Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 77106 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77106 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Zoe - 2 years
“For the life of me, I can’t figure out what is so complicated about getting your underwear in the hamper,” I mumbled to myself, using the pair of tongs I kept in the bathroom for exactly this purpose to pick up the boxers and drop them into the hamper.
Against my chest, our son slept peacefully. Likely plotting his own devious plans to leave his underpants on the floor in fifteen years’ time.
“You talking to me?” Coast asked, coming down the hall as I made my way out of the bathroom.
“Myself. Our son. The cruel orchestrator of this world of ours where worn underwear gets left on the floor for someone who was not the wearer to pick up.”
Coast opened his mouth to say something, but there was a voice booming from somewhere downstairs.
“Ey, I brought breakfast burritos!” Eddie called.
The absolute last thing I wanted to do was make breakfast that morning. Eddie was practically a mind-reader, I swear.
By the time we made our way downstairs, the food was already spread out across the counter and three teenagers were already plowing into it as Eddie picked up Lainey and set her in her booster at the table.
“Hey, pick up your fucking drawers,” Coast said, lightly whacking Grayson on the back of the head as he walked past him.
“How’d you know it wasn’t Ryland?” Grayson asked over a mouthful of breakfast burrito.
“Because I lived in a box for two years where we couldn’t have a scrap of paper on the floor,” Ryland supplied.
“And apologize to Zoe,” Coast demanded.
“Sorry, Zo.”
“Boys are animals,” Amy said, dropping down next to Lainey at the table.
“Animals,” Lainey agreed with a firm head nod.
Basically, anything that Amy said, Lainey agreed with. It was like she realized that we girls were outnumbered in this house, and we had to stick together.
When I’d brought the file to Coast, I hadn’t expected things to change so much for us. I thought it would be healing for him to see that despite all his worries, his kids mostly turned out great. That the decision he’d deemed as ‘selfish’ to call in child services hadn’t led to some catastrophic series of events.
But Coast had made it a one-man mission to seek out the three at-risk children. Starting with Amy who—arguably—was in the worst place, being a young girl on the street, unprotected.
Of course, perhaps he hadn’t given her enough credit. Because when he’d found her little camp, he’d leaned down to glance inside her tent, only to find a knife pressed into his carotid from behind.
Amy had grown into a rough, tough, take-no-shit teenager who spoke her mind and strictly enforced her boundaries.
When he showed up with her—smelling a little worse for wear and in desperate need of a good meal—I’d been the one to suggest we let her stay the night in one of the extra bedrooms.
I’d meant only for the night. I mean, Amy was a runaway. I was pretty sure we could get in trouble for not reporting her to the authorities.
But one night turned into two, then a long weekend. And before we knew it, she was part of the family.
Not long after Amy was living with us full-time, there’d been a frantic knock on our front door at three in the morning.
When Coast went to open it—gun in hand, telling us to stay back—Grayson had fallen into Coast’s arms.
Bloodied and bruised, he’d barely been able to move, eat, or speak for days.
When he finally could, we learned that his gang had heard a rumor about him being a snitch, and had beaten and left him for dead.
We’d asked about his foster family, only to learn that his foster father and his biological sons were in the same gang.
“We have another room,” I reminded Coast when he’d looked ready to storm across town and do something that would etch more tally marks into his skin. “Make a deal with his foster family. He lives here. They get their check. Everyone’s happy.”
And so, we had another teenager in the house. Only, a boy. Who seemed to have hollow bones, because there was no other way to explain how he ate so damn much and still looked like a beanpole.
Ryland, well, Ryland was the newest addition.
He’d been released, as expected. He’d gone straight from juvenile hall to a group home. Where he was forced to keep to a rigid schedule and intense chores from his house parents and subjected to constant room searches and unreasonable curfews.
Basically, he felt like he was still being treated like a prisoner. Only worse, because where the corrections officers on the inside generally just left him alone, the house parents were constantly breathing down his neck.
Eventually, one night, there was another knock on our door.
Then there was Ryland.
A recent runaway who didn’t have anything but the clothes on his back and the sketchbook Coast had given him when he’d learned he was into art.