair, its legs screeching across the floor.

“Does she get off on having multiple men at each other’s throats? Maybe the misanthropic, tormented writer thing does it for her? Or maybe you’ve been too wrapped up in your work that you’ve forgotten where it’s safe to point your dick.”

Andrew stands, his shadow slashing over the table and cutting his relative in half.

“Because the stupidest thing to get into a fight about is a temporary side-serving of pussy.”

Andrew heads to the sink, his muscles tensing under that sweater.

The stepfather drops the fork, picks up his mug, and leans back, trapping the vessel in a chokehold. Love discerns one lucid thing about him. Resentment is webbed around this human, thin lines of tension weaving through him like a snare. No matter what’s about to happen, there’s no guarantee the men will leave their fists out of it.

He sneers, “You’re just about the biggest dumbfuck if you let a woman run you into the ground.”

Andrew’s dish clatters in the wide, steel sink. “You would know.”

As they become airborne, the words appear to surprise him, as if he rarely engages with the man’s tirades. For a second, he closes his eyes and mouths,Fuck.

Behind him, pain cleaves through the man’s face. Then comes the fury.

Something acidic rains down Love’s throat just as the stepfather’s chair skids across the floor. Within seconds, the man is whipping Andrew around and slamming him up against the cabinet-covered fridge. “What’d you say?”

With at least six inches on his relative, Andrew can easily overtake the man. Regardless, weariness drags down hisfeatures. He merely waits as if expecting this storm to pass, as though it’s a common occurrence.

Love is less patient. And far less composed. Her arrow catapults toward the translucent panel, punches a hole into the facade, grazes the stepfather’s temple, and spears past his vile head. Glasses filling a modern hutch shatter like fragile human hearts, then her arrow vanishes and reappears in her quiver.

The stepfather growls in pain and releases Andrew. He pats the side of his head and draws back crimson-speckled fingers, the cut oozing small dribbles of blood. Muttering a shocked oath, he strides toward the hutch, his shoes crunching shards of glass.

Andrew whirls the other way, toward the point of entry, a glimmer of recognition in his eyes. Love ducks, but it’s no use. He’s seen her. Once again, she hadn’t been quick enough.

“Did you feel that?” she hears the wraith say. “Like a kind of draft or some shit.”

Footsteps pound toward the back deck, followed by the stepfather plastering his leathery face against the pane. Bracing a cloth against his wound, the man glowers through the arrow hole and into the distance. His injury is minor, nothing a strip of gauze won’t fix. That said, the only reason he doesn’t have an arrow lodged in his miserable excuse for a cranium is because Love hadn’t been operating at her best. For she’d been too wrathful and careless to focus clearly.

Her temper flares. At herself, at Andrew, at this knave.

The stepfather growls, “So now you got people targeting you here? Climbing the gate and throwing crap through the back doors? What’d you do to piss them off?”

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