Love and Wargames: A Bad Boy Hacker Romance (26 page)

I miss Chicago. I miss my friends. Above all, I miss my bad boy stepbrother, Rick. The only person in the world that wants me around.

Charlie has three rules:

1. Put everything back where you found it.

2. Don’t leave the house without supervision.

3. Stay away from his son, Tobias.

He’s
untouchable
.

In more ways than one.

I walked in on Tobias changing.

It was a total accident, but I didn’t cover my eyes.

It wasn’t his perfect body that kept me from looking away.

It was the bruises.

They were everywhere, like red and blue paint splattered across his ribs and arms.

He’s hiding something but he’s not telling.

Luckily, I’m not too keen on living by the rules.

I follow him underground — literally — and catch him going head to head with some of the most vicious fighters in the country.

The Midwest Alphas. An illegal MMA fighting tournament.

Tobias is the local favorite to win it all.

But there’s something he wants more than to be the Alpha champion…

And he’s looking right at me.

Chapter 1

Who Are You?

My stepfather turns the wheel and we travel off the highway onto a dirt road. The car rocks back and forth along the unstable drive and the contents of my stomach shift from motion sickness I never knew I had.

Six hours. It’s been six hours in this hot, muggy car, driving farther south than I’ve ever wanted to be in my entire life. Chicago is my home and I miss it more and more with every mile we travel. The last thing I want to do is spend the summer down in Bumfuck, Missouri, but like they said, I have no choice in the matter.

The farm comes into view as the fluorescent headlights illuminate it in the darkness. I cringe. It looks exactly as I expected it to, with a big, white house and an ugly, red barn at the far end of the driveway. Ugh, it even smells like it looks. Like dirt, mold, and dead things.

The car stops and my mother and stepfather exchange a quick glance in the front seat. She’s barely looked at me in days, even when I begged her to speak to me. She’s weak, always has been. I know that this was all my stepfather’s idea, and like the submissive, doting wife she is, she never questioned it for a second.

My stepfather steps outside the car and slams his door before wandering back to the trunk. I lean forward, taking the only opportunity I have left.

“Mom, please,” I beg her. “You don’t have to do this. Just give me one more chance and I—”

The door next to me opens and I look up into the dark eyes of my stepfather, Thomas. He holds my suitcase in one hand. “Get out, Claire.”

I turn back to my mother. Her eyes are down, on the brink of tears. “Mom, say something,” I tell her.

“Claire, get out of the car.”

I ignore him and reach out to my mother. “Mom—” His hand grips my arm to pull me out. I snatch my purse off the seat beside me. “Mom!”

She covers her face with her hands as I’m forced out on to the gravel driveway. Thomas closes the door behind us, casting her face into total darkness.

“Come on,” he growls. He keeps his grip on me and tugs me along with him towards the dark, white house. A dim lamp lights the porch above the scratched front door, painted red to match the eyesore of a barn across the gravel driveway.

“Will you please let me go?” I ask, my voice shaking.

Thomas says nothing, he never even turns back to acknowledge that I spoke. We climb the wooden porch steps and stop in front of the door. He reaches out and knocks twice.

Before I can take another breath, the door flies open and an older man stands in the doorway. He’s taller, a little taller than Thomas, but carries the exact same buzzed black and silver hair and mustache that every man I know born in the 1970s carries around with him like a badge of honor. I look up at him and we lock eyes for a brief moment.

“Come on in,” he says.

Thomas’ hand drops from my arm and he stares me down. “Go on,” he gestures me inside.

My eyes scan the entrance. I stand firm, not wanting to take another step. “Please take me home—”

“Get in the damn house, Claire.”

I look at my stepfather and my hatred for him multiplies. A chill glides through my body. I wrap my arms around my chest to keep the warmth inside. The early summer air does little to help. I quake and shiver. My body doesn’t feel like my own. I feel out of focus, lost in my own skin.

Thomas’ hand touches my back and he shoves me inside. I stumble, but keep myself up right as I walk into the large farmhouse. He tosses my suitcase inside after me and it lands with a loud thud at my feet.

“Goodnight, Thomas,” the man says to my stepfather before closing the door behind me.

We stand in silence as I listen to the sounds of Thomas’ boots on the porch outside and the car engine roaring with life before rolling down the gravel road.

The shock hits me. They left me here. They actually left me here. They left me behind in some strange house with some strange man out in the middle of nowhere. I look around the entryway. The stairs to the second floor sit right ahead of me and a living room sits just to the right of the front door. This house is obviously old, worn, and hasn’t seen a woman’s touch in quite some time. The furniture in the living room doesn’t match. The throw rugs are worn down from feet walking on them for decades. The television is small and just as old as I am.

“Come with me,” the man finally says.

He steps out of the living room and I reluctantly follow him into the back of the house. We enter a kitchen with white counters and a white floor. White appliances, white everything.

“Sit down.” He pulls out a wooden chair from the round dinner table in the corner and points it towards the center of the room. As I sit down, I feel like it might break beneath me, it’s so old. I cling to my purse like a security blanket, the only sense of familiarity I have here.

“Do you know why you’re here?” the man asks. He reaches up and grabs a drinking glass from the cupboard and fills it with water from the sink faucet.

I scoff, but say nothing. My teeth chatter together in my head. My thumping heart fills my ears. He walks forward and holds the water glass out for me to take. My tongue twitches, begging for it after the long and hot car ride. I take the glass and gulp the water down. It tastes old and strange, but it’s better than nothing.

“Your parents believe you’ve gone down the wrong path and they sent you here for my guidance,” he says, leaning back against the kitchen counter near the sink.

“What makes you so special?” I set the glass down on the table behind me.

“My name is Charlie Eastwood,” he says. “We’ve never met, but I know who you are.”

“Right…” I sigh, recalling the name. “Uncle Charlie. Thomas’ brother. The cop.”

“I’m not a cop anymore,” he says. “But back then, I was the one they called to deal with situations like this.”

“Like what?” I ask.

“You’re in withdrawal, Claire,” he says. “You’re twitchy. You can’t get warm.” He furrows his brow. “How long since your last hit? Two days? Three?”

I roll my eyes.

“Your parents aren’t sure what you took, but I’d guess cocaine, maybe a little bit of something else.”

“Am I supposed to be impressed?” I ask.

“You have a drug problem, an attitude problem, and…” he takes a breath, “a boundary problem.”

“What boundary problem?” I scoff.

“They told me about you and Rick,” he says.

I shift in the chair. “Oh, come on…”

“You two are family—”

“He’s my stepbrother!” I shout. “
Step
. We’re not actually
related
. You people know that, right?”

“Family is more than blood, young lady.”

“Okay, yeah. Sure. Fine. Whatever. But Rick and I did nothing wrong!”

He pushes himself off the counter. “Calm down,” he warns. “Now, I don’t care about that as much as they do. The cops didn’t pick you up for fooling around with your stepbrother. They picked you up for being a minor under the influence of drugs and alcohol. And to be honest, I’m more concerned with the bruises on your face right now than anything else.”

I flinch. “He didn’t do anything.”

“He’s not here, Claire. You don’t have to cover for him—”

“I shouldn’t be here,” I interrupt. “This is bullshit.”

“I won’t tolerate swearing in my house.”

“What is this, 1962?”

“While you’re here in my house, you will follow my rules,” he says. “You should consider yourself lucky—”

“Lucky?”

“The officers that picked you up could have booked you with enough to put you away for a long time. I’m not just talking jail, I’m talking rehab and lots of red marks on your permanent record. Your life, ruined, in one night — over something as stupid as getting high—”

“Thanks for the recap, Dudley Do-Right.”

He pauses and stares down at me. I expect anger in his voice, but he holds it back, calm and collected. “Claire, you’re lucky,” he repeats. “You might not think so, but the other kids you were arrested with didn’t have the connections with the law your stepfather does and they’re all sitting in concrete cells right now. You aren’t.”

“May as well be…” My eyes wash over the bright kitchen again. “You can’t keep my here. This is kidnapping.”

“The law says otherwise,” he says. “You’re a minor and your parents have transferred you into my care for the summer—”

“Only for another month,” I interrupt. “I turn eighteen soon and when I do, I’m walking out of here.”

“We’ll see about that,” he nods. “In the meantime, you’ll follow a strict schedule for meals, chores, and bedtime—”

“I have a
bedtime
?”

“And you’re late for that tonight, so I better see you to your room.”

I scoff. “It’s nine o’clock.”

“Oh, and also…” He reaches out and snatches my purse out of my hands.

“Hey!” I shout.

He fishes inside of it and grabs my phone. “You’ve lost all phone privileges. And we don’t have wi-fi out here, so it’s basically useless to you.”

“What the hell—?”

“I said no swearing.”

“Hell isn’t a swear,” I argue.

“It is the way you use it.”

I take a breath and it clatters throughout my body, knocking my insides around. “This is crap,” I say.

Charlie glares down at me, his eyes falling down my face. “You want to tell me how you busted your lip open?” he asks.

I press against the cut with my tongue and the near-forgotten pain fires up my cheek from my bottom lip. “Slipped on a banana peel,” I quip.

“I bet you tumbled right onto a doorknob, too, didn’t ya?” he asks.

I say nothing.

He sighs and drops the empty purse back into my lap. “Let’s go.”

I follow him back to the entryway and I grab my suitcase off the floor. My eyes wander upwards and I see a long rifle mounted above the door. I missed it earlier, but it’s clear as day now from this angle.

The floor creaks beneath us as we climb the stairs. It’s loud, annoying, and completely eliminates the possibility of sneaking out. I get the feeling Officer Killjoy here sleeps with one eye open.

There are four doors in the second floor hallway. Charlie points to the left, targeting the nearest door to the top of the stairs. “That’s my room,” he says. We head to the right and he pushes open the next door. “Bathroom here. If the toilet won’t flush, just jiggle the handle a little.”