Irrational (Underneath it All Series: Book Two) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) by Ava Claire

Chapter Five: Jackson
    I strapped myself in tight, adrenaline turning my spine into jelly.
    No one knew about the butterflies in the pit of my stomach. I even gripped the walkie-talkie extra tight so my hands wouldn’t rattle.
    I was the captain of this ship. Lives were in my hands. Joe’s life was in my hands. And just to remind me of that fact, he nudged me with his elbow.
    “Are you sure about this, Cap’n?” His green eyes locked on mine uneasily. The sweat that he wiped away with his t-shirt wasn’t because the sun was blaring down on us. We were attempting the impossible. The ’S.S. Badass’ was headed on a mission to the outskirts of space, to find planets and aliens and lands that we’d only seen on TV.
    We were getting as far from 1124 Brook Street, and Mrs. Ludlow, as possible.
    I pressed the Sharpie created ‘GO’ button on the dashboard made out of cereal boxes we’d snuck out of the trash. We weren’t allowed to have toys, and any we found by accident were quickly claimed by Tommy, Mrs. Ludlow’s jerk-face son. Her ‘real’ son, as she reminded us all the time, patting him on the head and scowling at the rest of us.
    She had five kids that weren’t her ‘real’ kids. Five kids she demanded were to be seen and not heard, because she had the kindness to take us unwanted, ungrateful worms in. Her words. Words she spat at us, when she wasn’t throwing things at us for getting on her nerves. When she wasn't complaining that the measly checks she got weren’t nearly enough to deal with our sticky hands and ugly faces.
    I pushed Mrs. Ludlow from my mind. She was gone all afternoon and would come back with her salt and pepper hair perfectly curled and her nails done.
    I pushed my dark hair out of my eyes. It was longer than it had ever been, so long that the kids at school called me ‘Jackie.’ A haircut was out of the question though. Mrs. Ludlow told me I hadn’t earned it.
    Another poke from Joe snatched me out of my anger.
    Right! The countdown!
    I gripped the imaginary steering wheel. “10...9...8-”
    “NO!”
    The shriek came from the shed and it brought our space mission to a grinding halt. Joe and I leapt from the grass immediately. Our shuttle, made of newspaper, aluminum foil, toilet paper rolls, and soup cans crashed all around us.
    The other two fosters were inside, dutifully sitting on the couch like Mrs. Ludlow had ordered us to. Me and Joe had wanted a real adventure, not another re-run of some judge show. Channel 9 was one of a handful of channels on TV that we were allowed to watch, if Mrs. Ludlow wasn’t watching her stories, of course. Hope had peevishly followed us outside with her teddy bear, drawn to her secret garden. Her imagination was as big as ours because her garden was really an overgrown bed of weeds and broken flower pots. She’d only been at Mrs. Ludlow’s for a week. Not long enough to know that her smile would just make Mrs. Ludlow more cruel and vicious, until Hope forgot how to smile altogether.
    That screech was the sound of someone who was in pain. Who was getting a dose of what it felt like to be a unwanted, ungrateful worm.
    “PLEASE...NO!!”
    Joe grabbed one of the soup cans and tossed me one of my own. I knew Mrs. Ludlow wasn’t back yet, so she wasn’t on the warpath.
    That left Tommy.
    Clutching our weapons, hearts in our throats, we weaved through the tires, beer bottles, and trash that littered the backyard, heading toward the back corner where we saw Tommy stood. The numbers on his basketball jersey glittered in the sun.
    I frowned, scanning what used to be the garden for Hope, but there was just Tommy. His foot was perched on something. A bundle of clothes.
    “He’s stomping on Hope!” Joe hollered, the terror of what was happening channeled in his voice.
    Even though reality was becoming more clear the closer we got, I put aside my fear of what could happen. I didn’t care that Tommy was older. Bigger. Stronger. That he was Mrs.