Page 104 of Cuffed (Everyday Heroes 1)

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I shrug again but hate that my bottom lip quivers and tears well in my eyes. “I just don’t want to go inside.” My tummy hurts, and I keep thinking about when it gets dark and I

have to go to bed. Hopefully, my mom will be back before then . . . but most times she isn’t.

“Is your dad in a bad mood? I always go outside when my dad’s in a bad mood about work. That way, when he gets mad, I’m not in the way.”

“Your dad gets mad?” I can’t remember Chief Malone ever getting mad. Strict, yes. But not mad.

“My mom says he gets stressed when he worries about a case.” He shrugs and picks up one of our rocks, stares at it, and then puts it back down. “He has lots of bad people he has to put away, and it’s his job, so when they don’t get put away, he gets stressed. What does your dad get stressed about?”

When I wet the bed.

When I cry.

When I pretend to be asleep and curl really tight into a ball.

When I don’t do what he says . . .

I wake with a start, my own gasp still coming off my lips.

The room.

This is my room.

Not my old room.

In the dark.

There’s the runway lights out the window.

There’s the hum of the television I left on.

But it’s the rocks that are front and center in my mind.

The painted rocks.

The ones Grant keeps talking about but for the life of me I couldn’t remember . . . until now.

My hands begin to shake as memories I didn’t know I had come flashing back to me.

Going outside to my spot on the side of my house to avoid my dad and finding a new painted rock there from Grant. Something silly that meant everything to me. Something to let me know he was there and checking on me.

To let me know he cared.

To make me smile.

The goddamn rocks.

Grant.

Memories I now remember.

So many more I don’t want to.

Oh. Shit.

It’s finally happening.

I can’t let this happen.

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