Page 38 of Triple Threat

They were the type of foster parents that weren’t in it for the good of humanity and for saving kids. They were in it to line their own pockets and they were my first lesson in just how cruel the world could be after the death of my parents.

The only sliver of goodness out of this place was the fact that Dean Daughton wasn’t a pedophile… just a mean drunk.

“Ugh, will you justshut upalready!” Tara was seventeen to my fifteen and had the top bunk. I could hear her punch her already flat pillow up into some semblance of a useable shape. Either that, or she was putting it over her head to drown out my sniffing for the umpteenth millionth time.

“Leave her alone, Tara.” Melanie was eleven and had the single bed opposite mine. She was the Daughton’s real daughter. They had a son, too. Caleb, who was fourteen. He was in the room across and down the hall with the two foster boys that lived here – Kyle, and Demetri.

I sniffed slightly and turned on my side, my back to the open doorway and to Melanie. We didn’t have a door. Tara had pissed off Mr. Daughton, and he’d taken it off the hinges.

“She’s right, though,” Melanie said after a moment. “You don’t stop crying; you might wake up Daddy and I wouldn’t want to be you if you did that.”

“I know,” I whispered. “I’m trying… I just can’t help it.”

My second lesson in cruelty was the new school I’d been thrust into midway through the school year. My parents hadn’t been rich, I mean, I was used to being poor, but the Daughton’s was next-level low.

I tried my best with outdated clothing and making the thrift store finds uniquely mine and fashionable, but kids were freaking mean as shit and as soon as I’d arrived, no one knowing where I came from, I’d earned the new nickname of Shady. Shady Brooks. It would have been almost pretty if the intent behind it weren’t so cold.

Rumors started almost immediately, fueled by Tara who was two grades above me, that I’d killed my parents and it was just downhill from there.

I hadn’t. It was just a stupid accident… but today had been beyond the pale in humiliation and a lesson in pain, when one of the other girls who was bullying me shoulder checked me into an open locker which had torn the back of my shirt. When I’d come back to the Daughton’s, Pricilla Daughton had raged about it. When I had tried to protest feebly that it hadn’t been my fault, she’d slapped me and had sent me up here without dinner. I was hungry, and my stomach hurt. We didn’t get a lot to begin with, so any missed meal could be torture.

“Psst!” I jumped and Tara sat up above me. “Shady,” Kyle whispered from the door to the bedroom.

“Go away,” I murmured tiredly. He insisted on calling me Shady, too… but for a different reason. When I’d asked him to stop, he’d said ‘no’ and that I needed to learn how to be tougher. I just wasn’t built like Kyle Lachlan, though… I wasn’t confident and Icaredwhat people thought of me. I just couldn’t be anyone else.

He chuckled darkly and the bunk dipped behind me. I sucked in a sharp breath and whispered sharply, “Dean catches you in here with the girls and he’s going to kill you!”

“Like to see the fat bastard try,” Kyle said darkly. He laid down behind me and reached over the top of me. “Here,” he said, and I swallowed hard.

He had two crescent dinner rolls wrapped in a paper towel.

I took them, and his hand went to the dip of my waist, right before the swell of my hip and I shivered at his closeness even as I stuffed my face.

“You’re a good person, Kyle,” I murmured, and he snorted.

“Am not. I’ve never been one of the good guys and I never will be.” He sighed out and with a frown in his voice said, “You’re cold.” He shifted, cuddling up to my back. He was tall, even at seventeen. Like almost six feet tall, and he was warm.

“You better get the fuck out of here,” Tara warned. “Or I’m gonna rat your ass out.”

“Do it and die, bitch,” Kyle whispered harshly into the dark, his breath blushing over the sting of my scraped shoulder.

“Tara, shut up,” Melanie whispered and if a whisper could be a shout, she’d done it. “They aren’t doing anything!”

“Yeah, you would know, you little pervert.” Kyle’s voice held judgment. His head turned back in Melanie’s direction. “You like watching, don’t you?” he teased cruelly.

“You don’t have to be so mean when people are trying to help you,” Melanie said with a sniff of superiority.

Kyle chuckled again, a rich dark sound, and his fingers fanned out over my ribs. He could be such an asshole to everyone else. I didn’t know why he chose to be kind to me.

“You should go,” I whispered.

“Not until you’re asleep,” he countered and his tone brooked no argument. I wriggled to give him a little more room, and he sucked in a breath.

“Stop doing that!” he said sharply. “Just hold still and go to sleep. I’ve got you, Shady…”

I woke with a start, miles and miles and years and years away from the Daughton’s but still, I thought ironically, still in Kyle Lachlan’s clutches.

I drew in a deep breath and turned in the oversized and overstuffed cloud of a bed to look at the clock.

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