Stepdad and His Friends Bred Me During the Birthday Blackout novel · Chapter 18 of 48

Chapter 18: Home

I didn't go in.

You don't walk into a room somebody just left. I knew that from every job site in the Valley.

I backed down the path to the street and called Breck.

He picked up on the first ring. "Miss me already?"

"My door's open. My tools are gone."

He didn't say anything. I heard his blinker click, and then his engine roar, and then the line went dead.

His truck came back around the corner ninety seconds later and stopped half on the curb.

Rand's car came in seven minutes.

Abram's borrowed pickup came in ten, which wasn't possible from Paradise Valley, and I never asked how many lights he ran.

Breck went through the casita first, with a framing hammer in his fist, and came back out shaking his head.

"Nobody," he said. "Just the mess."

They'd dumped my drawers. They'd pulled my mattress half off the frame.

They hadn't found the work order, because it was buttoned into my shirt pocket over my heart.

They'd taken everything off the rack.

My strippers. My benders. My fish tape. My apprentice drill from when I was eighteen.

The Klein multimeter Rand gave me on my birthday.

I stood in front of the empty outlines and didn't cry, because Breck was already crying for both of us, quietly, into his beard.

"I'll get you a new one," Rand said. His voice was very even.

"I don't want a new one. I want that one."

"Then I'll get you that one."

A patrol officer came and wrote it down. Rand did the talking.

When he left, the three of them stood in my tiny kitchen and filled it up completely.

Nobody told me what to do.

They were waiting.

"I'm not staying here tonight," I said.

"Breck's," Rand said. "He has nine bedrooms and no doors."

"No." I looked at Abram. "Your house."

Abram went still.

"The guest room is made up," he said.

"Not the guest room. Your bed." I held his eyes. "That's my rule."

Breck made a small sound and looked at the ceiling.

Abram's jaw worked.

"I haven't slept in that bed since July," he said. "I've been on the sofa. It's her bed."

"It's your bed. She's in Scottsdale."

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