It took a couple of months for Peyton to resume normal activities again. Even though the injuries she sustained were minor, the nightmares took their toll and often she left for school with dark circles under her eyes.
When the bad dreams stopped, or at least her screaming throughout the night, her grades started to slip. Her overall attitude with life, the Cartwells, and everything in general, drastically changed. Her coach was a friend, and her mentor. With too much death surrounding her, it finally took its toll.
Evan sat at the kitchen table watching her as she stomped across the yard. A truck barreled up the driveway and took the final curve toward the house on two wheels. Peyton never looked back. Evan immediately stood, ready to go and save her if she needed saving.
“Peyton Storm!” A boy jumped out of the cab, took two or three leaps toward her and wrapped her around the waist, pinning her to him. He said something to her, something intimate, something secretive.
Whatever he said, she hauled off with a rapid reply. She hit him.
By the time Evan saw her tight little fist drawn, the first punch was thrown. Evan headed for the door but Kane and Braden beat him there.
“What seems to be the problem here?” Braden asked in a sensible tone while Kane gave the fellow an evil eye.
The younger guy held his lip and bled. “Damn it, Peyton, you throw a mean punch!”
“Peyton?” Braden waited for an answer. “You know better than to hit your friends.” The stench of booze filled the air.
“Yeah, well, maybe you should’ve taught her how to be a lady altogether. The fucking bitch bit me.” He tugged up his shirt and showed off a few bite marks, right above his belt buckle.
Evan watched Braden and Kane. His own dick twitched but their set jaws showed more anger than he’d ever want to go up against. Damn her for going down on the prick.
“I told you, I don’t suck a guy’s cock. You should’ve listened.” She prissed her small ass across the lawn and didn’t look back. She most likely realized they’d take care of her little problem. And they did.
“Trying to get Peyton’s sweet little cheeks around that bad boy, huh?” Kane grabbed his shirt and shook him. “How old are you kid?”
“Seventeen.”
At least he was smart enough to lie and Evan knew it was a fib. Peyton didn’t go out with guys younger than herself.
“Seventeen.” Kane released him. “Is that right?” He took a step backwards. “What the hell?”
He drew back and came through with a swing but Braden grabbed his arm and stopped a direct hit. Cursing, Kane glared at the guy one last time and then headed for the house.
From the porch, he shouted back at his brothers. “Someone explain to our guest why Peyton bit him, and while you’re at it, let him know Peyton doesn’t go out with minors. I started to hit him because he lied to me. If I find out her lips locked around his dick, I’m coming back out here with a gun.
Peyton pulled the bottle of vodka from under her bed. She poured it into the glass of diet soda she brought from the kitchen. She stirred it with a straw, tossed the plastic bottle back into the duffel bag and kicked it back where she found it just in time to look up at Kane.
“What do you want?”
“I want to know why you’ve decided to self-destruct.”
“I’m going through a hard time right now. It’ll pass. I’ll get over it.” She took a gulp of her drink, slammed it on her bedside table and opened her Spanish book.
“Peyton, you said you’d play basketball. You didn’t. You were supposed to try out for the softball team and you didn’t. There’s something going on here, and it’s time you talked to someone. If not me, then maybe Braden or Evan.”
“And if I don’t want to talk to them?”
“You’re going to talk to someone.”
She took another sip of her drink and realized when she stirred it, Kane wasn’t stupid. He reached for the glass and didn’t sniff. Instead, he turned it up and drank the bottom out of it.
“Vodka isn’t going to make the pain go away, Peyton.”
“I’m not in pain,” she replied.
“Oh you’re hurting all right. Everything you’ve done over the last few months proves it. You can’t get away from it and unless you let us help you, it’s going to become a big part of who you are. You don’t want-”
She turned the page in her book and pretended to read. “Go away, Kane. I don’t need your lectures.”
Braden studied them from the hall before he stepped inside her room. “She’s right, Kane. She doesn’t want to hear it. She’s doing fine on her own, it appears. The kid downstairs didn’t even know Peyton before yesterday. She met him on the internet. See how great she’s doing on her own? So good in fact, she almost let some twenty year old loser fuck her. It would’ve been her first time, or so he said, and you were just ready to lay it out for him, huh, Peyton?”
“He’s not a kid. Just because you boys tower over everyone and look older than you are doesn’t mean everyone else is a kid.”
“Are you talking about the kid downstairs or yourself?” Kane asked.
“What difference does it make?” she snapped.
Braden’s jaw set tight. “Peyton, I want this room clean, and I want it tidy before the weekend. I want you to pick up your things downstairs in the living room and start taking some pride in yourself again. Half the time you smell like cigarettes and booze.”
She stuck her lip out and pouted, something she often did whenever Braden scolded her. “I’m too old for you to tell me what to do.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass if you’re forty nine and holding. I want you to call your softball coach and ask her to consider letting you try out late for the team. One C on your report card, and you’re grounded. Ditch school again, and you’re spanked.”
“Fine.”
“Then-”
“Oh fuck you, Braden! You aren’t my father.”
He stared at her dumbfounded. “No, you’re right. I’m not your father but I am still a man who cares about you. We all care about you, Peyton. Hell, Kane even saved your life. Maybe someday when you drag yourself out of self pity, you’ll let me show you a clip from the video footage I have. He’s lucky he didn’t die trying to save you.”
Peyton didn’t look up. She couldn’t look up. She slipped deeper into her own misery and couldn’t save herself from the freefall.
“She’s drinking in her room too.” Kane handed the glass to Braden.
“You’re tattling on me?” Tears welled up in her eyes. “I have a right to do what I want in this room. Braden, you said so yourself. It’s my room. I have the right to bring whatever I want into my own room.”
“If it’s legal,” Evan pointed out as soon as he appeared there too.
“Alcohol is legal!”
“If you’re twenty-one.” Evan continued to stick his nose where she didn’t think it belonged, “And you’re not twenty-one.”
“Gang up on me all you want but it’s not going to change anything.”
“It might,” Evan said.
“Young lady, I’m just getting started too after what your friend told us downstairs.” Braden tilted her chin, and she knew he wanted to see her squirm.
Kane sat down in the rocking chair. He looked like he planned to stay awhile.
“First of all, I want your keys,” Braden deadpanned.
“My keys?” she wailed.
“Yes, now.” Braden stood his ground.
“You can’t take my keys. You made me sell my car and without the one you gave me, I’ll have to bum rides.”
“You have three bums ready to sign on as your personal chauffeurs.” Evan smirked and added, “Then we can get a good look at that pervert who thinks he’s going to make you his mistress.”
She swallowed stiffly. She should’ve known they’d find out. The rumors were all over school.
“I’m eighteen years old. I can do what I want when I want.”
“Not while you’re living here,” Braden said. “You’re seeing a married man, Peyton.”
Kane’s jaw muscles tensed and he clenched his fist. “She’s what?”
“Tell him, Peyton,” Braden encouraged. “It’s out all over town. You’ll hear about it Kane, trust me. Everybody but the man’s wife knows it.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Peyton said. And they really didn’t. She’d decided not to sleep with that guy anyway, because he did have a wife. In fact, in recent days, she’d decided she might die a virgin.
“Oh I think we do,” Evan said.
“That boy down there doesn’t know anything about me,” she informed.
“He knew enough to have your little pointed teeth bite him right above the belt. I’m willing to bet he knows what it feels like to have your lips on his, your bare breasts against his chest…” Kane shifted in the chair and she saw the raw hunger, almost heard it in his voice before he allowed her to see the bulge in between his legs, and he let her see. He splayed his legs and they fell right open encouraging her to look, never mind want.
“I’m not worried about a kid. I’m more worried about the family she’s setting out to destroy,” Braden said.
For a second Peyton wondered if he was talking about the married guy again-David Taylor’s family-or the family she disrupted when she moved in with them.
“The man has a wife, Peyton.” Braden said. She didn’t want to look at him. She felt his gaze burning through her. “A wife and two kids.”
She shrugged. “Maybe he’s tired of her.”
“Shit, I’m not going to listen to this,” Evan said, “Peyton, if you want to whore yourself out to a married man then you go right at it, but the sad thing is David Taylor is…was a good man. He’s never had the first bit of trouble making his ends meet, raising his family, and taking care of his pretty little wife. You’re starting trouble with a married man who doesn’t need it. Walk the fuck away. Be decent for a change. You used to have some decency in you before the…”
“Say it,” she mumbled.
“I don’t need to say it. You were there. You know…”
“I want you to say it! I want you to say it so I can hear it! I want to know I made it out of there. I want someone to tell me how lucky I was to make it out alive but only after I remember everything I can remember about that day. I’m tired of everyone tiptoeing around it, afraid to tell me how horrible and awful it was. I know how horrific it was but I…want…you…to…say…it!”
By the time she’d screamed her head off, she stood in front of Evan with her hands nothing more than tight fists. She stretched up on her tiptoes and for a minute, she thought she might swing at him, fight out her anger regardless of where she displaced it.
“You wanna know?” Braden’s shock made her feel pathetic. “Then I’ll let you see. I’ll show it to you. My camera captured it all.”
“No,” Kane warned.
“Yeah, it’s time. She’s right. We’ve tried to protect her and instead of helping her, we drove her away, into her own world and the guilt-the package you shouldn’t even think about carrying, Peyton- is tearing her apart. I’ll be right back.” Braden disappeared into the hallway after he agreed to show her the footage.
“And don’t you ever call me a whore.” She glared at Evan and then at Kane. “I would’ve gladly been your whore or yours,” she looked back to Evan again, “but I wasn’t woman enough for a Cartwell man.”
Evan’s voice softened but Kane shook his head and looked down at his hands. “Peyton, that’s not true.”
“What a sorry bastard,” she said turning to Kane. “You’re not going to admit it or deny it.” She wasn’t good enough. His actions spoke louder than words anyway. At one time, she thought he wanted her, but now everything she thought they shared seemed like a distant dream.
Braden came back with the DVD in hand. He turned on the DVD player and her television and then settled on the bed next to her. He tossed the remote to Evan who hit play.
Peyton took a deep breath and watched as the events Braden captured on camera told several tales of one blood spilling afternoon.
“I hope you’re happy.” Kane’s accusatory tone of superiority often pissed them off. He hoped it made them fighting mad. He was pissed now and they caused it.
“She wanted it over, behind her.” Braden grabbed a beer from the fridge.
“So you had to show her the way it all happened?” Kane’s face tensed as he relived the memory of watching her glance over at him throughout the recorded footage. His voice rang out over everyone else’s that day. It wasn’t until then, until he watched everything Braden’s camera captured, that he realized he carried something deep for Peyton. Something so deep, it terrified him. He not only dodged bullets for her, he ran in front of them and barely missed life-threatening shots fired.
“She’s going to move on, now. You’ll see.”
“You still need to ground her ass,” Evan said as he ran his hand over the front of his pants. “Imagine her out there at the boathouse with the guy she met online. She met him online and took him to our boathouse. I’d like to swat her little tail again and again for the stunt. I can’t even think about what he did to her, his mouth doing things to her that I…”
“That you what?” Braden pointed out the window. “She’s over there by the fence, by the way.”
“Never mind,” Evan said.
“I’m not grounding her. I can’t take away her car. It’s the only thing she feels like truly belongs to her.”
Kane understood but he still thought she needed some discipline. The kind he wanted to give her wasn’t anything these two would agree to at all so why ask. “Ground her for tomorrow. I’ll take her to school. I have to go into town early anyway.”
“You’re going to see David Taylor,” Evan said.
“I thought about it.”
“Peyton had little to do going after him.” Braden shook his head. “Damn pretty wife he has too.”
“Is she fucking him?” Kane asked like he didn’t care one way or the other but he did. He wanted to snap the man’s neck for looking at her. When he thought about another man handling her with nothing but sexing her little body crazy on his mind, he wanted to kill. It wasn’t normal. It wasn’t rational but who cared? His thoughts in regards to Peyton were his to own.
“Don’t know. I imagine she is.” Braden said. “Seems everyone in town thinks so.”
“Then, I’m going to go pay him a visit and ask,” Kane said and before he walked out he added, “And if he is, somebody better call him and tell him to run like hell.”