Finding Stefanie by Susan May Warren

Author:Susan May Warren
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION / Christian / Romance, FICTION / Romance / Contemporary
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2013-07-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

STEFANIE STARED AT Lincoln Cash—incredible, beautiful Lincoln Cash—and couldn’t breathe.

“What?” she managed to say, but it didn’t seem that he heard her because he covered his eyes with his hand, shaking his head as if he’d been sucked into some memory that overwhelmed him.

The memory of killing his mother?

“Oh,” he said, and it sounded more like a groan than anything. “I don’t know why I . . .”

Stefanie slipped off the desk. And then suddenly she had her arms around his neck, pulling him down to her, wrapping him tight. Holding him. Because, although this night had started out with her feeling completely out of her element, wondering why she’d agreed to dinner, wondering how to fortify her heart, right now, in this moment, she knew she had to be more than a neighbor. Lincoln needed a friend. “Linc . . . shhh.”

His arms went around her; his head touched her shoulder. He was shaking a little and holding on to her tight, like he meant it.

Like he needed her.

She closed her eyes, laying her head against his chest, breathing in the smell of his freshly laundered shirt, his cologne, and the musky scent of the outdoors. “What happened?” she whispered.

He said nothing for a long time. Then he took a deep breath and moved back.

She searched his eyes, but he turned his anguish away from her.

“What happened?” She kept her voice gentle and slid onto the desk again.

He sighed as if expelling pain. “I was . . . so . . . stupid.” The way he said it, like he was spitting, made her heart ache. She knew exactly the kind of stupid that elicited that tone.

He braced his hand against the wall and stared out the window. “There was this kid where I grew up. His name was E-bro—”

“E-bro?”

“It was a gang name—and his favorite sport was . . . well, let’s say I learned how to take the hits I do on the screen from real-life tutoring, thanks to E-bro and my stepdad.”

Stefanie clenched her jaw against that visual.

“E-bro was a couple years older than me in school and one of those kids that had been born with a beard and a mean streak. He thought I’d be a good target for torture, so I spent most of my school years running home, in hopes I’d get there before he did. When I didn’t, I’d hide out in the junkyard near our trailer park.”

Admittedly, Stefanie had a hard time getting her brain around Lincoln hiding, his knees knocking. But she didn’t say that, because the look of agony on his face as he turned to her confirmed his words.

“Later on, when I was fifteen and sixteen, I just learned to take the lumps. But I wanted so desperately to be strong and maybe pay him back, so I—” he shook his head—“I joined another gang.”

“A rival gang?”

“Yep.” Lincoln sat down in the desk chair, pulling her foot onto his knee. He had his hand around her ankle and now rubbed his thumb along it, almost absently.

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