Page 3 of Monster's Madhouse
“I am,” he said, “it’s good to meet you, Ms. Blitz.”
“I told you to call me Blitz,” she insisted. Honestly, he remembered that she liked to be called by her last name, but for some reason, he kind of liked making her a little hot under the collar.
“Right, sorry,” he lied. From the smirk on her face, she didn’t believe any of his bullshit.
“Do you want to come over here and say hi to your brother?” Blitz asked Josie. His little sister looked as though she wanted to say no, but she begrudgingly nodded and stood from the barstool.
She stood in front of him and waited for him to say something. “Hi, Josie,” he almost whispered. “Do you remember me?” he asked. Drifter wanted to pull her in for a hug and tell her that she was going to be all right, but he was sure that she wouldn’t believe him.
Josie shrugged, “Not really,” she admitted. He liked that she wasn’t afraid to give him the truth. She was a lot like their mother in that way.
“I’m going to take care of you until Mom comes back,” he said, hoping that bit of information would reassure her.
She shook her head, and he worried that Blitz had driven his kid sister all that way for nothing. “Mom’s not coming back,” she whispered. “She told me that she wasn’t ever going to see me again, and I believe her.”
“Do you know why she left, Josie?” Drifter asked.
“Nope, and I really don’t care why she left. Just like I don’t care why you left. I’m just here because I don’t want to go into a group home.” Geez, she wasn’t shy at all about giving him the truth.
“Fair enough,” he mumbled. “You hungry?” Drifter asked, wanting to change the topic.
“Starving,” she said.
“I just fed you an hour ago,” Blitz reminded.
“Well, I didn’t like the shitty healthy food you forced on me. Can I get a burger?” Josie asked him.
“Sure, kid, and I don’t blame you for not wanting to eat healthy shit—it’s the worst.” Drifter walked past her and Blitz, straight back to the kitchen, where he knew for sure that Monster was listening to their whole conversation. He was going to get his little sister some food, and then he was going to ask his buddy for advice, because Drifter had no idea what to do about Josie or the sexy CPS woman who brought her to town.
Blitz
Blitz had grown up in the system. Her birth mother had given her up for adoption when she was only two days old, and there was no father listed on her birth certificate. She didn’t remember her adoptive parents because they both died in a car crash when she was about six months old. They had left her with a babysitter, and when no other family came forward to take Blitz in, she ended up in foster care. At least, that’s what her case worker told her on her eighteenth birthday, when she was released from the system and left on her own.
Honestly, Blitz had no idea what to do out in the world with no one telling her what to do. She had lived with five families over the eighteen years that she was in foster care, and most of those families loved to bark orders at her. They had more rules for her to follow than she could count, and when she left the system, she had the freedom that she had always wanted but never thought that she’d have.
She learned to survive on the streets long enough to get a waitressing job and save enough money to get a shitty apartment in the city. Some of the kids who had gotten out of foster carebefore her had let her sleep on their sofas, but she never stayed for too long. She didn’t want them to think that she was taking advantage of their generosity, so she’d stay at each place for a few nights and then move on. Sometimes, Blitz slept on a street bench, but for the most part, she usually had warm, safe places to sleep thanks to her former foster siblings.
She had kept her nose clean, and Blitz was pretty proud of herself for that. A lot of her old friends weren’t so lucky, and they lived hard lives that Blitz wanted nothing to do with. When she had enough cash to rent her first place, she was pretty damn proud of herself. She had found a secondhand bed and sofa that fit perfectly in the efficiency apartment that she found. She had all the comforts of home and couldn’t ask for anything more. Well, that was a lie. She was working her ass off, spending all her time at the diner and even picking up shifts because when she sat in her tiny apartment feeling alone, it usually led to her feeling sorry for herself. That was something that she usually tried to avoid—feeling sorry for herself. She had plenty of reasons to feel that way, especially after losing two sets of parents in the first six months of her life. But Blitz learned at a young age that throwing herself a pity party usually didn’t end well for her.
Blitz lived her lonely existence, not able to balance work and personal time very well, especially when she decided to throw in taking college courses on top of everything. Blitz wanted to become a social worker and help take care of kids like her who grew up in the system. She found her rhythm, working her way through school and finally feeling that she could handle everything that life threw at her, when she was thrown a major curveball.
One Thursday in the month of October, she met the man who was supposed to be the one. Maybe she was naïve, thinking that her first real boyfriend would be the man that she’d spend therest of her life with, but she did. She was sure that he felt the same way, too, but when he started acting strangely, she had second thoughts. Reid told her that he loved her after just two weeks, but she didn’t feel the same way about him. They had only been on a handful of dates by that point, and while having dinner at her favorite Italian restaurant, he blurted out the three little words that she had never been told before. Maybe that’s why she was so thrown off by his declaration. Foster families never worried about making her feel loved. They thought that it was enough that they had given her a roof over her head and food in her belly. They didn’t do feelings, and she wasn’t sure of her own, even with Reud.
She didn’t say it back to him, and although he said that he understood, his anger told her a different story. Of course, Blitz felt horrible about hurting him that way, and before she could stop herself, she asked him if he wanted to move in with her. How the hell she was going to fit another person into her small space was beyond her. She wasn’t really thinking when she asked him. For some reason, she wanted to make him feel better since she was the one who put the scowl on his face. That should have been her first red flag, but it wasn’t. Reid agreed to move in with her right away, and within just four short days, he had practically moved all his stuff into her place.
She had finally gotten what she wanted, and she felt far from alone, but Reid’s strange behavior just got worse with time. He started dropping by the diner to check on her, saying that he missed her and needed to see her. At first, Blitz thought that was cute—even romantic. But then, he started popping up at other places where she was, like the grocery store or even the hair salon. He would always have a good excuse as to why he was there. Sometimes he told her that it was a coincidence, which she didn’t believe. Other times, he said that she told him that she was going to the grocery store, and he thought that he’d stopby to help her. She hadn’t told him about going on a trip to the grocery store because it was a spur-of-the-moment decision to stop by and pick up a few things for dinner. And every time she’d call him out for lying, he’d become irate. He was furious at her for not believing him, and she’d usually back down, not wanting to cause a fight with Reid that would leave him pouting for days.
The biggest red flag was when he asked her to marry him after just a few months of living together. She laughed when he first popped the question. Blitz was sure that he was joking, but the look on his face told her otherwise. She turned him down flat, and that was when he grew violent. His anger was something that she had witnessed firsthand, but he had never hit her before. She told him to get out of her apartment, and he hit her again. The only reason that he stopped smacking her around was because her neighbor, Mr. Higgins, knocked on her door, shouting that he had called the police.
Reid took that as his cue to leave, but he promised that he wouldn’t be far. He meant it, too, because he was always lurking around every corner, watching her. It was as though Reid didn’t care if she saw him in the shadows. He wasn’t even trying to hide the fact that he was stalking her, and that was the scariest part of all.
When Josie’s case popped up in her office, she couldn’t help but take it. At first, she took the case because the teenager reminded her so much of herself when she was that age. Her mother had just taken off on her, leaving her all alone in the world. Shoving the girl into a foster home didn’t feel right, so she did some extra digging. Josie’s grandmother offered to take her, but the poor woman was barely able to take care of herself. Josie would have to become the old woman’s caretaker, and that wasn’t a life for a teenage girl. When her grandmother told Blitz about Josie’s older brother, she knew that she had to convince him to take the teenager. She knew that some older siblingswould baulk at the idea of taking on a teen. He probably had his own life and maybe even a wife and kids, too. But the last thing that she wanted to happen was to have to put Josie in a foster home.
After she convinced Drifter to take Josie, she started coming up with a plan to get out of town for a while. If she offered to drive Josie to his place, she’d come up with an excuse to stick around to keep an eye on her, wanting to make sure that she was okay before heading back home. It was a total lie. Her duty was to get Josie to her brother, one way or another. Hell, she could have put Josie on a bus and delivered her to Drifter that way. But Blitz needed to get out of town. She needed time to think about what to do about Reid. She knew that going to the police wouldn’t stop him from stalking her. He was obsessed with her, and that had become perfectly clear every time she saw him lurking around a corner. She was going to use her time away from home to figure out her next move, and she was pretty sure that it didn’t involve going home again—ever.
When she walked into the bar to meet Drifter, she ran right into a solid wall of man—Monster. He was hot and exactly the type of guy that she was currently trying to avoid. She had fallen for the bad boy in Reid and look where that had gotten her—on the run with no real plan in place. And when Drifter walked into the bar, she nearly swallowed her damn tongue. Keeping her composure was hard to do, but she hoped that neither man saw how she had reacted to either of them. Drifter looked like even more of a bad boy than Monster did, and she knew that gawking at either of them wasn’t going to lead her down a good path.
She needed to concentrate on Josie and getting her settled, and hopefully she’d be able to get her mind off the two hot bikers, but she was pretty sure that was going to be nearly impossible. Especially with the way that they were both watching her. It was almost the way that Reid had looked at her,and there was no way that she’d get involved with anyone who reminded her of her ex. She didn’t need anyone else to worry about stalking her. With any luck, she’d find a little place to rent for a week or two so that she’d be able to figure out what to do next. Blitz was sure that Drifter wouldn’t want her to stick around to keep an eye on Josie forever—no matter how much she needed a place to lay low and possibly start over. She had to start over once, and she was sure that she’d be able to do it again. And this time, she’d figure out another way to handle her loneliness when it crept back in.
