The Fight for Us (7 page)

“Harper is a good kid. I would know.” Steph would know. Steph was Harper’s one and only babysitter from the time Harper was two and Steph was a junior in high school. Joss was only twenty-one when Harper was born, so while Steph may have been in high school when they first met and she became Harper’s babysitter, their age difference meant little now that Joss was thirty-six and Steph was nearly thirty. Steph was also the closest thing Joss had to family in this place.

“Yeah, well, there will be no hatchet burying for us apparently.”

Steph just looked at her sadly for a moment before standing to leave.

Chapter Six

When Isaiah entered the gymnasium a few nights later, he started scanning the risers for Joss. He’d almost called her a couple times since making an ass of himself and hurting her feelings in the process. He was guessing, at any rate, that it hurt her feelings to hear him say he was attracted to her but didn’t want to be. What asshole says such idiotic things? It was true. He didn’t want to be attracted to her. But there was certainly more to it than that. In addition to not wanting to be attracted to her, he really, really
wanted
to be attracted to her.

She was sitting alone about half-way up the risers. The girls were warming up on the court, and as he glanced to Nat, she waved quickly. She was standing across from another student, and they were setting back and forth to one another. Harper was nearby too, doing the same warm-up with another student.

When he returned to his path, a woman suddenly popped up in front of him, smiling broadly. She had big hair and a loud voice, and as she batted her eyes at him, he just gaped at her, waiting for her to get out of his way.

“Well, hi there. You’re Isaiah Henry, right? Heard about a new man…err…family in town.” She was gratuitously flirtatious as she reached for his forearm. When he shrugged away from her touch, she didn’t take the hint. “Come sit down. We can chat.”

“No, thank you. I have a seat already.” He brushed past her. Did he really have a seat? Hell no, he didn’t. He wanted the seat next to Joss, but he wasn’t entirely sure she’d welcome him. In fact, he certainly didn’t deserve the seat beside her.

Joss watched, looking suspicious, as he ascended the risers toward her. He stopped next to her and held the box of popcorn he’d grabbed at concessions out to her. She looked at it for a moment and then back up to him.

“Peace offering.” He took a deep breath as he waited for her to say something.

“Did you poison it?” She watched him coolly. He deserved that.

“No. I’ll share it with you. If you die, I die. We’ll be all Romeo and Juliet about it.”

She studied him for a moment. When she finally edged to the side, signaling that he had her permission to sit, he handed her the box of popcorn and joined her. He enjoyed being close to her rather more than he should, considering he’d already told her he didn’t want to like her. He wasn’t lying when he’d said it. It was blatantly, not to mention hurtfully, honest. He felt like a piece of shit when he let his mind go to the places his body wanted to go with her. It was guilt. This couldn’t possibly be okay. Of course, logic said it was, but his damn guilt-ridden mind said he deserved to suffer life alone.

He caught himself getting closer and closer to her body as the game wore on. The Bristol Tigers junior varsity volleyball team was kicking ass, and both Natalie and Harper were spending a good deal of time on the bench by the time they neared the end of the second match. That wasn’t necessarily any offense to either of them. Harper and Nat had started, and they were so far ahead there was no reason not to let the usual benchwarmers play for a while.

When he and Joss had moved close enough together that their legs were touching, he stopped breathing for a moment. All he could think about was her skin. She had pale alabaster skin against her dark brown hair and stunning blue eyes. Her skin looked as smooth as silk, and there was so little separating him from that skin right now. She had to feel incredible. There was no chance she couldn’t feel just as soft under his fingers as she looked, and by the time she excused herself to the restroom, he was so aroused there was little chance he’d be standing up anytime soon.

Watching her walk down the bleacher stairs didn’t help matters. She was dressed more casually than he usually saw her. She dressed up typically, no doubt for her job, but tonight she was wearing jeans and a fitted long sleeve knit shirt. Her jeans made her ass look amazing, and he watched every step she took, getting more and more aroused the farther away from him she moved. When she returned, she sat just as close to him as she’d been when she’d left, and his heart started pounding. The combination of want and need coupled with confusion and guilt was intensely painful and at the same time intoxicating. He needed to be okay with wanting her, because regardless of the bad things he felt, he so wanted more of the good feelings that he was nearly willing to accept the bad along with it—torturous as that might turn out to be.

Shortly before the end of the third and final match when Harper set up Nat and she spiked a perfect ace, Joss shot to her feet, squealing as she went. Isaiah clapped as he laughed at her. When she practically sat in his lap as she clumsily tried to clap and sit at the same time, he gripped her hips with his hands. She sank to his thigh, teetering precariously off to the side of him.

“Inappropriate behavior for a volleyball game, don’t ya think?” He was speaking with his lips nearly against her ear as he still held her farthest hip to steady her from toppling onto the ground at his feet.

She froze gasping as his fingers squeezed against her skin. As she looked to him, he caught the furious pink of her cheeks. She blushed a lot, and it certainly wasn’t the first time he’d seen it. He liked the way that pale skin could turn scarlet in half a second flat, and when her lips pursed as she looked at him, it was his turn to gasp. He was thinking about kissing those lips that happened to be entirely too close to his at the moment.

She edged off his leg and back onto the bench, and when she was seated hip to hip with him once more, she chanced a nervous sideways glance to him. He could see her out of his periphery, and rather than look at her, he chuckled quietly. She knew perfectly well he was onto her, and moments later when the game ended in an eruption of cheers and clapping, she was still staring, and he finally did look at her.

Her lips were slightly parted. She was watching in as much a stupor as he was in. They were dwarfed by the crowd around them—all of whom were on their feet, bouncing and cheering as they sat staring at one another. It wasn’t until the crowd started breaking up and slowly moving toward the exit that she shook her head subtly and stood to her feet as he followed. She was quiet and seemed about as confused as he felt around her as they moved down the risers toward the gymnasium floor. When they finally reached the floor, the girls were just exiting the locker room, redressed in street clothes.

Harper came bounding up to Joss, beaming from ear to ear. Natalie, who was smiling too, followed moments later. He missed Nat’s smiles. She used to smile constantly. Of course, she’d had reason to smile back then, but it was a haunting thing seeing that happiness on her face now.

“Good game, Harper.” He stopped her as she and Joss passed by them toward the parking lot.

Harper looked at him nervously for a moment before responding. “Thanks, Mr. Henry. Natalie did great too.” Harper looked at Natalie a bit sheepishly, but she smiled, and Nat did too. But then Harper’s focus caught on a couple other girls nearby, and she instantly waved and bounded off in their direction, leaving Natalie rocking on the outside of her shoes awkwardly.

“You really did well, Natalie.” Joss smiled at Nat and rubbed her shoulder in a casual friendly gesture. Natalie smiled back and thanked her, but it was Isaiah’s own reaction to seeing Joss so friendly to his daughter that left him most confused. His guts twisted in a knot, and he could feel his face following suit. The moment Joss saw the shift in him, she pulled her hand back from Natalie’s shoulder, and her brow furrowed. “Well, goodnight.” Her voice sounded nervous, and he nodded as she turned away.

It wasn’t two seconds after he and Natalie had climbed into his car that she called him out. “She’s pretty. You like her, huh?”

“No!” His overly quick response wasn’t the least bit convincing.

“It’s okay if you do. It’s kinda normal, right?” She cocked her head to the side as she eyed him from the passenger seat. “Harper said the same thing.”

“You two talk? I mean, outside of volleyball?”

She shrugged. “Sometimes. Like, when her friends aren’t around. She’s nice actually.”

“When her friends aren’t around.” He reiterated her words in a mutter.

“Come on, Dad. I get it.” Nat shrugged her shoulders again. “I used to be like that. I always wanted to be nice to everyone, and I would be, but when
my
friends were there it was just harder. It wasn’t that I was rude to anyone. I was just
with
my friends.”

He glanced at her quickly, saying nothing. He sometimes forgot she used to be just like Harper. She’d been the popular one. The one with more friends than she could possibly need. Then their lives had been turned upside down, and Natalie had reacted as though her life had been turned upside down. By the time they’d gotten her right side up again, life had left her in the dust, and her so-called friends had abandoned her.

“Anyway, the point is, I like Ms. Verna. She’s friendly. She’s pretty. She’s not—” Nat looked at him, gauging whether she wanted to venture into this territory if he was deciphering her expression correctly. “—sad.” She furrowed her brow as she watched him. She was waiting for a response.

He nodded but said nothing else. He wanted to say something self-chastising about how Joss was only happy because he’d not had a chance to ruin her happiness yet, but he was guessing sharing that self-destructive tidbit would be considered inappropriate with a child. So, he kept nodding slowly. And nodding. And nodding some more.

“Dad, you just missed the driveway.”

Once he regained consciousness, he shook his head and turned around on the shoulder of the road.

Nat laughed at him as he finally pulled into the right driveway. “You do like her. I knew it.” She kept laughing as she said it, and he looked at her, wondering how she could be okay with it. Maybe it was kinda…normal.

Chapter Seven

“So, are you going to tell me why you walked away from Natalie like that?” Joss glanced at Harper. She wasn’t upset, so much as…well, she wasn’t sure what she was. Confused wasn’t the right word. She understood to a degree—hell, she’d even caught the look on Harper’s face as she’d glanced over to Natalie from her group of friends. Harper had felt bad for her, and yet she’d done nothing to include Natalie.

But it really wasn’t confusion. Joss understood. She hated it, but she understood it too. And she almost hated that as much as anything. How was one rather small fourteen-year-old girl supposed to change the course of things for Natalie? It was one thing to be friendly with someone. It was another to stick up for them. And it was yet another altogether to stick up for them in the midst of a group of people.

Joss wanted her daughter to be strong enough to do that, but she also remembered just how hard fourteen could be. One moment you were liked, the next you weren’t. One day could make all the difference in the world between being accepted like Harper and being shunned like Natalie. There was nothing at all shun-worthy about Natalie. She was exceptionally sweet, adorable, kind even though the world was making it difficult, and while Joss had no idea why her mother wasn’t part of her life, she suspected it was something note-worthy. That alone could be a mountainous challenge to face at her young age.

But as much as Joss wanted her daughter to be strong enough to defend those who couldn’t defend themselves, it terrified her to think of Harper suffering the way Nat had or even still was. And all those thoughts left Joss feeling like a piece of shit, because in truth, she wasn’t sure it made her any stronger than her fourteen-year-old daughter. Hell, she knew she wasn’t. She’d already fucked her own life up royally, and hiding it from her daughter to save her own face was the only path Joss knew at this point. But it didn’t stop Joss from wanting something better for Harper.

“I couldn’t be rude to my friends, could I?” Just as Joss had suspected. The masses were certainly an influential bunch. All she had to do was listen to any one of a gazillion bullying stories, hell any one of a gazillion celebrity-turned-train-wreck story, to see just how easily swayed people can be. The path of least resistance often leads to less than desirable outcomes. How was a fourteen-year-old girl supposed to fair against those odds?

“You could have included Natalie. Or, you could have walked over, said a quick hello, then told your friends you were tied up, and returned to us.”

“Get real, Mom.”

“I’m getting
very
real, Harper. These are the choices you have to make. They’re not fun, they’re not easy, but they’re damn real, and they have very real consequences too.”

“I know!” Harper’s voice was shrill as she threw up her hands in frustration as Joss drove them toward their house.

The first snowflakes of winter were starting to float down, and the wind was howling. It was nearly ominous. Bristol was an icebox in the dead of winter, and she couldn’t say she was looking forward to it—not if her life was going to revolve around penny pinching and fighting her daughter at every turn in hopes of steering her down the right path—a path Joss couldn’t even claim to recognize. Parenting had suddenly gotten very
real
the past month. That damn word again, but there was just no better word for it.

“I like Natalie just fine, but I can’t make other people like her. I wish I could. She’s really good at volleyball, though. Lots of other kids want to practice with her now, and she’s always picked fast in P.E., so that’s good. I mean, I think. Maybe it’s getting better for her?” She shook her head as she turned to look out the passenger window at the passing coastline. It wasn’t until they were turning into the driveway that Harper finally turned back to her. But her stress was gone now, and she had a wry smile on her face. “You know, some of the older girls on the varsity squad think he’s hot.”