Page 33 of Hero Next Door
Oh my God.
And then there was Gordon, the guy I’d thought had her wrapped around his little finger in high school. Parker and Olivia had always seemed like they lived in a world of their own—and a world they didn’t invite anyone else into. The popular girls, always surrounded by a crowd of other popular girls. They’d never bothered with people like Connor and me, and we’d thought it was because they thought they were too good for the likes of us.
But if Gordon was isolating Parker and Olivia was that focused on trying to save her best friend...
The things I’d taken for granted all through high school shifted so suddenly that it was a wonder when the world stayed right-side up. Olivia and Parker had run away the moment we all graduated.
And Parker hadn’t been back for years, because she was trying to recover from what had happened to her here. She’d had a perfectly good reason not to want to come back—and a very, very good reason to want to leave again.
All my plans, all my dreams of her staying and us building a dude ranch together, collapsed. No, they hadn’t been real dreams. Just puffs of cloud that had floated through my head. But they’d still been there. And now I realized that they could never happen.
She needed to get back to Nashville, and back to the life she’d built for herself, for her own mental well-being.
And I was going to help her.
CHAPTER18
Parker
Iwas in the process of fixing dinner—and wondering whether I had the guts to call Dev up and invite him to come eat with me—when someone banged on the door. I stopped chopping onions, surprised at the ruckus, and glanced at the clock on the one remaining countertop in the kitchen.
It was 7, and the sun was already dropping beyond the horizon, leaving long shadows on the grass and a hazy, one-dimensional sort of look to the world. I wasn’t expecting anyone and it was too late for any of the contractors we’d hired.
More banging on the door, and my blood started to run cold.
It was getting dark outside and I was here by myself. I didn’t have any weapons in the house—unless you counted the numerous hammers laying around—and it was way too late for anyone to show up at my house unannounced. Avery would have texted me if she was coming over, and Dev...
I knew the way Dev knocked, and it never sounded like he was trying to bust the door down.
More banging. And now, shouting as well.
I gulped and tried to control my heart, which was doing its best to escape out of my mouth. And then I started rationalizing things. No one knew I was in town but Dev, Avery, and Jackson. And the developers—who definitely wouldn’t be banging on the door and shouting. They wanted me to like them, not be scared of them. Whoever that was, it couldn’t be any of the people I immediately suspected.
My dad was dead, thank God, and Gordon didn’t know I was in town. Hell, I doubted he could look up from his beer long enough to bother with strangers in town. From what I’d heard, he was so busy drinking his money these days that he barely had time to run the dump where he worked.
No, there was no way it was him, and he was the only one I actually didn’t want to see in this God-forsaken town.
Besides, I wasn’t scared. I’d spent the last five years taken care of myself in Nashville. I didn’t need anyone else here to make me feel safe. I was more than enough on my own.
I turned and made my way toward the door, picking up a hammer on my way and hefting the weight of it in my hands. If there was someone at that door that I didn’t want to see—or someone who was going to threaten me—then they’d be meeting a Parker they never even knew existed.
* * *
I didn’t see him coming.
I opened the door, the hammer held behind my back just in case the person on the other side was someone innocent—like Girl Scouts selling cookies in the dark on a country road or something. And when he barged in and threw me against the wall, I was so shocked that I didn’t have time to react.
By the time I came to a stop, my head banging against the wood behind me, my arms were pinned behind me back, along with the hammer, and memories were chasing each other through my brain so quickly that I could hardly see past the nightmares.
Then I did see, and I realized that I wasn’t only seeing nightmares or memories.
Gordon was right in front of me, his face older and heavier but very definitely still his, and that smirk on his face exactly the same as it had always been.
“Hello, Parker,” he snarled. “I heard you were in back in town, but I didn’t really believe it. Until right now.”
His hand squeezed around my throat and I fought to keep from gagging, my mind racing as it tried to make sense of what he was saying. How had he heard I was in town? What was he talking about? And what was he doinghere?
He leaned toward me, his breath reeking of beer and his face grimy. “I don’t want anything to do with you anymore, girlie, but I tell you what. I don’t exactly appreciate you sending your little boyfriend around to threaten me.”
