Pike (The Pawn Duet #1) - T.M. Frazier Page 0,3

looking because my sisters are giggling like idiots.

I whip my head around. “Shhh, don’t be rude,” I say between my teeth and turn back to the stranger. “Sorry about them.”

“Them,” he says, as if he doesn’t understand why young women would be giggling in his presence. I might be, too, but his face is even blurrier now than it was when he first pulled up. In fact, everything is blurrier now.

We need to keep going, so we can get there.

But where is there?

Where am I?

“Thanks again for the offer,” I say to the man. “But, as you can see, even if we were to take you up on your kind offer, your truck doesn’t have a backseat, and I don’t think it can accommodate all six of us.”

“All six of you,” he repeats. It’s not a statement or a question. I’m beginning to think he doesn’t have all of the necessary brain power to compute such a simple statement.

Or count to six.

My feet ache, and I’m shifting from one to the other. I’m eager to send this stranger on his way, and I’m finding it harder and harder to remain upright. “You don’t think I’d leave my family here and go with you alone, do you?” I turn back to my Papa and shoot him a shrug. He smiles proudly, no doubt at the realization that his constant stranger-danger talks have sunk in.

“Miss, where is your family?” he asks, tentatively.

I frown. I mean, my vision is blurry, but this man must be downright blind.

“Right behind me!” I wave my arms to where my family is gathered at the side of the road. They all wave back like they’re a moving painting of a picture-perfect family.

He opens the driver's door and hops down onto the pavement. I register bear arms and a white shirt. Tattoos. His hair is dark blonde, reminding me of my cat, Penny. He’s got a scar on his jaw and bright eyes that keep moving out of focus. No wonder my sisters giggled. He’s very giggle worthy. My guess is that he’s only a little older than me although his deep voice sounds much more mature.

He slams the door shut.

I don’t know if it’s the sudden movement or the long walk that has me swaying on my feet.

The young man glances over my shoulder into the dark, then back at me before repeating the process again. His facial features now resemble a close-up image of a fly I once studied. Large and nonsensical. Too many eyes.

He scratches his head in confusion.

I growl in frustration and spin around to point my family out to him, but the movement continues even as my body stops. Everything spins. My family. The truck. The stranger. The moon above me. Faster and faster like an out of control carnival ride.

I catch one last glimpse of my family as I fall.

The last words I hear before I hit the ground are deep and garbled.

“There ain’t nobody behind you.”

Pike

The night starts like almost every night: with two girls in my bed. I grow bored easily and find it hard to focus on just one at a time. My friend, Nine, calls it sexual ADD.

He isn’t wrong.

Also, I’m a twenty-two-year-old man with a huge sexual appetite.

So, there’s that.

After the girls leave, I quickly shower and head out to do what I do best. Sling dope. I deliver an astronomical amount of molly and blow to a bunch of rich kids throwing a rave on the boujee side of the causeway in Logan’s Beach.

Once I cross back over onto my side of town I breathe a sigh of relief. The more distance I can put between me and the fucking entitled rich brats, and their determined quests for parental disappointment, the better. The twats have so few problems in life that they have to create them while the rest of the world living on this side of the causeway, the land of sand and ruin, wanders through a literal hell on earth.

Hell, or not, I fucking love this town. Saltwater and sand run through my fucking veins.

Logan’s Beach is where I want to be. Right now, I live in Coral Pines with Nine but I’ve got my eye on a shitty little antique store on Main Street with an apartment on the second floor that I hope to make into my very own shitty little pawn shop as soon as I can scrape up enough cash.

Bass is still beating in my ears. I make myself yawn