Page 1 of Daddy Defender
Chapter 1
Bodie
“Jeez, you have to be kidding me!” I call out, banging my fist against the steering wheel. “Don’t do this to me. Not now. Come on. You’ve got two miles left in you…”
The turn off for Sunny Ferns is a mile away, and then it’s only another mile before the beach—and the respite I need more than anything else right now. But there’s a problem…
“Please be enough gas, please be enough gas,” I say, my eyes dashing back and forth to the gas meter, each passing second making me paranoid that I’ll go too deep into the red and my van’s trusty engine will cough, splutter, and come to a total standstill. “You’ve never failed me before, Shred…”
Shred is my trusty van. We’ve been through a lot together. Shred might be old, and he’s definitely got a few bumps and scratches on the bodywork, but this sweetheart of a van has never let me down. And I’ve taken Shred on some crazy journeys, that’s for sure.
Travelling from coast to coast, beach to beach, always on the lookout for the next big wave to surf, I live the kind of life that I’ve always wanted. I might only be twenty-three, but I’ve seenand done a lot in my time—waymore than I would have done had I gone to college like my parents wanted me to.
Whatever, it’s all good.
My parents might have been mad at the time, but deep down I think they always knew that I was never going to be cut out for the whole college-career-retire-die path. That’s just not who I’ve ever been. I like to move, see new things, go where the vibes take me.
And, yeah, sometimes that means I get myself in a little bit of trouble. But that’s part of the fun of it. I’ve surfed with some pretty rad people, seen some wild sights, and always come out on the other side smiling and feeling better for the experience.
Why would I ever want to stop?
Except this time… things feel a little bit different.
“Come on… just one more… mile,” I say, grimacing as the needle on the gas meter drops down even closer to rock bottom.
We’re deep in the red zone.
Like super deep.
Like… super-super-mega-bottom-of-the-ocean deep.
You get the picture. But as I take the exit off the highway and begin what should pretty much be a chill one mile toward my stop for the night, I know that things aren’t as they should be. And I’m not just talking about the severe lack of gas in Shred’s tank.
My eyes flash up to the rearview mirror for what must be the three hundredth time in the last couple of hours. There’s an old lady in a pale blue Tesla behind me, but apart from that it lookslike there’s no one following me. And I’m pretty certain that Tesla lady isn’t in fact connected to my ex-boyfriend…
Vince Gray.
Good looking?Yup.
One hell of a surfer?You bet.
Dangerous smuggler with a murky past?Yikes.
I met Vince a few months ago and we hit it off pretty much from the start. I mean, he’s hot as hell and loves to surf. There’s no denying either of those two things. On the face of it, we had a lot in common.
Vince seemed to genuinely like me forme. He knew I was a little different from the other surfer boys. It wasn’t just that I was extra competitive or didn’t take any crap out on the water. Vince liked the fact that I was different outside of surfing.
Being a Little is something that I don’t try and hide, it’s part of my identity.
I might be a fierce competitor on the waves, but I still love my romper, juice boxes, and milkies time too. Oh, and not forgetting my stuffy Poot the walrus—we’ve been together ever since I was a kid, and it’s a wonder that Poot had any fur left given how long and hard I’ve snuggled him over the years.
Anyway, Vince saw all of this and was cool with it.
But then something happened… I realized just how deep Vince’s criminal activity ran. It was way more than the ‘dodgy deals’ that Vince told me about when we first met. Vince was doing the kind of deals that could land him a long sentence in prison.
And more than that, I began to see that Vince was capable of hurting people too if they didn’t fall into line with his way of doing things—even his own posse of men seemed like they were in fear of crossing him.
So… I knew that I had to get away.
