“Yes, I do have a lot of sense. Thank you for noticing.” Brody looked back at us over his shoulder and stuck his tongue out.
Fucking Brody.
“And you know where I think you’d be safest?” Brody asked in a concerned voice.
Roger looked at him like Brody was about to tuck him into bed and tell him a bedtime story.
Brody dropped his arm from Roger’s shoulders. “In your car. Driving away from here.” Sophia’s brother’s voice was icy now, and the look on his face brooked no argument. Brody might have been a man-child, but he could sure dial up the mad face when he needed it. “Enjoy your night.”
Roger spluttered and looked around, seemingly just then realizing Brody had walked him to the stairs that would take him to the parking lot.
“I’ll ruin you for this!” Roger shouted.
“Wow, what an original threat,” Drew deadpanned.
We all laughed, now able to find the threat of his deck being shut down funny, even though it hadn’t been a few weeks ago when the jerk at the marketing firm Sophia was interning at gave the name the Yard to a famous client, making us all worry Drew would face repercussions for operating with the same name.
Roger lobbed a few more threats around, but I tuned him out, instead focusing on the group that had rallied around me and stood up for me without even needing any details. This was what I needed in my life. And it was exactly what I didn’t have back at school. The thought made dread lodge in my sternum.
Everyone had moved a little closer to where Roger was standing except Ransom. He still stood directly beside me, glaring at Roger with eyes as sharp as lasers.
“Girlfriend, huh?” I said quietly so only he would hear.
“Huh? Oh, yeah, sorry. I just said whatever came to mind.”
I smiled at him. “Thanks. I’m glad you noticed I wanted him gone.”
He rubbed a hand over the back of his sand-colored hair. He kept his hair a bit on the long side, and the strands swayed with the movement. “Oh, uh, I didn’t really notice that to be honest. I just saw the way he was looking at you before he came over. When he was standing behind you.”
Ah, so it hadn’t been me Ransom was scowling at. “Well, either way. I’m glad you were here.”
“Yeah, me too.” He gave me a small smile before he began to shuffle away.
I reached out and grabbed his arm. He looked back at me questioningly.
“I’m sorry. For whatever I said earlier that upset you.” And I was. I’d been sorry the instant I’d seen his smile disappear, even if the way it made me feel was unwelcome. Well, maybe the feeling wasn’t unwelcome, but the desire to act on it was. Whatever. Semantics could suck a nut.
“You didn’t upset me. No worries.” Ransom then turned and walked away quickly, leaving me to stare after him, wishing he hadn’t just shown himself to be a liar.
“Well, that was dramatic,” Sophia exclaimed when she reached me. “What the hell happened?”
I pulled my eyes off Ransom and looked at all the expectant faces looking at me. Even Xander had joined us. Of course they were all curious, but they looked concerned too.
And that was when I knew.
Zeroing in on Sophia, I said, “I can’t go back to school. I can’t go back to that campus.” Emotions made my sinuses burn, and I felt my eyes fill.
Sophia, always knowing what I needed, drew me into a big hug. “Okay, Tay. We’ll figure it out.”
“My dad is going to lose his shit.”
She rubbed soothing circles on my back, and I gave in to it, allowing myself to be reassured by the person who knew me and my relationship with my family better than anyone else in the world.
“Nah,” she said. “He’ll understand.”
“I don’t understand.” My father looked at me like I’d just asked him to solve advanced calculus.
My dad and stepmom had been trying to get me to come home for a family dinner since summer break had started, but I’d used every excuse in the book to avoid it. So when I called yesterday and said I wanted to come home for a meal, one would’ve thought he’d have figured out something was up. But the man looked positively gobsmacked.
It had been a week since the incident at the bar, and Sophia and I had spent all our free time putting things in motion for me to complete my final semester of college online so I could stay close to my friends, all of whom had become my support network. We’d also discussed how this conversation with my dad was going to go.
It wasn’t going how we’d planned.
For one, I’d wanted to have this discussion after dinner, when I could get him alone. This wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have in front of my two younger half-siblings. And I never wanted to have any conversation with or in front of my stepmother. But she’d just had to ask me when I was going back to school, which had really thrown me off my game. My stuttered answer of “never” had been a severe lapse in judgment and decidedly not part of the plan.
But I hadn’t wanted to lie when she’d asked. Who knew being honest would turn out to be such a big mistake?
“I transferred to online classes for the fall,” I explained. I pushed food around on my plate to avoid eye contact with anyone, which I was sure really highlighted my maturity.
The sound of my dad’s utensils clattering against his plate made me wince. “Why on earth would you do that without discussing it with me first?”
I took a deep breath. Sophia had talked me into telling my dad the truth about why I didn’t want to go back to school. But blurting out that I had a stalker since last October that I hadn’t
