“Please stop taking them,” I quietly say to her for what seems like the millionth time.
“I’ll try,” she replies, her voice cracking slightly.
I look up at Bentlee and the smile on my face, while sad, widens slightly. She does try; I’ll give her that. She tries to be the kind of girl she thinks I’ll love one day. She tries to be the kind of girl that she thinks can survive in the world on her own in the event that something ever happened to me.
She tries so damn hard, but sometimes, it’s not good enough, and she knows it.
I know it.
But that won’t stop me from making damn sure that while I can breathe air into this body of mine, from protecting her from her “monsters”.
All of them.
The ones she can’t see, the ones under her bed, and the biggest one of all that’s sitting right in front of her.
Chapter 9
I wait patiently as she clicks her seatbelt into place. Bent’s always loved this damn car, though I can’t imagine why. It’s a brand new, midnight blue Acura NSX, and this fucker can go. Sometimes I like to hit the gas hard when she’s in the car because it makes her happy.
Dangerous things makes the girl ecstatic and it makes sense in a way. After all, look at us. We couldn’t be more mismatched, but I think she sticks around since I’m the only person in her life who hasn’t shooed her away.
I don’t see any point in making someone who’s down feel worse than shit, and she doesn’t bother. She just hates the days and nights she spends alone when I’m working, and that’s understandable.
But I don’t have the time to reason this arrangement to myself right now when I need to get her to the safest place I can think of, and that’s my place.
I glance in the back of the car while I wait for Bentlee to let me know that she’s ready to go, and then turn my attention to her when I see my backpack is still tucked on the floor behind her seat.
“All set?” I ask her with a nervous glance in the rear-view. She nods as she neatly folds her hands on her lap and I turn the car on, put it in gear, and shoot out of the spot in front of her house.
“Did you even look to see if anyone was coming?” she asks with a high-pitched giggle.
That’s the point.
“Yeah,” I reply honestly. She doesn’t have to know the level of honesty, only that I’m making sure that no one is indeed coming after us.
Bent clears her throat and turns on the radio, finding some pop station, and I groan. I don’t have to look at her to know that she’s grinning from ear to ear. She likes that bubblegum crap while I prefer harder music.
It’s no matter, though.
When I’m with her, I want to make sure she’s happy, even if it means having to listen to this teen dream bullshit.
“So why are you awake?”she asks when the radio gives me a short reprieve and begins to play commercials.
“I don’t sleep, you know that,” I say with a laugh.
“You have to sleep sometime,” she replies cheerfully.
“Easiest when you’re in my bed,’ I tell her softly.
It’s not an invitation to anything regardless of how it sounds, but it’s the damn truth and we both know it.
“Well, stop making me leave and maybe you’d be blessed with a regular sleep schedule,” Bentlee says dryly.
I laugh again.
For as young as she is, she’s still smarter than most adults I know. Another cheesy pop song comes on, but I happen to know this one since she plays the shit out of it when she’s in a good mood, and my fingers involuntarily begin to drum along the steering wheel in time with the beat.
“I knew you liked this song,” she says triumphantly.