Page 1 of Only for Love

ONLY FOR HIM

CHAPTER ONE

Six Years Ago

Sophomore Year, Summerland County High School…

Grayson

This entire shitty-ass trailer reeks. The stink of cheap liquor and an even cheaper woman hangs in the air as I walk in the door. There’s a system I keep for knowing how deep Pops is, and it goes by smell. If he’s been smokin’ pot, I’m on my own before football practice. No big deal. If the stench of cheap beer fills our place, Pops’ll give me hell, but not enough that I can’t duck out and escape. I’ll be a little banged up, but nothing I can’t ignore when Coach Snyder makes me run laps for being late. But if our trailer smells like liquor, I’m screwed.

That’s the last thing I need. I forgot my damn football pads this morning and needed to slink in, grab them, and go. But judging by what stinks, that may’ve been a bad decision.

“Oh!” A woman’s slurred surprise drifts down the short hall.

Well… damn.

I turn toward the source of the slurred yip and cheap vanilla aroma. She walks into the room, and I feel her gaze as I assess her level of sobriety. On a scale from buzzed to smashed, she’s hovering around a solid tipsy. Smeared red lipstick and years’ worth of smoking are written on her too-tan face. That’s Pops’s type—dive bar skank.

The lady’s hair screams “just been fucked,” and she hops from one foot to the other, tugging on a stripper-girl shoe. One foot makes it into the see-through plastic, but she drops to the ragged carpet in a mess of drunken giggles.

Great.

“Hey, you,” she slurs, her eyes bobbing all over me.

Disgusting. I don’t know her name, but I could guess. Bambi. Candi. Mandi. Sandi. I think they make up their names. Statistically, there aren’t enough parents in Summerland County naming their kids with names ending inito allow his screws to all rhyme.

“Didn’t know you had a boy, Randall,” she coos, more to me than to Pops. “Quite the boy…”

Not only have I been caught at home, but the lady is eyeball fuckin’ the shit out of me. Pops’s instability makes him jealous, which fuels his anger. Like I’d touch one of his whores.

But now that Pops is done with his woman, he’s going to take it out on me for whatever he dreams up—that I’m flirting with his fucks or that I… exist.Such an asshole.I exist. I’m his son. His problem. It blows my mind how often he brings his trash back here when he doesn’t want them to know I’m alive. In what world does that make sense?

Shirtless and with glassy eyes, Pops sways from the back room, acting drunk and well-fucked. I hate that look; I always thought that getting laid should chill him out, but it never does. Just makes him angrier. Not that it is hard to do. He can go from passed-out to ready-to-kill in a liquor-stinking breath.

Pops sneers at me, and even though I should expect it, my stomach sinks. He hates me, and as sick as it is, I can’t blame him. I ruined our lives.

“Grayson, boy, told you not to come home.”

“Randall.” The lady, still sitting on her butt, giggles from the floor. “You’re too young for a boy that big.” She eyes me like she needs another go in Pops’s waterbed. Alcohol-fueled lust fires behind her makeup-caked eyelashes.

My skin crawls. Her tongue darts out, licking like she wants to taste me, and a foul shiver runs through me.

Pops swings his glare between me and his piece of ass, and his scowl tightens. “You shoulda stayed doing your football, ROTC, whatever the fuck you do. Not come here.”

If I didn’t need my shit for football, I wouldn’t have come home. I should’ve skipped practice. I’m never going to make it back in time. With the anger pulsing in our trailer, there’s no doubt Pops wants a fight that I won’t give him. I can’t—I’ve earned every punch he lands.

Dread rushes into my blood. The thing about a whiskey punch is that it hurts a fuckava lot more than if he’s been slamming beers. Even better is when he’s stoned. Even if his limp-dick fist balls, there’s a good chance he’ll pass out before he makes contact.

I swallow the lump in the back of my throat, bracing for what will come. It will suck, especially since he doesn’t seemthatdrunk. The more sober he is, the longer he lasts. A shitty fact of life. The guy’s up for father of the year.

“I forgot my pads.” I try to sidestep him in the narrow living-slash-kitchen area.

He takes two swaying steps. “Boy.” Spittle hits the back of my neck, then his fist cracks sloppily on my head.

Son of a bitch. I hadn’t braced for that. If a hit’s coming, I zone out, not feeling a thing. But him swinging in front of that lady? I shrug it off, ignoring the sting. “Just getting my shit, and I’m out, Pops.”

“You ain’t goin’ nowhere now, boy.”

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