One time Sierra had showed up at a game. Coach had wrapped his chiseled arm around her narrow waist and kissed her on the cheek. I hadn’t been able to help but daydream about being the one who stood in his strong embrace, the one who made him smile and laugh. He’d begun to take on a larger-than-life appearance in my mind. I fantasized about him being my everything. Taking care of me, protecting me, and even making some of my decisions for me when life got to be too much. He was like a mental touchstone. Whenever I’d found myself the victim of bullying at school or my brother’s foul moods at home, I’d imagined Evan Paige coming to my rescue again, swooping me up in his giant embrace and keeping me safe from the rest of the world.
But of course, that had never happened.
Until the night I turned eighteen and bought my firstPlaygirlmagazine from the corner store just because I could. I’d happily masturbated myself into a stupor, accidentally leaving the magazine visible on the floor. Of course, my brother had seen it as soon as he came home. Once he’d taken out his frustrations on my face, Kade had barricaded me in my room and gone into a rage that resulted in him throwing shit around, including a kitchen towel that had landed on the hot stove, accidentally setting fire to the apartment.
EVAN’S PROLOGUE
The first timeI saw Stevie Devore, he couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve and had just been pantsed by a bully attending one of my summer soccer camps. The poor kid had stood there, grabbing his junk in horror while the group of bullies snickered at him. I’d helped as best I could, hiding him from view while I yanked his shorts back up, but the damage had been done. Not only had he been humiliated, but I’d heard a rumor that he’d also been teased by his very own brother for it later that night. His older brother, Kade, had worked for my boss at the rec center in Valley Cross that summer and had been a total piece of work. Lazy, entitled, and bigoted. The very idea of that little middle schooler in the cartoon T-shirt and hand-me-down Walmart sweatpants being related to cocky Kade Devore set my teeth on edge.
If I was being honest with myself, my desire to watch over Stevie had started all the way back then, almost ten years ago. But I didn’t see him again until seven years later, when I’d responded to an apartment fire in nearby Valley Cross. I’d ascended the ladder to help someone from a two-story apartment window and encountered a familiar face. Only this time it was black and blue and covered in soot.
“What happened?” I asked the gangly teen as I reached in the window to help him climb out. From what I’d gathered, he was trapped in the bedroom of the very apartment where the blaze originated.
He was trembling like a leaf and seemed scared out of his mind. “My b-brother,” he stammered through tears. “He… he was angry, and he…” He hiccupped and reached for me with skinny arms left bare in a tank top. He had on some kind of colorful pajama bottoms too, but that was it. It was winter. The poor guy was going to freeze.
“Oh, honey,” I murmured, pulling the kid close to make sure he didn’t fall from the ladder. “Did he hurt you?”
My words only made him cry harder. Once we made it safely onto the ground and away from where the rest of the crew battled the fire, I wrapped a Mylar blanket around him and found a spare pair of boots in the truck for him to put on before taking him to the back of the bus to check out his injuries.
“There’s a big accident west of town that has the Valley Cross responders busy. I’m afraid the Hobie fire crew is all you’ve got, but I’m also an EMT, so I should be able to help you out here.”
I used some wipes to gently clean the smudges off his face so I could see what was actual bruising. Even with the blanket wrapped tightly around the kid, he shivered violently.
“What’s your name?” I asked softly.
“S-Stevie,” he replied through chattering teeth.
“We’ve met before. Do you play soccer?” I moved the blanket aside enough to slip the blood pressure cuff onto his arm.
“N-no,” he said, turning his face away from me. “I g-graduated. B-b-but I’ve been t-to some of the g-games.”
“You didn’t go to school in Hobie, did you?”
He shook his head. “V-Valley Cross.”
“Have a friend on the Hobie team?”
Stevie's eyes looked up at me with such sadness, such vulnerability, I suddenly remembered. He was the boy who’d been bullied while bringing his brother lunch at the soccer fields. My heart clenched. This poor guy and his jackass of a brother.
“You said your older brother did this? Kade, right?” I asked.
Stevie’s eyes widened at the name as if he was surprised I knew who his brother was. “N-no, I was c-confused. It was an-n-n accident.” He began coughing violently, and I reached for the oxygen mask.
His hair was a tangle of dirty, dyed-green spikes, made messier by the smoke and the trauma of his experience. Once I settled the mask on his face, I brushed his hair back from his eyes. “Shh, just take it easy. Slow breaths.”
He did as I said and began to relax finally, slumping sideways a bit until he was leaning heavily against me.
“Lieutenant Paige, what’ve we got?” the chief’s voice called out from across the parking lot as he strode toward me.
Stevie jerked up and pulled away from me, shooting me a guilty look for some reason. I reached over and squeezed his hand to reassure him it was fine. All victims needed support and comfort.
I tried not to admit to myself that my desire to comfort and support this particular victim was considerably stronger than normal for some reason. I wasn’t attracted to him sexually—he was barely legal, and I was twice his age—but he seemed to need me… to needsomeoneon his side, and I couldn’t handle the idea of him not having what he needed.
As I explained what I knew of Stevie’s condition, my boss’s radio squawked. Before I could do more than assure Stevie he didn’t have any serious injuries besides the facial bruises his asshole brother had given him, Stevie’s mother approached with a toddler on her hip and began fussing at him.
“Why didn’t you come out of that room when I yelled for you? This poor fireman had to use the ladder to save you. Who do you think you are, some kind of pretty princess? If you’d just come out when Kade told us to go, we could have avoided all this drama. You just have to be the center of attention, don’t you?” She reached for his arm just when the chief’s radio squawked again.
I heard enough through the radio to know the chief was going to send me to an accident back in the direction of Hobie. The last thing I wanted to do was leave this poor kid with his terrible mother, but I had to remind myself he was safe while the victims of the car accident weren’t. I leaned into the truck and pulled out a scrap piece of paper, quickly jotting my number down. When I handed it to Stevie, I met his eyes and tried to getacross how serious I was. “Call me if you need anything. Okay? And tell the officer what really happened in there.”
