He really was trying to kill her. Then he wouldn’t have to come back to Shady Grove or make those stupid phone calls every week where neither one of them knew what to say.
He had no interest in her. In what she was doing at school or with her friends or even what she liked to do.
She could give him a hint. It didn’t involve running.
Her stomach felt funny. For real. The contents were sort of sloshing around in there, threatening to come back up. She swallowed. Swallowed again. Maybe she shouldn’t have guzzled that big glass of orange juice when her dad went out onto the porch to take a phone call from his agent. But she’d been hungry still. She’d been so nervous during breakfast, with him watching every bite she ate—as if he wished he could snatch half the food from her mouth—that she’d only nibbled at the eggs and toast he’d made.
“How about we race?” he asked, his sunglasses hiding his eyes, his arms muscular. People honked and waved or yelled out the windows of their cars and he always lifted a hand or nodded.
But he never smiled.
“First one around the block wins,” he added.
It took her two tries to get enough breath to ask, “Wins...what?”
He didn’t hear her. He increased his pace, going faster and faster until she fell behind. No matter how fast she ran, how hard she tried, her arms and legs pumping, she couldn’t reach him.
He didn’t notice, didn’t even glance back. Not once.
He crossed the street and in what seemed like a few seconds, disappeared around the corner at the second intersection. She’d lost him.
Panic coated her throat, made it raw. She glanced up the street at the intersection, saw the car approaching, but it was far enough away that, if she hurried, she could make it across. Pushing herself, she sprinted toward the road, staring straight ahead, at the spot where she’d last seen her dad. She could make it. She would make it.
But her toe caught on the curb and she fell, landing hard on her hands and knees. The car swerved, the driver laying on the horn. Yelled something out his window but she couldn’t make out the words.
Slowly, shakily, she got to her feet, limped over to the corner and slid to the cool, damp grass in front of a brick house. Her face was hot, her skin clammy. She wrapped her arms around her bent legs and lowered her head, her breath coming out in gasps. In sobs.
She hated this. Hated running. Hated getting up early and having to eat eggs when all she’d wanted was a bowl of cereal.
Sometimes, she thought she might even hate her dad.
A car pulled to a shrieking stop, the door slamming as the driver got out. She kept her head down, her eyes squeezed tight in case it was the driver come back to yell at her.
“What the hell were you doing?”
The voice was very male, very angry and very, very familiar.
Bree raised her head, blinked back the moisture from her eyes as her uncle Leo stormed toward her. “I fell.”
She sounded like a baby but he didn’t call her on it, just knelt in front of her.
“You could’ve been killed. When I saw you darting out in front of that car—” His hands shook as he grabbed ahold of her upper arms. He swore, then hugged her. “What were you doing, running across the road like that?” He leaned back, a scary frown on his face as he looked around. “Where’s your mother?”
“She’s working.” Bree’s own voice sounded strange, as though she was going to cry or something. She sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “I’m with my dad.”
If possible, his frown got darker. Scarier. And he went really still, like a cartoon that’d been shot with a freeze ray. “Your dad?”
Staring at her sneakers, she nodded.
Uncle Leo sighed. “You sure you’re okay?” he asked, this time sounding nice like he usually did.
“My knees and hands just sting a little,” she said, though they hurt worse than that.
He whistled lowly. “They don’t look so good.”
As a firefighter, Uncle Leo knew all about cuts, bruises, burns and broken bones. Bracing herself, she glanced at her legs. Felt woozy. No. They really didn’t look good. Her knees were bleeding, the skin torn away. Her palms were scraped, bits of dirt and tiny pebbles embedded in the fleshy part.