“I’d just
turned seventeen.”
“Did he bother you?”
“Not at first. He was more into my mom than a dopey-looking kid with bad hair and ill-fitting clothes. But his friends were something else. I think initially they started to bug me out of sheer boredom. I was used to having my ass grabbed or being shoved around by some of the other guys my mom hooked up with. Nazi boy’s friends were different, though.”
As she described her encounters, Shane’s muscles tensed. “Did they hurt you?”
She knew what he was asking. “If you’re trying to be delicate and ask if I got raped, the answer is no.”
Shane relaxed a little. “So what happened?”
“For a while it was okay. I was hiding behind bad hygiene and a dim-witted personality. Then one day I was taking a shower and thought I was alone in the house.”
“You weren’t?”
“Nazi boy had taken off with his buddies to go do something and I wasn’t expecting them back. I never showered when he was home. Most days I either took clothes to school and cleaned up there or did the same thing at a friend’s house.”
“That’s pretty extreme.”
The unfinished mug of tea had gone cold in Brandee’s hands, so she set it on the coffee table. “I’d seen how he could be around my mom and it made me feel way too vulnerable to be naked in the house.”
“So he came home unexpectedly and caught you in the shower?”
Those days with her mom weren’t something she liked talking about and part of her couldn’t believe she was sharing this story with Shane. The only other person she’d told was Chelsea.
“I was coming out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a towel. The second I saw him, I jumped back into the bathroom and locked the door. He banged on the door, badgering me to open it for twenty minutes until my mom came home.”
“Did you tell her what happened?”
“No. Why bother? She’d just accuse me of enticing him. Either she was scared of him or she liked the partying too much. This one wasn’t going away anytime soon.”
“Did he come after you again?”
“For a while I tried to stay away as much as possible, but sometimes I had to go home. When I did, I was careful to do so when my mom was home. He left me alone while she was around.”
“I don’t suppose you had a teacher or adult that could help you out.”
“That might have been smart. But I felt like all the adults I’d reached out to had failed me. Instead, I found the biggest, meanest football player in our school and made him the most devoted boyfriend ever.” She batted her eyelashes and simpered. “Oh, Cal, you’re just so big and strong.” Her voice dripped with honey. “Do you think you could get that terrible man who lives with my mother to stop trying to put his hands all over me?”
“Did that work?”
“Like a charm. Nazi boy was all talk and glass jaw. He knew it and I knew it. At five-ten and 170, he might have scared me, but he was no match for a six-five, 280-pound linebacker.”
Shane regarded her with admiration and respect. “So your linebacker kept you safe until you finished high school?”
Brandee shifted her gaze out toward the darkness beyond the patio and debated lying to him. “I didn’t actually finish high school.”
“How come?”
“Because two months before graduation my mom finally figured out that her boyfriend was coming on to me and rather than kicking him to the curb, she blamed me. That’s when I ran away for good.”
* * *
Shane’s first instinct was to curse out her mother, but the way Brandee was braced for his reaction, he knew he had to take a gentler approach or risk her fleeing back behind her defenses.
“Wow, that sucks.”