Sweet Hill Homecoming (Sweet Hill 1)

She set her menu down and crossed her arms. “Oh, I get it. I know what you see in a woman like Mia.” Abby shook her head. “She’s not right for a man like you and you know it.”

Tate had to fight the urge to yell, because despite instant and concentrated anger raging through him, he was taught manners. And you never spoke rudely to a lady.

“What I see in Mia is a bright, ambitious woman,” he said firmly and rose.

Putting money on the table he walked to where Abby sat and shook her hand. She was obviously shocked that he was leaving her, but the truth was something he couldn’t ignore.

He was falling for Mia.

~

“Please don’t cry, Mia,” Kyle said but his words had the opposite effect. All she wanted to do was cry. Yesterday was a disaster. She sent the man she was sleeping with out the door and on a date with another woman and now the other man in her life was in pain.

“Oh my god,” she whispered and gently brushed Kyle’s cheek so she could look at his face. Getting a call that Kyle was in the hospital in the middle of the school day took twenty years off of Mia’s life. But seeing him sitting in the ER, in a blue gown and bleeding made her want to vomit. “Are you okay?”

“It looks worse than it is,” he said, wincing a little when he sat up in bed. There was a cut over his eyebrow that had just been freshly stitched and his bottom lip was busted. “Doc said I just have a few bruised ribs but nothing serious.”

“Nothing serious?” Mia said. “Kyle, you were beaten up.”

He glanced at the floor.

“Who did this to you?”

He shook his head.

“No!” she snapped, her chin trembling and trying like hell to hold it together. “No more covering for these assholes. Who did this, Kyle? Who’s been hurting you?”

He grit his teeth together. Mia wanted to scream. Her brother was being tormented and now physically hurt, and he said nothing.

The privacy curtain wooshed open and the Sheriff walked in. Kyle instantly sat up a little. Though Mia hadn’t laid eyes on him since she moved back, she was a little shocked at his appearance. He looked tired and older than his years. Granted, he was getting up there in age, but something about the Sheriff just looked…bleak.

She thought about what Tate said, that Branch wasn’t well, but had no idea the seriousness. Judging by his absent grumbling and wrinkly shirt, he wasn’t the same man she remembered.

“Can I help you, Sheriff?” Mia said.

“The school called me. In cases of bullying, the school notifies the local law enforcement.” Judging by the way he spoke, Sheriff Branch didn’t want to be there anymore than Mia wanted him there. But it would help Kyle. Hopefully they’d catch who did this to him. That is, if he started talking

.

“Why don’t you tell me what happened, Kyle,” the Sheriff sounded like he was being put out and added, “and the truth.”

Mia frowned. Though she had some run-ins with him when she was younger, he was always polite. But now? He seemed mentally checked out and angry. Which upset Mia, considering it was Kyle lying in the ER bed.

“What are you insinuating, Sheriff?”

Branch cleared his throat. “It’s convenient that these things start happening right after you move back is all.”

“These things?” Mia scoffed. “You mean like my brother getting harassed, set up and now assaulted? And you want to blame us?”

“Just tell me what happened,” Branch said. “Then we can blame the proper people.”

She didn’t miss the insult in his tone and Mia had to literally bite down on her tongue. “Are you going to actually look for these kids?”

He grumbled again like she asked him to move the moon. “I don’t know, Miss Blake. Look at this kid,” he tilted his chin at Kyle, “he’s one of the biggest boys at the school and he’s being harassed?”

“His size has nothing to do with it.” She held up Kyle’s hand and showed the Sheriff. “Not a single scrape or bruise on his knuckles.” She swallowed hard because while it proved her point that Kyle wasn’t a fighter, it also proved that he wasn’t defending himself. “There is more than one person doing this to him.”

Kyle peeled his hand from hers and she met her brother’s eyes. “Tell him, Kyle,” Mia said softly to him. “Tell him who did this.”