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D

ad was suspiciously calm about the impromptu sleepover, especially compared to me who hadn’t been informed beforehand that it would be a sleepover until the conversation was occurring.

It’d been a fight to keep my expression blank when it felt like an army of ants had begun marching beneath my skin.

“So, Mr. Walker,” Kolton began, slapping Dad on the shoulder like they were old pals. “It’s okay with you if we spend the night, right?”

I about swallowed my tongue.

Dad cast me an unimpressed look, garnished with a skeptically raised brow. He’d been throwing together a couple of homemade pizzas to feed the incoming horde of teenage boys—men, honestly.

I shrugged my shoulders, feigning nonchalance even as it seemed to be a sudden struggle to maintain my balance atop the barstool at the island.

“Hmm.” Dad rolled the dough, shaping circles as deftly as his hands could tear down a carburetor. “Your parents are okay with you spending the night at a girl’s house?”

“Yeah, George won’t care, if he notices at all.”

And if that wasn’t a loaded statement.

Was I the only one here with a well-adjusted family?

Well, okay, fine, Mom was a workaholic who took overprotection to an extreme, so there was that.

Oh, and crazy Aunt Brunhilda from Mom’s side, but she’d been a footnote at best throughout our lives. Did that qualify as a broken family?

I could see the exact second Kolton’s home life registered with Dad, tugging at his heartstrings.

Ben’s absent father had Dad taking him under his wing—after he was reassured that Ben was good enough for his “only daughter.” The day after he’d roadside assisted Ben when Chief Pierce couldn’t be bothered to hop in his squad car and drive over until his shift ended hours later, I’d sulked downstairs midday after lazing in bed an embarrassingly long time for Ben to text me his routine good morning. To my shock, he’d been out front all along, bent under the hood of his truck with my dad instructing him how to check his fluids, and I’d found out he’d been there for hours.

Mark my words, I’d be running into Kolton around the house too, now, and heaven help Ralph or Hunter if they also had family problems. Dad was gaining a penchant for collecting wayward teens.

“You know what? Alright. I’ll have to run it by Anne first, but I’m sure it won’t be a problem.” Dad paused, chopping up the onions. The fact that his eyes hadn’t watered from the burning juices was a flex in itself, so when he lifted the knife and pointed between the two boys with it, I swore that I wouldn’t tease them later for how they paled. “But just be aware, my wife keeps a very hectic schedule, so I sleep light. I can hear a mouse crawling around from the other side of the house, if you get my drift.”

Ben cleared his throat. “Loud and clear, sir.”

Dad’s humor flooded back into his entire demeanor, and even the way he stood changed, as if he’d gained an inch or two of height to give the boys his speech. “Come now, Ben” —he popped a jalapeno in his mouth, chewing it with a straight face— “no need to call me sir! Mr. Walker is just fine.”

Considering he’d already allowed Ben first name privileges, I had to fight not to roll my eyes. Apparently, Dad had his heart set on posturing all night and keeping the guys on their toes.

Joy.

Change the subject, Willa.

“Speaking of Mom, where is she?” I asked, stretching over to snag a much tamer green pepper.

“She got called in. Won’t be back until morning.”

I gave a noncommittal hum. “So, about my text regarding the Jeep—”

Dad paused, his laser focus jumping up. “You texted me about the Jeep?”

“Er, yeah? Didn’t you get it?” Even as I questioned him, I slipped my phone from my pocket, only to stare in confusion. None of the texts had gone through, and not even the SOS I’d sent about the Jeep not starting and to come get me when he was done was there. My brows scrunched up.

Had I only imagined writing it?

More than a little weirded out, I cleared my throat. “Ah, sorry, my mistake. I must not have hit send.”

Dad swapped the bowl of sauce for the mozzarella he’d tasked Kolton with grating. “What about the Jeep?”

That explained why he hadn’t burned a path into the Save-a-Lot parking lot, guns blazing.

“Oh, nothing bad, just that the alternator went out. It wouldn’t start. Hunter is getting it replaced. Should be fixed in no time.”

Dad toweled his hands dry before tossing the overly floral cloth over his shoulder—a regular Mr. Mom, that one. “You should have called. I could have come and got you.”

Yes, he would have.

I scrunched my face to hide my nerves. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d lied to my dad in such a large way. “And interrupt you and Mom? No, thank you.”

Dad huffed. “You were made somehow, kiddo.”

Now, I didn’t have to exaggerate my disgust. “Ew! Dad, gross!”

Dad grinned a very smug grin.

Oh, they’d definitely been up to no good before Mom got called in. “Hunter,” I began pointedly, indicating that we were moving on.

“What about me?” the guy in question asked, his deep voice sounding so surreal in my house. The boundaries between my worlds blurred, and the lonesome part of me that yearned for companionship seemed so far away.

Hunter appeared as he rounded the closed staircase that marked the center of the house on an otherwise open first floor. Even without a doorway to frame him in, he seemed massive. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Sorry, some kid answered the door and let me in.”

Dad circled the counter, his hand held out. “I remember you. Gray Jeep. Twenty—”Dad rattled off a string of information about Hunter’s car that I tuned out in lieu of my racing mind. I hadn’t clued Hunter in on the lie I’d just told. What if he spilled the beans?

I jumped from my seat, crossing to where they were still talking. “Yeah,” I interrupted, my voice high-pitched. “Hunter’s the one who did the battery test and traced down that the alternator was why my Jeep wouldn’t start.”

Hunter’s gray eyes locked on me, steel cold.

“Right,” Dad agreed affably. “I appreciate you helping my daughter out, but I can come get her car and fix it myself. Seriously, I don’t want to impose, and my wife is going to insist I check over anything you do anyway, so we might as well skip the middleman.”

Yeah, that wouldn’t work.

Hunter shrugged. “It’s no problem at all. I work at TJ’s across the street, so it wasn’t a big deal to take a ten-minute break and run over. And since Willa already paid in advance” —I hadn’t— “and she’s one of the first customers I brought in” —I probably wasn’t— “it would look bad in front of my boss if you just came and towed it away.”

I held my breath as the two faced off.

Eventually, Dad nodded. “I can respect that. Welcome, Hunter. You like pizza?”

Hunter’s answer was interrupted as Dad and I both spotted Ralph’s silhouette moving through the glass of the front door. Since Nick had been parked in front of the TV all afternoon to binge his favorite shows, he popped up to grab the door before Ralph even got the chance to knock.

That was how we’d missed Hunter’s arrival before.

“You here for my sister too?” he demanded bluntly, not bothered by Ralph’s broad size.

Ralph arched a brow that morphed into amusement when he clocked our impromptu powwow near the kitchen. He shot me a wink. “I am.”

Nick shrugged as he left the door open and returned to his spot on the sectional. As if Ralph couldn’t see us for himself, Nick added a careless, “She’s that way.”

Brothers were so embarrassing.

Ralph coughed back a chuckle as he stepped inside.

The gang was all here.

Dinner passed quickly, and despite feeling slightly nauseous from nerves, I did not want to play Russian roulette with hallucinations by skipping food, so I cleared my plate and choked down a second.

“Okay,” Dad said, wiping his face with a napkin. “I think I’ve grilled you enough. Nick and I will do the dishes. You guys can go hang out, and we’ll get the couch arranged for sleeping later. Hope you boys are close, because you’re about to be even closer after tonight.”

Kolton, who’d claimed the seat on my right in a hurry at the start of dinner, leaned over with wide eyes glued on my dad’s back. “Why did that sound like a threat?”

My lips twitched, finding some amusement through the overwhelming embarrassment. “Probably just some residual PTSD from all the implied violence and promises he made during dinner.” I nudged him and climbed to my feet. “You’ll be fine.”

“Says you,” he grumbled, following my lead and taking his plate to the sink, except he gave Dad a much wider berth than I had. Dad didn’t look up, but my vantage point let me see the grin he cracked at having somewhat cowed the rather brash, overconfident boy Kolton had been upon arrival.

“Lead the way, Willa,” Ralph prodded when I paused in indecision as they gathered at the foot of the stairs. He glanced around the open layout. “I’m going to guess your room’s not on the first floor.”

It wasn’t, but it only hit me just now how it might look that I still shared my room with my little brother when we started our senior year the day after tomorrow. “But what if my dad thinks…”

Kolton shrugged, slipping past me before I could think of another excuse. “Eh, he was expecting us to secret away to your room, otherwise he wouldn’t have made that fu—uh, uh, fudging comment about keeping the door open. Now, which door is yours?”

He was an unstoppable force as I chased him up the stairs, but he’d already discovered and dismissed the master bedroom, the linen closet, Nick’s and my bathroom, and the attic. That only left my door, and he entered before I could even think about catching up.

Deft little thing.

Bet that was annoying to the opposing football teams.

“Uh, Willa?” he called from within. His shaggy blond head poked back out. “You share a room with your kid brother?”

Ben knew that, kind of. I’d told him, because he hadn’t wanted to push the boundaries and go into my bedroom—something about it being disrespectful.

Was it odd that Kolton had technically seen my room before my boyfriend?

Yeah, probably.

Ben swept past me to shove Kolton. “If you’re going to give her a hard time, you’re welcome to walk home.”

Kolton looked horrified. “But… it’s dark as fuck outside.” His eyes bugged out, and he stared at the open doorway as if expecting my dad to materialize and rain brimstone and fire down on him for cursing. When nothing happened, he crossed over to my bed and flopped back on it, staring up at the slats above. “Seriously. I’ve been spoiled in the city. I don’t know what to do with all the darkness out there.”

“Can we focus?” Hunter demanded, stealing the swivel desk chair. “Is your dad really going to inspect your car? Because if so, you probably need a story ready to explain why you have brand-new brake lines.”

I groaned, fully pulled back into the conversation until Ben began casually inspecting the knickknacks and books in my room. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Kolton picked up a decorative pillow, a blue rose, tossed it in the air, and caught it. “If her mother’s half as paranoid as Willa described, then yeah, she’s going to make her dad inspect it.”

Ralph plopped down on my brother’s bed, mimicking Kolton’s prone form. “Can’t you find a used set?”

“A used set. Of brake lines.” Hunter cast him a skeptical glance. “Most people just buy new when theirs blow. We could track some down, but it might take a while.”

My eyes rounded. “Wait, what? How long? Dad thinks you’re just putting in an alternator! We don’t have weeks to find replacement parts.”

Hunter fixed me with a look. “Why are you so eager to get your car back? They cut your lines once, they can cut them again. It was only by some miracle that your Jeep didn’t start, because it should have.”

I deflated, leaning against Nick’s bedpost. “I know.” My voice was small, but the taste of freedom had been so sweet after growing up so sheltered. The normalcy of having friends and forgetting my problems, only to have new ones heaped on to spring a wrench in my plans… “I know.”

“So we’ll make an excuse to your dad for the time being and give you lifts if you need it,” Hunter declared, but his tone had softened a lot more than normal to cushion the blow.

Here I was, being ungrateful because I didn’t want my wings clipped. Cry later, Willa . “Thanks,” I squeezed out past the lump in my throat.

Kolton sat up, thumping his forehead on the upper bunk with a hiss. The number of times I’d done that myself growing up nearly cut through my grief and worry as I winced with sympathy. Rubbing what would surely be a bright bruise beneath his mop of blond hair, he glared at the slats as if it was their fault. “We need to talk about how murder fuckhead got his creepy fucking hands on her number too.”

“And how Nick just lets random strangers in your house,” Ben added. “He didn’t even let anyone know Hunter was there, and Hunter’s the kind of guy people should blink twice at.”

“No offense,” Kolton quipped, to which Hunter flipped him off.

I glanced over Hunter. Between his buzzed hair, the scar on his eyebrow, the prominent jaw, and cold gray, back off eyes… Yeah. Hunter didn’t even need to be giant sized to look like he was not someone you wanted to tangle with. Paired with the fact that he was the biggest guy in school, most people went running in the opposite direction.

I cleared my throat. “Nick’s good with faces. He probably remembered you from when we went riding together.”

Ralph sat up more carefully than Kolton, having learned from the blond’s mistake. He crossed his arms, resting his wrists on his knees as he leaned forward. “Yeah, I want to hear more about these phone calls Kolton mentioned.”

Between the three of us, we brought Hunter and Ralph up to speed.

Hunter’s expression shifted into a forbidding frown throughout. “Okay, and hear me out, but what if this guy is someone you know, someone from school?”

I wanted to laugh at the impossibility of his theory. Not only was that a no, it was emphatically no. No one noticed me at school. It might not seem like it to them since we’d become fast friends, but they were the only people in my phone who weren’t relatives.

I didn’t say that though. “No, I don’t think it is.”

“Still, you need to say something to Nick and start locking your doors,” Ben stated, letting me off the hook. He knew more about my isolated history than them, though from Kolton’s knowing gaze that settled on me for half a second, I felt he’d read between the lines on my conviction as well.

“But let’s focus on the next twenty-four hours. You’ll get your statement to the police tomorrow and give them something they can act on,” Ben added. “So let’s take everyone for the grand tour. We can check for locked windows, and I mean every window. Dad took a safety training on serial killers, and the lecturing officer said a teenager crawled through one of those half basement windows and let his friends in so they could slaughter the family.”

I shuddered.

Well, that was a pleasant thought.

“Okay, then.” Ralph got up, also looking a little pale beneath his chocolate complexion. “A long, thorough tour it is then.”