Page 27 of Look at Her and Die

Sighing, I got up and slipped into my clothes from the night before—a white wife beater tank top, cutoff shorts from my favorite pair of jeans that I’d worn the inside of the thighs out on, and a pair of flip-flops that I’d gotten at Walgreens for a dollar in the clearance section—and headed out.

My anger only rose the further I had to drive to get her.

The houses went from shitty—ours—to not shitty in the blink of an eye.

The closer you got to suburbs surrounding Dallas, the better looking the houses got until you were in a subdivision that probably cost a cool million to own.

I slowed my car and pulled over when the streetlights started to turn on.

When one door that I’d stopped in front of actually opened, I turned the car around and parked at the entrance to the subdivision.

Then, I decided…fuck it.

Fuck these guys and their nice houses.

I’d pull my shitty ass car that was in serious need of a muffler right up to this house and they could kiss my ass.

I pulled another bitch and went back past the houses that I’d just woken, right to the house that my sister was now prissily standing in front of.

I barely had my door unlocked when she was yanking it open and fell into the car, her arms crossing defensively over her chest.

My sister was my sister, regardless of whether I liked her all the time or not.

That was why, when she called and told me she needed a ride in the middle of the night, I put everything that I was doing down and went to fetch her.

I was happy that Kent was old enough to be considered an almost-adult now, making it possible for me to leave Anders behind with him.

In the past if this happened, I’d have to get Anders and Kent out of bed and take them with me.

And trust me, it happened often.

Calliope Joe Hodges was hell on wheels, and there wasn’t anything that was going to stop her. Not police. Not lack of funds. And certainly not some guy that told her that she was easy.

The thing about Calliope was, she was easy.

Her self-worth was so low that she didn’t think that she was meant for anything more than what she was doing.

She had no aspirations in life.

Had no desire to go to college, or hell, even discover a trade that she was good at.

She’d told me once that there was no point in her trying, because most likely she’d be forced to work at the diner just like me, and ‘what was the fucking point of trying if you just kept getting sucked back into a shitty life?’

Anyway, my sister had issues, and I was very much aware that sometimes I helped her nurture those issues.

But how the hell was I supposed to say no to helping her out in the middle of the night when she was family?

I just couldn’t.

She’d been mine to protect and take care of for so long that it was near impossible to turn off the instinct.

“Hey,” I said carefully.

Her jaw worked, letting me know that she was fuming mad.

“What’s wrong?” I asked as I pulled yet another U-turn.

“Nothing,” she lied, turning her face away so that she was staring out the window at the nice ass houses that we were passing on our way out of the fancy-ass neighborhood.

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