Bad Son (Wild Men 3.50)

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Excerpt from BAD WOLF

Once upon a time...

Once there was this boy in our neighborhood, living a few houses down the street. I didn’t know him well, but he was handsome like a god, with those high cheekbones and cat-like eyes, and shoulders built to carry the weight of the world.

His name was Jarett, and the Lowes had adopted him the previous year. Rumors abounded that he came from across the country, maybe California or Idaho, and that his parents had been murderers shot by the police. Others said he’d been in juvie for a while, and finding a home for him had been tough, because of his past, and his age.

When I met him, he sure wasn’t a kid anymore. He looked tough. He had tattoos inked on his forearms, and his green eyes were hard like glass behind a fringe of dark hair.

He limped. Scowled. Didn’t talk much. Didn’t hang out with the other kids in the hood. I was seventeen at the time myself, a woman already, and he was a year older. His gaze was that of an old and hardened man, and his body was taut and made for fighting.

I noticed his body, just like I noticed his gaze. He did look at me at school sometimes. I caught his hot gaze on me.

Hey, like I’m saying, I was a woman already. I looked. I wanted.

But it was more than that.

I’m not a shy girl. I get what I want. It wasn’t like boys didn’t swarm around me, making it clear they couldn’t wait to get their hands on me. Back home, in the little town of Destiny, I’d fought them off.

Here it wasn’t any different.

But not Jarett. He minded his own business. Went to school—he was a year behind—and tinkered in his yard, or walled himself up in his attic room. I could see him sometimes sitting at the window, one long leg stretched out, the other folded up. Mysterious.

Sexy.

No matter how hot he was, that wasn’t why I followed him at first, and then talked to him. No, I had other reasons.

I ran to catch up with him whenever I saw him walking down the street, and just talked. Asked him things. Told him things. I was more reckless then than I am now.

Sometimes he replied. Sometimes he shot me bemused looks, like he could see right through my act, right through me, and found something funny there.

We weren’t besties by a long shot. We barely hung out, barely talked enough for that. But we were sort of friends. His presence was always there, a thorn under my skin, inside my chest, burning bright.

Too bright.

His adoptive parents already had a son. Sebastian was his name. Dark hair, blue eyes, tall and lanky and a real douchebag, the sort that pulls the wings off butterflies and brags about it. Sebastian was older by a couple of years, and at the time was supposed to be working in an office downtown as a courier.

I say “supposed” because he was always at home, lounging in the hammock in the back yard, or sitting on the porch steps, messing around on his phone. He was a guy to avoid, especially at night, when he stumbled about drunk, yelling at passers-by.

School wasn’t easy for me there. Losing all my friends wasn’t easy. Living on a street with drunks and bullies was hell.

And here is the real reason I first gravitated toward Jarett. I looked to him for protection.

See, the other boys avoided him, never really picked fights with him—at least not in the open, not where I could see. He was tall, strong, intimidating. He had a look about him that screamed danger. So perversely, walking by him on our street felt safe.

We never talked about that. I never asked for his protection. He never offered it. But he walked with me anyway. And I felt safe, safer than I ever had, especially since that incident back in Destiny, the one I kept trying to forget.

In the time we lived on that street, I didn’t manage to find out about him anything more than random details.

Like the fact he has a middle name nobody knows.