The Dare: A Stepbrother Bully Romance (North Woods University Book 2) Read online

  I’m vaguely aware of Vance’s presence beside me. It makes me feel stronger, and less like the delicate piece of glass seconds away from shattering that I am.

  “Dad... he… he called me, he checked out of rehab, and he didn’t sound good. He was drunk and saying weird stuff. I’m really worried about him. He hasn’t reached out to me since I left and...” My mother’s expression changes from concern to annoyance and my voice trails off at the sudden change.

  “Ava, I know you worry about your father, and that’s fine and all, but he’s an adult. A grown man. It’s not your job to worry and take care of him. We helped him get into that facility for you, and only you. I know it’s hard, but he had his chance. There is nothing else we can do for him. There’s no helping someone that doesn’t want to help themselves.”

  Panic grips onto my heart, she doesn’t care. She doesn’t care. Why am I not surprised?

  “There must be something…he needs me,” I whine.

  “He needs therapy, but therapy only works if he wants it to work and by leaving the facility we sent him to, he’s proven he doesn’t want care, nor does he want to get better. He needs to help himself, Ava.”

  She’s right, I know that, but she doesn’t have to be so cruel. Had her and Henry made a different choice, had they not been so selfish, maybe this never would’ve happened.

  “I don’t care. I’m still going to call the rehab facility and ask them what happened,” I tell her.

  She shakes her head but doesn’t say anything else. Not that I would expect her to. She’s said all that she has to say. Turning, I exit the kitchen and head for the staircase with Vance hot on my heels.

  “I can help you—” he interjects.

  “No,” I interrupt him. “I don’t need your help.”

  “Ava—”

  “I said, I don’t need your help,” I repeat as I run up the stairs.

  He sighs but doesn’t make a move to follow me. Thankfully. Which is good because I need to concentrate on finding my father and I can’t concentrate on anything with Vance sitting next to me. It’s like a haze forms over my mind and my emotions go haywire with him near and I don’t need that right now. I need peace, silence, and a clear mind. I need to help my father, because even though my mother let him down, I won’t.

  ◆◆◆

  Time ticks by slowly. Twenty-four-hours has passed since my father and I’s last conversation. I’ve been on edge ever since then. The lack of sleep I got because of worry hasn’t really helped matters either. I’m grouchy, irritable, and still have no idea what’s going on with him. I can’t focus on anything, which only angers me further.

  Between classes, I’ve managed to call the rehab place twice but all they could tell me was that he checked himself out yesterday morning without any reason. They advised him not to, but he told them he was capable of making his own choices.

  When I wasn’t happy with the answer they gave me, I asked to talk to one of the therapists there and he told me that my father was doing great up until a couple days ago, and that he was surprised that he had left so suddenly.

  It didn’t make sense to me. The puzzle pieces weren’t fitting in their spots.

  “Class dismissed.” Professor Hall’s authoritative voice pulls me from my obsessive thoughts. “Please leave your papers on my desk on the way out, and remember, you lose ten percent of your grade for every day that it’s late.”

  Well isn’t this craptastic.

  He wants the paper that I don’t have because some asshole decided to delete it, aka Vance. I could almost cry. The amount of pressure on my chest making it hard to breathe. There’s probably an ulcer the size of Alaska in my stomach from all the anxiety I’ve been having, and now I have to add this onto the heaping pile of cow shit.

  Gathering up my books, I stuff everything into my backpack. Dragging my feet, I make my way up to his desk, dreading that I’ll have to explain myself to him. Never in my entire life have I been late handing in work. My grades have always been the most important thing to me, the only thing that mattered.

  “Mr. Hall, about my paper…” I start, eyes cast down, shame written all over my face.

  “No worries, Ava, I already know. Mr. Preston came in early this morning and explained to me about your laptop. I’ll give you a ten-day extension, and not a day more, get it to me as soon as you can.”

  “What?” I blurt out, lifting my gaze to Mr. Hall’s.

  He lifts a questioning brow. “Are you okay, Ava? I told you that I was giving you a ten-day extension and you say what?”

  Oh shit. “No, no, that’s not what I mean. I’m sorry.” I shake my head flustered, embarrassed, and ashamed.

  If it weren’t for Vance, I wouldn’t be in this stupid situation. Gripping onto the edge of my backpack, I take a step back and mutter a thank you, before escaping the confines of the room. Chewing on my bottom lip, I walk straight to my car and drive home. I try and call my father a couple more times, hoping, praying that his phone will be back on, but I get the same monotone computerized voicemail.

  Beating a hand against the steering wheel, I roar in frustration. He’s all I have left. The last person on this planet that cares about me and there’s nothing I can do to save him. I wonder what he’s doing right now, where he is? If he has somewhere to stay? I know he’s an adult, but I can’t help but worry for him.

  Moisture fills my eyes and when I pull into the driveway of the mansion, I park my car and wipe at my eyes, willing the pesky tears away. With my backpack in hand, I walk into the house, joyful laughter fills the space, and I tighten my hold on the strap against my shoulder. Their laughter grates on my last nerve and I snap like a rubber band pulled too tight.

  “What’s so funny?” I ask, voice clipped.

  They’re both standing in the kitchen, my mother near the stove, cooking. While Henry stands off to the side, a glass filled with brown liquid in his hand.

  “Oh nothing, sweetie.” She looks up at me, smiling.

  She’s smiling, and I’m dying inside. Why does it always feel like she and Henry are getting exactly what they want while everyone around them suffers?

  “How can you be happy?” Bitter anger boils inside me, filling my veins with an angry venom.

  “What’s not to be happy about?” Henry pipes up, and I swing my frigid gaze to his, acid burning up my throat.

  What’s not to be happy about?

  “While I could name off a long list of things I’m not happy with, starting with my father missing, which neither of you seems to care about,” I spit, bearing my teeth.

  Henry squints his eyes at me, and instead of responding, takes a drink from his glass, a glass that he looks like he wants to toss at my head.

  My mother of course gasps, her eyes widening with horror as if I’ve slapped her.

  “I’m getting very tired of your attitude. I’ve tried to be understanding but…” she starts to lash out, but I don’t give her the chance to finish whatever ridiculous shit she was going to make up. I wonder if she even believes the shit she says.

  “Both of you did this.” I point my finger at my mother, and then Henry. “It was your selfish choices that drove a wedge between your marriages. If you hadn’t fucked each other, maybe our families would be whole. Maybe my father wouldn’t be missing, and maybe I wouldn’t be in this deranged jail cell.”

  I’m past angry, and more in the murderous rage bracket.

  “Ava Marie!” my mother scolds as if I’m a child, her face paling at my spoken truth. So far, I’ve never called her out on her bullshit, but I’m done, so far past done I don’t care what happens to me anymore. Put me on the street, take it all away. At least when it’s over, I’ll still have myself. I turn on my heels, my sandals squeaking across the floor as I stomp out into the foyer.

  “You will not talk to your mother like that, not in my house,” Henry bellows behind me, and I can’t help myself, I turn around, lift my hand, and flip him off. If he thinks he’s going to try and
father me, he has another thing coming. I’ll jump off the side of a cliff before I let that happen.

  “Go fuck yourself, Henry,” I sneer, wanting to wipe the floor with his face, but instead stomp up the stairs and into my room slamming the door so hard that it rattles. Shucking off my backpack, I toss it into the corner on a chair and kick off my sandals. Then I sink into the mattress and wish for it to swallow me whole.

  Tears start to fall without permission and a sob pushes past my lips, the noise breaking the silence around me. Alone. Always alone. I have no one, nothing, my mother doesn’t care about me, my father is missing, and Vance… Squeezing my eyes shut, I try and forget about him. About his scent, the way his body feels against mine, and his words.

  I love you.

  I would never tell him, never, but I love him too.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Vance

  My fingers throb, and my eyes burn, but I finally finished the English paper for her. Most think I’m dumb and that I don’t know my ass from my head, but I do. I just don’t apply myself. Thumbing through the freshly printed pieces of paper, I count them ensuring they’re all there before stapling them together. I would never put so much work into one of my own papers, for her, on the other hand, I stayed up until almost midnight so I could finish this. Professor Hall might have given her ten days, but I want this off her mind.

  Opening my door, I sneak across the hall to hers. All I plan on doing is going into her room quietly to lay this on her desk so she has it in the morning, but when I grab the brass doorknob and turn it slowly, pushing it open gently, a soft sob meets my ears. The noise is earth-shattering, raw, and a cry for help. I open the door enough to slip into the room. It’s dark, but I can see enough to make out the bed.

  I put the paper down on the desk and step closer. Ava’s sobbing quiets down, but I know she’s still crying by the low sniffing noises she’s emitting. I should ask her if she is okay? If there is anything I can do. But I’m not stupid. I know she’ll just send me away.

  She doesn’t want to admit that she needs anyone, and especially not me. Staring down at her unmoving form, I wonder if she would push me away if I slid into the bed next to her? Maybe she would just let me comfort her while pretending I’m not here. I’ve never comforted anyone in my life, mainly because I never had the need or urge to do so. Not until her.

  Weighing my options after standing in her room for two minutes like a creep, I finally decide to try it. Without lifting the blanket, I crawl onto the bed, kicking my boots off, each one hitting the floor with a loud thud. If she notices, she doesn’t say anything. Biting my bottom lip, I scoot closer, waiting for her to tell me to leave, to fuck off.

  I don’t stop until my body is touching hers and even then, that’s not enough for me. Wrapping a heavy arm around her slim waist, I nestle her into the spot against me, the spot that I’m sure was made just for her. She stiffens for a few seconds before relaxing into my touch. Breathing her in, I let her floral scent calm me. A moment later, she starts to sob again, heavy bursts of what I can only describe as pain rip from deep within her chest.

  I want to say something, anything, but I don’t know what. Instead, I hold her tighter, burrowing my face into her hair, letting her know that I’m here, that I’ll always be here if she’ll have me. I hate myself for hurting her, for breaking her more than she already was.

  “When will the pain stop?” she whispers, her voice hoarse.

  “I don’t know. I’ve asked myself that a thousand times in the last five years.” There’s a long moment of silence and then she clears her throat to speak again.

  “Sometimes...” Her voice is thick with emotion and I feel her sadness, her pain, it pricks at my skin, it suffocates me. “I wish I never chose dare that night. I only chose it because I wanted to prove to you that I wasn’t a baby, that I could do one little dare. Now that I think about it, I see how stupid that was.”

  I smile into her hair, thinking of how even back then she had me wrapped around her finger. We were joined at the hip, where she went, I went. We were strictly friends, but I hungered for more. I wanted it, and if she had stayed, if everything hadn’t fallen apart, she would’ve been mine a long time ago. I knew it. Hell, I would’ve made sure of it.

  “I’ve blamed myself every day for telling my father. I’ve blamed myself, knowing that telling him ruined everything, and even now, I blame myself more after finding out that your father hid the truth from you, that he lied and placed the blame on me.”

  There’s a vise-like grip on my heart and it’s squeezing so tightly that I know at any second it will burst, leaving me a bleeding massacred mess.

  “I don’t fault you for being angry with me, for wanting to hurt me, for thinking I did this to you, to your family,” she whispers, and it’s so soft I almost don’t hear her speak the words.

  God, she’s wrong. So fucking wrong. I’m at fault. What I did was wrong.

  “None of what I did was okay, and no amount of words or apologies will take that back. I hate myself so much for hurting you, Ava, and I’ll never, never, forget it.”

  “If I could… I would…”

  A shrill scream pierces the night air, causing both Ava and I to shove up into a sitting position on the bed. What the hell? Another scream follows the first and before I realize it, I’m jumping off the bed and rushing for the bedroom door.

  “What was that?” Ava whispers, following closely behind me.

  Glancing over my shoulder, I press a finger to my lips. She nods her head, eyes wide, fear slicing through them. Turning, I pull the door open, then I step out into the hall. I can hear the sound of feet scuffling across the floor downstairs. What the fuck is going on?

  “Here, give me the gun, Greg.” Laura’s voice wobbles. “You don’t want to hurt yourself or anyone else with that, do you?”

  Gun? Greg? Ava pushes past me and starts down the hall, but I reach for her, my hand circling her wrist and pulling her back against my chest. She shifts in my arm, a protest on her lips when her father’s voice pierces the air.

  “First you take my wife, then you take my daughter…” Greg slurs.

  He’s drunk and he’s got a gun. That’s a deathly situation and one I’m not going to let Ava put herself in the middle of.

  “I have to go to him. I can get him to calm down,” Ava whispers, a frantic look in her eyes.

  I know she wants to help her father, but I refuse to let her put herself in that kind of danger.

  “I didn’t take anything, and you’re supposed to be at the rehab facility. We can’t help you if you don’t let us,” my father says.

  “Help?” Greg snorts. “You never wanted to help, it was me who helped you. Me, who gave you and your family a place to live, and you…” The pain, the hate it’s suffocating. “You stole my wife, you made me this way.”

  Ava whimpers into my chest. I move us down the hall and closer to the landing that opens up into the foyer. Releasing Ava, I go to maneuver her behind me, but she catches me off guard and bolts for the landing, reaching it before I can stop her. My heart leaps into my throat when my eyes catch on the scene taking place in the foyer below us.

  “Dad,” Ava croaks and starts down the steps.

  Watching her walk away from me and toward her father somehow feels like the end. Once she reaches the second to last step, I spring into action.

  “Sweettthearrrttt…” Greg slurs, his eyes are bloodshot, and I can smell the whiskey on his breath across the room.

  The barrel of the gun catches in the light as he whirls it around, and somehow, all I can see is his finger on the trigger. Time stands still but also moves a million miles a minute. At the same time I reach for Ava, my hands grabbing onto her shirt pulling her into my chest and turning to shift her so she’s behind me, the blasting of a gunshot rings out through the air. I don’t even feel the bullet enter my back, lodging itself deep inside the skin.

  All I feel is heat, searing, burning outward from the woun
d. My lungs deflate, like a balloon. I sag against Ava, barely keeping myself upright, my knees knock together as Laura and my father both lunge forward at the same time but in different directions.

  My father tackles Greg while Laura throws her arms around me and Ava like she could somehow shield us with her tiny body.

  “Oh my God, Vance is shot,” Ava yells. “Call 9-1-1!”

  Staggering backward, I manage to sit down on the bottom step of the stairs, refusing to let go of Ava. Greg groans on the ground only a few feet away from us with my dad holding him down on the ground. Wetness coats my skin, my t-shirt soaking it up.

  “Laura, you need to call an ambulance,” my dad orders, and for once, I hear fear in his voice. Letting go of Ava and me, she runs into the kitchen, only to reappear moments later with the phone already pressed to her ear. A wave of dizziness washes over me and light-headedness starts to come.

  “Hello…yes, someone is shot. My ex-husband broke into our house and he had a gun and my stepson was shot…” She’s talking so fast, I’m sure the person on the other line is having trouble understanding her.

  Shot. I’ve been shot.

  “My husband tackled… Yes... he took the gun from him…” Laura says, looking down at Greg and my father. Swinging her gaze to me, she continues, “Yes, he is conscious…but he looks really pale…and there is a lot of blood…” Laura’s eyes widen to the size of saucers. “He’s bleeding, there’s… Yes, hurry. Please…hurry.”

  Ava sits next to me, her body pressed against mine, her hands pressing over the spot that hurts the most. Forcing myself to breathe, I let her sweet floral scent fill my nostrils. My eyes drift closed, and silence settles over me.

  “Don’t die, Vance, please don’t die,” she whispers in my ear over and over again. I try and lift my hand, open my mouth to soothe her, but I can’t. It’s like my mouth is full of cotton, my limbs no longer working.

  “Vance…” Ava calls out to me, but the inky darkness calls to me. It pulls me under with each labored breath that passes my lips. “Vance, please don’t go to sleep. Stay awake, stay with me.” The sadness in her voice makes me want to reach out to her, to tell her it’s all going to be okay, but is it? Is it all going to be okay? I don’t know.