SEIZED Part 1: New Adult Romantic Suspense (Seize Me Romance Fiction Series) by JC Coulton

His dad bailed early on, so he’s pretty close with his mom.”
    I’m interested now, and I tilt my body more toward him in the comfy passenger seat.
    “Does he play sports or videogames?”
    Blake laughs. “Yeah, it’s usually one of the two, but this kid is special. He skateboards, he just learned to surf, and he’s nuts about Xbox. He could either end up being the captain of the football team or a math nerd. It astounds me.”
    There’s real pride in his voice, and it warms my heart. Being in a space this small with him feels intimate, and I see that he’s more than just a no-nonsense, get things done type of guy. I like him for it, and as we pull into the supermarket parking lot, I start to feel better.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    Blake
    S he’s finally starting to unwind. I tell myself I should be keeping notes on the progress of my witness. But who am I kidding? I’ve been watching her like a hawk from the moment I saw her, and it has nothing to do with keeping witness notes. I’ve done my fair share of tough assignments in this job, but this is hard in a different way. Sticking like glue to the woman who got away.
    She was the first one to break me back then, and it sucked. One moment I’m getting up the courage to ask her out, and the next she leaves for the entire summer and comes back acting like I’m the fucking invisible man. Christ, we were good friends. It was a waste. I have no idea what I did or didn’t do. She just never called again. Fucking women. This is why they have a bad reputation. This is why we need a manual. Things break on the inside, and we don’t even know they need repairing before they chew us out or take off.
    Not long after it went sour with Carrie, my mom finally snapped. She caught Dad spending money on unsavory pussy and left him. Well, she left us all, really. Brenda and I had to deal with his rages after that. The Wiley old bastard made sure he didn’t take it too far because he needed us. Without Mom in the picture, he had no one to pick on. He didn’t want to be alone with his resentments and pain. I wish we’d had the courage to leave earlier, but we needed to hit rock bottom before we saw there was another way.
    Change is like that. Sometimes shit needs to get utterly unbearable. For me, that was when he started targeting Brenda. I was big enough and stupid enough by then to handle myself, but there was nothing she could do. He’d always pick a fight with her when I wasn’t home. Cowardly old fool. She could manage him to a point, but the day finally came when he was too stoned on pain meds and too drunk on cheap scotch to stop himself from leeching all over her. It was disgusting. I walked in, and she was frozen. He had her up against the wall and was sniffing her like a dog.
    There he was, in the midst of a binge, likely in complete black-out, inhaling the freshly showered scent of his teenage daughter. The bastard had his knee in her crotch, and when I saw the look on her face I just snapped and knocked him out. He was so wasted he probably didn’t feel it, but we were gone long before he woke up. I pawned some of the jewelry my mom left, the TV and stereo, and took all the money from his wallet, but that was all we had. I was too ashamed to tell anyone, and Brenda was too shaken to do anything but pack a bag. We took his car and started driving, and that was that.
    I haven’t left Brenda’s side since, but she’s been complaining about it for years. She’d had boyfriends, and for a while, I thought it might work out for her and George’s dad, but it didn’t. She decided to keep the baby anyway, and that’s when I knew I had to put down the booze. I was working at a bar to help us pay rent on our shitty place, so while she grew a baby, I grew some balls and got sober in AA. It was the fucking hardest thing I’ve ever done. Admitting all the shit I’ve done. All the reasons I drank. I didn’t do it for me, though. I did it for her. Eventually, when I realized it