Claiming the Enemy: Dustin (Porter Brothers Trilogy 3)

“I don’t know what was worse—Ma using paint thinner to get it off me, going to school looking like a victim of an atomic blast, or the ass-whipping from Pa. And what trouble did you get in? Zip, zilch, nada. You told your parents I talked you into it.

“Hell, you even convinced me to sneak out one night to go camping. Jesus Christ, that was a fiasco. You left me out there all night. And where were you? Home in bed. You told me you fell asleep waiting for your pa to go to bed.

“You know that when Holly put Logan in your daycare, Greer had a fit? I told him that kids would never put one over on you, because you had done it all.”

When he couldn’t take Jessie’s guttural moans anymore, he lowered the Porter pride to let an admission slip out. “I used to tell Tate and Greer when we were younger that no one could hold a candle to you. Jess, they still can’t.”

9

The pain in her face was excruciating, forcing her to consciousness. She just wanted to slip back into the dark sleep she had escaped to, but his voice wouldn’t let her.

At first, she had been frightened to find herself held in strong arms, but then she relaxed at the tender way he was holding her, protecting her from the rocking movements he was making. When she stopped being afraid that the arms holding her were going to hurt her, she was able to concentrate on his words.

Dustin Porter was holding her?

Her jumbled thoughts couldn’t understand why he was there, and she didn’t care. Jessie was just glad she was no longer alone. She wouldn’t have to keep moving, afraid she would never be found. Dustin would take her home. She had as much confidence in him for her safety as she had with Holt and Asher.

She could hear the laughter in his voice as he talked. The youth-filled stories didn’t make her want to laugh, though. No, she felt aching loneliness, because she had lost the friendship that had meant so much to her.

There hadn’t been a time as they had grown when she hadn’t felt a pang in her heart that she wasn’t in his life. She had loved Dustin before she even knew what love was. The best parts of her days were the ones she had spent with him.

Whenever she saw him in town, it became a torture to keep her expression from revealing how much she cared about him. It didn’t matter who he was with, or what they were doing, she pretended his attention was focused on her.

When he was sitting at a booth in the diner with a woman, she was there. When he was sitting in the front row of the movies with Tate and Greer, she was there, too, sitting on the other side of him. When he was standing in the back of the gymnasium during Logan’s kindergarten graduation, she was there, holding his hand. When she saw him grocery shopping with Holly, she was there, pushing the buggy and telling him not to forget the Reese’s Cups. When he had buried Samantha and cried over her grave, she was there crying with him. He thought their friendship ended the day he had thrown the bracelet in the dirt at her feet. It hadn’t. It had just gone in hiding.

She had carried the bracelet home with her, tying it on her own wrist. Her family believed she wore it because Holt had given her the beads. That wasn’t the reason. It was because Dustin had worn it for that brief time. When she’d grown older and was allowed to go into town, she would leave it at home, not wanting Dustin to see it on her.

“Jess, I have to set you down. My legs are cramping.”

She felt herself being gently lifted and laid on the ground. Unable to see and feel his comforting touch, she tried to open her eyes again to make sure that he wasn’t a figment of her imagination.

“Stop! I’m still here. Let me shake this cramp off, then I’ll sit back down.”

His reassurance didn’t help. She had pretended too many times that they were together that she didn’t know if she was making it up in her imagination now.

She desperately licked lips that felt like dumbbells, feeling the relief of drops of water sliding down her throat, then a cool cloth placed on her eyelids.

Experimentally, she tried to find her voice. “Wh …? Where … am … I?” she finally managed to mumble out.

“Thank you, sweet Jesus.”

Jessie could hear the relief in his voice as she felt him crouch down next to her.

“You’re on Black Mountain. What happened to you? Can you tell me?”

“I … don’t remember.” Her head still felt as if a drummer was doing a solo in her head. “My head hurts,” she moaned out, trying to reach for the source of the pain, but Dustin wouldn’t let her.