Somewhere in the City Read online

  Somewhere in the City

  Michaels Family Romance, Book 2

  Toby Neal

  Copyright Notice

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  COPYRIGHT © 2015 Toby Neal

  http://tobyneal.net

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/publisher.

  Cover Design: Victorine @ Blue Valley Author Services

  E-book ISBN: 978-0-9967066-2-9

  Contents

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt Somewhere in California

  About the Author

  More Titles from Toby Neal!

  Connect With Toby

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  Toby Neal’s Website

  Chapter 1

  It’s dangerous to be too beautiful.

  I know. I’ve lived it. Right now I’m sitting on a hard metal folding chair in the recovery meeting, enduring the way guys scope out my body and girls judge me. I’ve dressed down for the occasion, too—I’m no threat to anybody in my ratty hoodie, the hoodie that’s been a kind of security blanket for the last six months since Dad died and everything changed.

  I have on baggy jeans, and my hood is up to hide my hair. I’m thinking of dying it. Some mousy color, like muddy brown. My hair draws way too much attention.

  In fact, that’s what I’ll do, right after this stupid meeting.

  The leader gets us going with the Serenity Prayer, and then we are supposed to go around and share our “experience, strength, and hope.”

  I don’t have much of any of the above, at eighteen, just moved here, and my biggest hope is to get everybody off my back as soon as possible.

  I endure the stories. Sad ones, really. Kids ripping off their parents. Guys giving other guys blowjobs in parking lots for a few bucks to get high. I was never into any of that shit or did anything radical like that. In fact, I’d have been fine, would never have had to come to this meeting, if it weren’t for the Carver boys.

  But who could resist the Carver boys? The only thing to do in that pothole in the road, Peterborg, on Saint Thomas. Yeah, it all started with Connor, but then there was Keenan. I shut my eyes and indulge in a little memory starring me and the Carver boys.

  Someone elbows me. “Your turn.”

  I sit up. The leader, a chubby lady with one of those soft do-gooder faces I’m too familiar with, gives me a hairy eyeball.

  “Welcome to our meeting,” she says. “Is this your first time with us?”

  I nod. “Hi. My name is Pearl.”

  I’m supposed to say, “and I’m an addict,” but I don’t. I can’t. It would be a lie. I just barely got going with some hard stuff and everybody freaked the hell out, and now here I am enrolled in this “day treatment” daily meetings routine. It sucks. But at least I’m not in Eureka, armpit of California, with Mom’s tears and Jade’s compulsive cleaning.

  The group leader narrows her eyes a little because I haven’t said the catechism. I remember she has to sign my attendance sheet, though, as she says, encouragingly, “Would you like to share your experience, strength and hope with us?”

  “Not really, no. But thanks for asking.”

  A titter goes around the circle, and the leader moves on.

  There’s a guy across from me, long thick legs extended into the circle, his jeans just the way I like them—broken in, with split knees. He’s wearing black boots and a leather motorcycle jacket that looks like it’s the real deal, like he got here on a Harley or something. His arms are folded on a chest I wouldn’t mind getting a closer look at, and dark brows are pulled down over eyes that look black from here.

  I stare back at him, and touch my tongue to my lower lip. Then, I shut my eyes very slowly, and open them again, so he can see how blue my eyes are, how long my lashes. I uncross and recross my legs, so he can appreciate that mine are almost as long as his.

  His face doesn’t change and he looks away with such a bored expression I feel heat rise up my chest under my hoodie.

  Well, getting him to notice me will make the meeting a little more interesting. I push my hood back so my naturally curly blond hair tumbles out like Rapunzel sending down her ladder.

  He doesn’t so much as glance at me, and I spend the rest of the meeting trying to get him to.

  When it’s finally over, I get up from my chair, unzipping the hoodie so my black turtleneck showcases my curves, but he’s already walking out without talking to anybody, picking up a helmet from beside the door.

  Well. That gives me something to look forward to tomorrow when I come here again, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel. And maybe I’ll keep my hair blond for a while longer.

  Unfortunately, my antics have attracted someone else’s attention, one of those lumpish hockey-player types that think they’re God’s gift—not that I would know a hockey player from a pole vaulter, since we have nothing but soccer on St. Thomas.

  “Hi.” He actually reaches out and picks up one of my curls, rubs it between his fingers like he wants to smell it or something. “Pearl.”

  I yank my hair out of his hand and bundle it into my hood and zip it up again. “Howdy, fellow druggie.”

  That puts him back a bit, rubbing his rash-roughened chin with a hand. “Need a ride somewhere?”

  “No thanks.”

  “I’m Steve.”

  “And I don’t recall asking.” I turn and walk out. I can feel his eyes burning holes in my back, and I can feel the other girls hating on me. Everyone judging me, like they always do.

  Well, if they’d walked a mile in my boots they wouldn’t envy them, I can tell you that. Not that I’m complaining. I’m not in Eureka, California, after all. Instead, I’m living in Boston with my sister Ruby and her hunky husband Rafe, and they’re pretending they have some idea how to deal with me.

  I don’t need anything but to be left alone.

  That’s what I tell myself as I walk home from the meeting. It feels lonelier and more pathetic than I ever like to feel, the wind cutting through my jeans and the last of the fall leaves rolling along the sidewalk. There’s a sharp wind off the Charles River, only a few blocks away from my sister’s sweet old Back Bay ne
ighborhood. I go up the stairs of their brownstone with the sandstone lions that guard the door. I’ve nicknamed the lions Beowulf and Odin, and I pat their heads as I get my key out and go inside.

  Yeah, every time I think I’m lonely or sad or get tempted to drink or hit someone up for a line or a hit, I have to think: EUREKA. I don’t have to go there. And I need to be grateful.

  Up in my girly-pink bedroom, I turn my radio to the rock station and flop backwards on the bed, listening to the Top 40 of 1989.

  I really am grateful to be here. Rafe and Ruby didn’t have to take me in, make me the third wheel to their two-person googly-eyed love fest, especially now that Ruby’s pregnant.

  Right on cue, Ruby knocks on the door and then opens it. “How was the meeting?”

  Ruby’s so pretty. She has green eyes, long dark red hair, and the kind of heart-shaped face with blushy skin that makes guys want to protect and take care of her, when nothing could be further from what she’s really like: stubborn as a mule and smart as hell. She just got her law degree, and the only person who can sometimes beat her at an argument is me.

  “It was fine.”

  “Where’s your paper?”

  I got so distracted I forgot to have the leader sign my attendance sheet. “Dammit, I forgot to have it signed. But Ms. Betsy can sign it next time.”

  Ruby comes all the way into the room. She’s about three months pregnant and just beginning a little pooch of belly. “Pearl, come on. You promised. Let me see your arms.”

  I push up the sleeves of my hoodie, biting down on all the ways I want to tell her to back off, thinking Eureka. She and Rafe trying to lay down rules is really kind of funny, when Mom and Dad never could get me to obey anything.

  I’m the original rebel without a cause. I don’t know why it’s always my first instinct to do the opposite of what everyone wants.

  She sits next to me. “I hate this, Pearl. I hate having to hold your feet to the fire like this. But I just don’t think you get how serious things are.”

  “Oh, I get it.” I pull my legs up under my stretched out, comfy old hoodie. “I do what you and Rafe want or you ship me back to Mom.”

  “I guess that’s the bottom line, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I just don’t think you get how worried we are about you. You have a problem.”

  I can’t take it anymore, and surge up off the bed in a waft of anger.

  “You don’t get how it’s really not a big deal and never was.”

  “Mom and I talked. She said she’s thought a lot about how things started going bad with you and traced it back to a Christmas party two years ago that you went to at the Carvers’ house. Did something happen there? Something bad?”

  Yeah, I remember that party. What I remember is that I don’t remember.

  “You know what? If I’m too much trouble, send me back already. I’m sick of the inquisition, of nothing I do being right.”

  I slam out of the bedroom, feeling tears at the backs of my eyes.

  If only Dad hadn’t died because of me.

  I could have still turned things around if he hadn’t died when he did. How he did. I jump on the smooth walnut railing and slide down the long curving stairs to the entryway.

  I’m not a total nutcase. I grab a coat. Boston in November is pretty damn chilly at night.

  Out on the street it’s quiet. I head for one of the walking bridges that crosses over the freeway to the park that runs along the Charles. I just want to walk, to clear my head. I’m not looking for trouble.

  But trouble has always seemed to find me.

  It doesn’t help to have a sister like Ruby. So good at everything, so clear about her goals, the responsible super achiever.

  I missed her so much when she left for school. I realized I was never going to be able to fill her shoes with Mom and Dad, and their scrutiny began to really chafe once I got into my teens.

  I didn’t want the same things they did. But I didn’t know what I wanted, myself. I just knew it wasn’t the mellow island life on Saint Thomas, where the biggest social event of the week was the Sunday church potluck.

  That’s how I ended up going out with Connor Carver. He was twenty when we started going out, and I was fifteen. He worked at the shipyard in Charlotte Amalie, and he drove a souped-up Charger and smoked Marlboros. He was so hot in those broken-down jeans and the T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up around his cigarette pack...

  Ah, memories. Memories I had, and didn’t have.

  The wind off the river is fierce. I tighten my hood and lean down to walk into it, feeling it smack my cheeks, and I’m so focused I don’t hear the running footsteps coming up behind me until it’s too late, until my head explodes with stars and the ground is coming up to meet my face.

  Chapter 2

  I wake up on my back. The sky is dark, there are a few stars above, but ambient yellow light from the park outlines the stark branches of bare-limbed trees.

  Someone is digging through my pockets, patting me down. It takes a second but I realize I’ve just been clocked on the head and now I’m being robbed.

  Not that I’ve got anything to steal.

  I scream, and kick at whoever’s muttering, his hand in the pocket of my jeans and about to get the key I’m carrying, literally the only thing on me.

  “Shut up!” He slaps me, and it snaps my head to the side. He gets hold of the zipper of the jacket and hauls it down. “Where’s your purse? Your wallet?”

  “Screw you, asswipe!” I yell, terrified he’s going to touch me, rape me. I thrash and kick at him again. I connect with something soft and he grunts. I roll to the side to get away.

  “Help! Help!”

  He’s pissed now and kicks me, right in the stomach. It knocks the breath out of me.

  I curl up in the fetal position, my hands over my head as he kicks me some more and then I hear someone yelling, “Hey! What are you doing? Get away from her!”

  I’m too busy trying to drag air into my lungs to pay much attention to the scuffle that goes on, but then someone is rolling me onto my back.

  “Are you all right?”

  My hood’s fallen off, and he sucks in a breath at the sight of my face.

  That’s how I know he’s a man, and he’s gotten a look at my hair, and face, and since my jacket is unzipped, now he can see my body, too. Yes, it makes people gasp.

  My eyes pop open, too wide, but the man’s haloed by one of the park’s carriage lamps and I can’t see his face. I open and close my mouth a couple times, still trying to get air.

  “He ran away,” my rescuer says. “Just get your breath. You’re going to be okay.” He sits down and lifts me halfway into his arms, and we just sit there on the ground for a few minutes.

  Finally, I can speak past the pain. “Thank you.”

  “I didn’t do anything. What kind of jerk beats up women in the park?”

  “He was trying to rob me, but I didn’t have anything.” I feel a wave of tears well up, so many tears. I never cry. Pearl the tough girl, that’s me.

  But now, my body battered, lying on my cold ass in the park in the arms of a stranger, I let it all go.

  All I’ve been holding onto. Dad’s gone. The Carvers. The move here, which has been harder than I’ll ever let anyone know. I really miss Mom and Jade, even though I don’t want to live in Eureka. I even cry for Saint Thomas, that pretty little cliché of an island where I grew up.

  “Shhhh,” he says. “You’re all right now.” He holds me against him, but just by the shoulders, not trying to cop a feel, and he pats my back, little gentle pats like burping a baby.

  But he doesn’t seem to be trying to hurry me along, get me to shut up. Most guys totally can’t handle a girl crying, but he seems perfectly content to sit on the freezing sidewalk in the dark with a crying girl snotting all over his clothes.

  Finally, I’m done. Pain of a different kind is taking over my body, reminding me I need to get home and probably into a hot bath.

&nbs
p; “I’m so sorry,” I snuffle. “I’ve just—been through a lot. I’m sorry I cried all over you.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He’s still patting, but now he’s touching my hair, gently, so gently. It scares me. He’s a stranger after all. I pull away, and groan because my tummy hurts, and my back, and my hip and my head, too.

  “I need to get home.”

  “Let’s get to Mass Avenue and find a phone booth. Call the police.”

  “I just want to get home.” I can feel hysteria rising.

  He must hear it in my voice because he says, “Okay. We’ll get you home and then we’ll call the cops.”

  I try to get up but I wouldn’t have been able to if he didn’t loop an arm under my shoulder and hoist me up against his side.

  I still haven’t seen his face, but at this point I hope I never have to look him in the eye after my total sob-fest breakdown.

  He mostly carries me to Mass Avenue, but we can’t find a phone booth and the cars can’t stop on the freeway-like road, so we limp and hop up over one of the bridges and into my sister’s Back Bay neighborhood, and by then it’s not worth it to try to find a cab, so my rescuer and I gimp our way to the brownstone, and I was never so happy to see Beowulf and Odin.

  The ten steps to the shiny black door of Rafe and Ruby’s building are just too much for me, and I collapse. He sets me gently on the bottom step and bounds up to the door, pounding on it. The door opens, and it’s Rafe with no shirt on, wearing a pair of flannel pajama bottoms and looking ripped and scary.