Page 9 of Phoenix

“I haven’t either.”

Tor slowly raised his hand and traced his fingertips over the bandage and down the side of Jule’s face. “Do you want me to kiss you, Julie?”

Jule nodded.

Tor gazed into his eyes as he cradled his cheek and moved forward until their lips brushed together.

Chapter 3– Age 17

“What happened to your eye?” Jule whispered as soon as Tor sat at the desk beside him, sporting a huge shiner.

“Tell you later.” He pulled a pencil out of his backpack.

“You’ll tell me now.” He always hated seeing Tor hurt. Well, he usually hated seeing Tor hurt. The two of them had marked each other up plenty of times when they’d scuffled, but that was different. They were having fun.

“Shh. Ms. Fields is handing out the tests, and she’ll kick you out if she catches you talking.”

“Tor,” he demanded. “What the fuck happened?”

“Julian Sterling, do I hear you talking during your AP exam?” the teacher said.

They hadn’t even started yet. She was being ridiculous and Jule was about to say that when Tor squeezed his shoulder.

“That was me, Ms. Fields,” Tor quickly responded. “It won’t happen again.”

She frowned at them but continued placing exam booklets on each desk.

Julian wanted to demand an answer, but Tor would throw himself under the bus if they got caught and he didn’t want to get him in trouble, so he forced himself to be patient. That wasn’t his strong suit, which made concentrating on the AP Physics exam extra challenging. Thankfully, they’d studied hard for it.

Tor had drilled the information into him and even found ways to show him real life examples of the different types of mechanical and electrical concepts they were learning while he fixed up an old trailer they’d put on cinder blocks in the backyard. Tyson and his girlfriend and Trey were living in it while Travis and his daughter and Titan lived in the house. Travis and Titan were doing mostly legal work at an auto shop now, so they no longer had parts all over the yard, whichfreed up space. Tor planned to put up another trailer once they had enough money. He was amazing at repairing and building anything. He was doing the plumbing and the electric too. He had taught himself.

Tor was brilliant so he’d probably get a five on the physics exam, which was the top possible score. A three would be good enough to earn credit and Jule thought he had a solid chance of getting that. They were the only two juniors taking the test so worst-case scenario, he could try it again the next year.

“What the fuck happened?” Jule demanded when they left the room three endless hours later.

“John Jones is back,” Tor whispered.

“Your father?” Jule hissed.

“The one and only.”

They walked away from the group of people outside the room and down a relatively empty corridor.

“He hit you?”

Tor nodded and then shook his head. “Yeah, but he wasn’t aiming for me. He was pissed at Vickie.”

Aside from them all being grown now and Travis having a kid and Tyson having a live-in girlfriend, another reason for the trailer was that Tor’s mother was back in the house, had been for a few months, which meant Jule’s father had been spending time there too. That situation had gotten weirder as they’d gotten older. Not because it had changed but because Jule was now old enough to understand how incredibly messed up it all was.

His father had tried dating Vickie when they were in high school, but his parents didn’t approve of her. The Sterling family was all country clubs and political appointments and old money. The Dunworthys were none of that. So, Harold Sterling had pretended to move on. He’d had the right kinds of girlfriends, went away to college and law school, gotten the right kind of job at the right kind of firm, and eventually married the right kind ofwoman. But Jule now realized that his father had never loved his mother, because throughout that entire time, he had still been seeing Vickie Dunworthy, off more than on, but almost thirty years of that added up.

“John Jones hit Vickie?”

“He tried to anyway. I got in between them, and this happened.” He pointed at his eye. “John Jones is a psychopath, but he’s never laid his hands on me. When he realized I wasn’t going to get out of his way, he took off, but I don’t trust it. He was way pissed at her. He’ll be back.”

“Jesus,” Jule said under his breath.

“Yeah. I told Vickie that she needs to tell your dad to stay the fuck away from the house, but the way she’s coked up all the time, who knows what she’ll remember so you should tell him too. Honestly, I don’t know why he still comes around at all. He’s the fucking Arizona Attorney General. If someone catches him at the house, he’ll be ruined. The whole thing’s stupid and risky as hell.”