Blind Spot: A Creekwood Novel (Creekwood Series Book 3) Read online

  BLIND SPOT

  A Creekwood Novel

  A. MARIE

  Blind Spot

  A Creekwood Novel

  A. Marie

  Copyright © 2021 A. Marie

  Published by Booktickets by AM

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written consent of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. No copyright infringement intended. No claims have been made over songs and/or lyrics written. All credit goes to original owner.

  Editing: Sarah Plocher, All Encompassing Books

  Proofreading: Judy Zweifel, Judy’s Proofreading

  Cover Design: Murphy Rae

  Cover Photography: Miguelanxo

  Cover Model: Daniel Zarzosa

  Formatting: Champagne Book Design

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Playlist

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  PLAYLIST

  Music plays a big role in my writing. You can find the full playlist on Spotify.

  Suit And Jacket—Judah & the Lion

  Play With Fire—Sam Tinnesz

  Ember—Katherine McNamara

  ok on your own—mxmtoon, Carly Rae Jepsen

  All My Friends—AJ Mitchell

  I Don’t Exist—Olivia O’Brien

  Hurts Like Hell—Madison Beer, Offset

  Heaven—Julia Michaels

  Bad Boy—CARYS

  Fuck Away the Pain—Divide The Day

  Lost My Mind—Alice Kristiansen

  burning bridges—Bea Miller

  Honestly—Gabbie Hanna

  Anywhere—Sigma, Louis III

  Dance Monkey—Tones And I

  Real Friends—Camila Cabello

  Flames—MOD SUN, Avril Lavigne

  Damaged—Britton

  idfc—blackbear

  2 Souls on Fire—Bebe Rexha, Quavo

  Higher—The Score

  Small Doses—Bebe Rexha

  Thief—Ansel Elgort

  My Heart’s Grave—Faouzia

  Love in the Dark—Leroy Sanchez

  Brother—Sam Tinnesz

  Paralyzed—NF

  Almost Touch Me—Maisy Kay

  Collide—Rachel Platten

  Fantasy—Bazzi

  talk is overrated—Jeremy Zucker, blackbear

  Seeing Blind—Niall Horan, Maren Morris

  warmer—Bea Miller

  Go Crazy—Leslie Odom Jr.

  Bitter Love—Pia Mia

  Cry for Me—Camila Cabello

  I Fall Apart—Cimorelli

  Burn Me Down—Sophie Simmons

  Do You Miss Me At All—Bridgit Mendler

  Where Your Secrets Hide—Klergy, Katie Garfield

  I R L—DYSN, Prelow

  Dark Side—Phoebe Ryan

  I Still Wait For You—XYLØ

  Twenty-Somethings—Judah & the Lion

  Ocean Eyes—American Avenue

  For the ones holding two swords.

  May you never forget you have them.

  Blind Spot: an area where a person’s view is obstructed, keeping something or someone out of sight.

  CHAPTER 1

  Marc

  Ease up, dammit.

  She comes tearing around the final turn of the track, ahead of all the boys, of course—just like I taught her—and it’s the same one I’ve had my eye on since we pulled in at six o’clock this morning. The hay bales holding it up look unstable as shit, and as soon as the tires on her 50cc blaze across the top of the turn—unlike how I taught her—the loose bundles wobble enough to make her sway unsteadily and I grip the flimsy two-by-four railing I’m standing behind even tighter. Luckily, Rebel’s straightened left leg helps stabilize her fast enough so she can shoot out of the curve smoothly, her long, blonde hair flying out from beneath her maroon helmet like a superheroine’s cape.

  Even though she’s competing in the correct age bracket, she’s smaller than every other rider on the track—easily—but racing dirt bikes isn’t about size, it’s about heart, and Rebel’s determination is unmatched—also easily.

  I wait until she’s safely across the finish line before stalking over to the track master and getting in his face.

  “This track is shit! Someone could get killed.”

  It’s bad enough this run-down ORV park is the only one around, forcing anybody serious about racing to make the fifty-minute drive outside of town, but it’s poorly run and in need of major repair. It’s by far the worst one I’ve been on and it’s only getting worse as time goes on.

  “Isn’t that your daughter accepting the first-place trophy up there?”

  Over on the joke of a stage that’s comprised of wooden crates that have also seen better days, Rebel stands proudly, holding up her trophy and most likely cheesin’ beneath the helmet she’s still wearing.

  Fuck. I gotta get over there. Her mom will want a picture. Or twenty.

  I narrow my eyes and turn back to the man in charge. Yeah, she got a trophy, that she earned fair and square, but that doesn’t change the fact that this track is run by somebody who doesn’t even respect the sport, let alone know what riders actually need. Safety during an extreme sport may seem contradictory but it’s vital—literally.

  “Fix this place up or I’ll have it shut down.” Which honestly, should probably happen anyway before anybody dies out here but it really is the only—somewhat—legit place around. It’s the same track my boys, Coty and Beckett, and I used to ride when we were growing up, except now it holds an air of decay, of despair, that wasn’t here before that makes me want to stop coming here just so it can’t taint the memories, too.

  “Then where will everyone go, huh?” He lets out an irritating little chuckle that has me grinding my molars together.

  That’s one of my main problems with this fucking town. There’s enough open land around for people to ride wherever the hell they want but nowhere with actual practice jumps, let alone a full race course. Fuck if I’ll admit that to him though.

  Instead I pin the guy with a glare, then turn on my heel, needing to snap a pic of a little girl worth more than the hunk of metal—or whatever the fuck it’s made of—in her grasp.

  Trophy. Shit, she’ll laugh at this pathetic excuse of a trophy when she makes it pro one day. We both will.

  If that’s what
she wants.

  Heading over to the winners’ stand, I pull out my phone and start clicking away.

  Satisfied with enough pictures to fill one of those sappy scrapbooks my mom used to make for me and my sister, I put my hands under Rebel’s arms to lift her off the rickety crate and her chest protector clunks against my wrists as she squirms in my hold. Kid’s ticklish as shit.

  Once she’s back on the ground, I pull her helmet off to reveal a huge-ass grin on her flushed face showcasing her missing front teeth. Ruffling her already staticky strands, I grin down at her, so fucking proud my chest hurts.

  Then some guy rushes over with a camera saying something about a picture for the newspaper and I drop the smile to slip Rebel behind me before throwing a twenty and a quiet “fuck off” at him.

  Isn’t there a rule about taking photos of kids without permission? There fucking should be.

  Turned back around, I tell her, “Good job out there. You ’bout gave me a heart attack on that last berm,” I drop down on my knee to help with her gear, “but you pulled it off.”

  “Thankth. Can we get ithe cream on the way home?”

  Ice cream? Only a six-year-old would be thinking about ice cream right now.

  I hood my eyes at her which only makes her gap-filled smile grow wider. She knows she’s not supposed to have ice cream first thing in the morning.

  Screw it. She just burned off a ton of energy competing against boys that’ve probably been doing this since they were toddlers…and she won. Ice cream for breakfast it is.

  We gather her dark maroon Yamaha TTR50 and load it into my trailer.

  After switching both the trailer and truck out for my BMW tucked away at my dad’s, we head home while Rebel fills the silence with excited conversation. We’re talking over-the-top excited. If it weren’t for her being strapped into her booster seat, I have no doubt the girl would be levitating right now.

  The ice cream might’ve been a bad idea.

  Her scoop of double chocolate cherry chunk drips down her hand wrapped around the cone, landing onto my custom leather seat with an audible smack, making my jaw clench hard enough to hurt my temple.

  Ice cream was definitely a bad idea.

  Back at Creekwood Apartments, I swing a hard right to park in front, far away from my place, and as soon as I pull the e-brake up, I spy Rebel through the rearview mirror, mouth wide open, breaths heavy and slow. Little mama passed out—with the half-eaten ice cream cone still in her fist. Naturally.

  With a shake of my head, I set the cone on the pile of napkins she ignored, then scoop her up in my arms, taking the stairs without her so much as stirring.

  Kary opens the door the second I hit the top step, her light blonde hair matching her light eyes.

  “How’d it go?”

  “Fine,” I mutter, rearranging the limp body in my hold so we can fit through the doorway easier and fighting not to roll my eyes in front of her.

  Like I’d ever let anything happen.

  I lay Rebel down on the couch, then stand back a minute to just watch her sleep. Kids are crazy, man. She’s got chocolate coating her top lip, both eyebrows, and at least one of her ears.

  My own lips twitching, I turn around, going back outside to grab her riding gear along with her snacks, water bottle, tablet, diary with matching fuzz-covered pen, picture book, two bracelets, and a partridge in a pear tree.

  Fuck.

  Why did she need all this shit again? It’s a far cry from the two, maybe three, things I always carry with me and she didn’t even use any of it. Did she?

  The diary falls open to a dog-eared page showing the number one sketched across the top with a shit ton of hand-drawn smiley faces and hearts underneath. A full smirk pulls at my mouth. I guess she did.

  A breeze blows through the open car door, rustling the paper to an earlier entry, a drawing there jumping out at me before I can slam the frilly diary shut and add it to the growing stack piled on the booster seat.

  Kary’s suppressing a smile when I deposit it all upstairs but I just hand her the trophy, careful not to let our fingers touch as I attempt to stare directly at the floor.

  She makes a noise in her throat and our eyes finally do collide in time for me to watch her lose the rest of the battle as she lets out a laugh to say, “You know this is your fault, right?”

  My eyebrows plummet. What part?

  “Chocolate…ice cream, I’m guessing?” She gestures to Rebel’s face. “Really? I bet that left a mess.”

  “I needed a car wash anyway.” I shrug, AirDropping her the rest of the pictures now that I have a better signal before sliding my phone back into my jeans and realizing she’s the one refusing to meet my eyes now.

  Time to go.

  “I’m sorry,” Kary whispers even though we both know it’s pointless.

  On my way out, I peer over at Rebel one last time, feeling some of the tightness leave my shoulders, and nod.

  I’m not.

  Outside, I do a quick scan before pulling around to park beside Paige and Beck’s street bikes alongside our building.

  Creekwood is broken up into three sections, forming a broken U shape with a pool in the middle of the complex. Our unit—soon to be my unit—is in the central hub while Kary’s is in one of the outer buildings, the front one to be exact.

  With Paige about five months along in her pregnancy, she doesn’t ride for the time being, so she drives Beck’s Tahoe which is also parked in the lot, even though I thought they’d be gone already.

  By the time I do a half-ass wipe-up of the backseat, they’re both descending the stairs hand-in-hand.

  I honestly don’t know how my roommates haven’t noticed Rebel yet. That’s all I can see.

  She’s all I see.

  The thread holding me to Creekwood is clutched by a tiny hand with glitter-painted nails caked in dirt and probably even a little double chocolate cherry chunk ice cream now.

  With Beck and Paige set to move into their own home soon, she’s the only thing keeping me here anymore. I don’t see that changing anytime soon, even with my own group of properties sitting idle, waiting for me to do something with them.

  “Where were you?” Beck asks with a shit-eating grin on his face but I don’t bother with a reply. I don’t answer to him. I don’t answer to anyone.

  Fortunately, he knows the deal and laughs lightly, changing the subject like only he can. “Come with us. Paige wants to hit up the farmer’s market.”

  I’m about to decline when Paige speaks up, asking if we can swing by Pop Two, the second location of our joint venture auto repair shop, Pop The Hood. “I need to give my brother the ultrasound results so he knows which color powder to buy.” Her gaze drops immediately, probably checking to see if she can still see her feet or some shit. She’s been talking about that particular change a lot lately but I’m pretty sure it’ll be a few more months before she has to worry about that happening.

  Despite all that though, my ears perk up. Not for the gender reveal part. A kid’s a kid, and as long as they’re born healthy, they’ll see that’s all that really matters. No, it’s because I need my car washed—bad—and Angela’s the only one I trust with cleaning the interior as well as the exterior.

  As soon as the words leave my mouth suggesting my plan of dropping my car off too, Paige offers to drive it there for me, so I jog upstairs and grab my helmet. After watching Rebel tear up the track, I’m ready to do some riding of my own.

  With both my rides custom painted to be the exact same color, my Ducati Corse 899 parked next to my BMW looks like its hotter, nastier, younger sister and the shot of almost visible energy shooting up my arm when I turn the key settles over me like a low current of electricity. I keep all my toys the same color, the same garnet red, for a reason—as a warning of upcoming danger.

  An hour later, I’m narrowing my gaze on a boy that reminds me of Rebel as he studies the snow-cone stand with a deep wrinkle in his brow before I tune back into Beck. Or I try to a
nyway. He won’t shut the hell up about how much better my family’s farm is than every other tent at this farmer’s market. No shit. My dad may be a world-class dickhead but he knows his shit when it comes to his life’s work. After moving here from Mexico with his family as a kid, he dreamed of being his own boss and doing what he loved, which was grow things with his hands, so he made a risky investment on a large piece of land when he was barely nineteen. Over the years, he’s added to it, working his ass off to grow his produce farm into the successful business it is today. I’m surprised he’s not out here himself actually. I’m glad he’s not out here himself.

  The little boy in front of the stand is now holding a pencil up to his mouth, deep in thought, and I glance around for his parents, coming up empty. What the hell’s he doing? He’s got messy, sand-colored hair with several cowlicks all over the place and his clothes are filthy with tears every-fucking-where. Not the kind I shell out a ton of money to already be on my jeans either. These are real tears that make me think of the kids I grew up with on my family’s farm. Before my dad opened an onsite daycare for his employees, they’d sometimes bring their kids with them and we’d run absolutely wild.

  He squints and I eye the snow-cone stand again.

  Just as I’m getting to my feet, cash already in hand, he marks something down on a piece of paper and runs off in the opposite direction.

  I trade the money out for my cigarettes instead, scowling over at my roommate as I sit back down next to him. We’re sitting at a table in the parking lot cleared out for shoppers and I’d rather be anywhere else. Literally anywhere. Stuck in the middle of a human tornado is not how I wanted to spend my day.

  “Are you just gonna talk shit the whole time?” I snap at Beck for no real reason but he just shrugs unapologetically, pushing his blond hair out of his eyes to say, “Yeah, probably.”

  I roll my eyes, sticking a cigarette between my lips.

  “You know it’s my favorite hobby.”

  Guy could carry on a fully animated conversation with spackle, I swear.

  A passerby screws up his face in disgust at me, making me wonder why the fuck I agreed to come here again. Ever since Washington banned basically all cigarette smoke—not marijuana though—I get even more heat than ever about my…habit. Like I care. At least I’m open about it. I’m not pretending I’m good like those shit-for-brains taking hits off a stupid flash drive lookalike.