“Fight me, Reese. I like it when you fight me,” he hissed in my ear.

How could my mother stay married to this man? Was my father worse than this? She’d never married him. She never told me about him. I didn’t even know his name. But no one could be worse than this awful man.

I couldn’t do this again. I was done being scared. Either he would beat me until he killed me or he would kick me out. I had feared both for so long. Mother had told me once that all that men would do in this world was think about sex when they looked at me. I would be used by men my whole life. She constantly told me to leave.

Today, I was ready. I only had eight hundred and fifty-five dollars saved up, but I could get a bus ticket to the other side of the country and get a job. If I got out of this house alive, that’s what I was doing.

Marco’s hands slipped down the front of my shorts and I bucked against him, screaming. I didn’t want his hand there. “Let me go!” I yelled loudly enough for the neighbors to hear.

He pulled his hand out and jerked me around by my arm so hard it popped. Then he slammed me against the door. His hand punched my face with a loud crack. My vision blurred and I felt my knees go weak. “Shut up, bitch, and take it.”

His hands grabbed my shirt and jerked it up, then tugged my bra down. I sobbed, because I couldn’t stop the horror. It was coming, and I couldn’t stop him.

“Get away from my husband, you whore, and leave my house! I don’t want to ever see your face again!” My mother’s voice stopped Marco and he moved his hands off my breasts. I jerked my shirt back down.

My face was burning from the punch, and I tasted blood on my lip as the stinging cut under my tongue began to swell.

“OUT, YOU STUPID, GOOD-FOR-NOTHING WHORE!” my mother screamed.

That moment changed everything.

Mase

Two years later . . .

Fucking hell. What was that noise? I peeled my eyes open as sleep slowly faded away from my brain, and I was able to register what had woken me up.

A vacuum? And . . . singing? What the fuck?

I rubbed my eyes and groaned in frustration as the noise got louder. I was sure now it was a vacuum. And it sounded like a really bad version of Miranda Lambert’s “Gunpowder & Lead.”

My phone said it was only eight. I had been asleep for two hours. After thirty hours straight with no sleep, I was being awakened by bad singing and a motherfucking vacuum?

As she sang the first two lines of the chorus, I winced. She was getting louder as she sang. And it was seriously off-key. That was a good song she was butchering. Didn’t the woman know you didn’t come in people’s houses at eight in the fucking morning and sing at the top of your lungs?

I was never going to get back to sleep with this racket.

Nannette must have hired an idiot to clean her fucking house. But then, knowing Nannette, she was pissed, because I was here and there was nothing she could do about it. She probably paid the woman to screech outside my bedroom door. Nannette didn’t own the house—our dad, Kiro, did. He’d told us that while she was in Paris I could stay in the house and spend some time with our other sister, Harlow.

This must be the bitch’s way of getting me back for staying at her place.

Now she was singing the chorus over and over again at the top of her lungs. God, this was like waking to a nightmare. This woman so needed to shut up. I had to get some sleep before I went to visit with Harlow and her family. She knew I was here, and she was so excited about my coming to visit. But this idiot was messing my sleep up very effectively.

I threw back the covers and stood up and headed for the door before I realized I was naked. My head was pounding from lack of sleep, and this was just making me more angry as I searched the room for the damn jeans I had taken off when I’d gotten here. My vision was blurred and the dark curtains were closed. Fuck it. I reached for the sheet and wrapped it around my waist and went for the door.

I swung it open just as she started singing the opening lines to another song. Dammit. This time she was murdering “Cruise” by Florida Georgia Line.

I blinked and rubbed my eyes against the light, my vision still blurry. Shit, did the woman not see me here?

After a few seconds, I finally was able to open my eyes in a squint to see a round little ass wiggling as she bent over. My eyes slowly opened completely as I took in the longest damn legs I’d ever seen. And holy fucking hell, her ass. Was that a freckle or a birthmark under her left butt cheek?

She stood up, and the tiny waist only made her ass look better. She continued to shake her bottom as she sang off-key. I winced as she hit a very high note, again off-key. Damn, the girl couldn’t sing.

Then she turned, and I hardly had a moment to appreciate the front view before she screamed and dropped the vacuum cleaner as she pulled her earbuds out of her ears.

Big, round baby-blue eyes stared at me in horror as she opened and closed her mouth a few times as if she were trying to speak.

I took the moment of silence to check out her full pink lips and the perfect shape of her face. Her hair was pulled up in a bun, but it was the color of midnight. I wondered how long it was.

“I’m sorry,” she managed to squeak out, and my eyes went back to hers. She was really something. There was an exotic quality about her. It was like God had picked all the best pieces and put them together to create her.

“I’m not,” I replied. Not anymore. Who the hell needs sleep? Oh yeah. I do.

“I didn’t know, uh , , , I thought the place was still empty. I mean, I didn’t know someone was staying here. No car was outside, and I rang the doorbell but no one answered, so I used the code and came on in.” She wasn’t southern. Maybe mid-western. I just knew she wasn’t from around here. She lacked the twang of most locals. There was a softness to her voice.