Katerina Winters

Crossing the Line: Chapter 1


 

Chapter 1

A prickling awareness spread across Garrett's senses drifting past his sleeping mind and into his consciousness. Taking a measured breath, he opened his eyes and met three pairs of curious gazes standing less than a foot away from him. Now that he was awake the noises from the kitchen, which he had been diligently trying to ignore all morning, grew louder as his cousin Bethann stood in the open kitchen angrily stirring something on the stove.

 

Garrett glanced back at the disheveled children in front of him. It was only—he paused to check his watch—nine in the morning, and the kids already looked like they had been wrangling dirt devils all morning. From their mussed hair, dirty clothes, and fingernails, it was clear they had been busy. Or did they go to bed that way?

 

Sitting up, the worn couch beneath him let out a groan that rivaled his own. His back was killing him. Tiredly, Garrett scrubbed his face with one hand while a small finger began poking him in the thigh.

 

Garrett looked at the kid, Aaron, with a grave expression. Or at least he thought that was the kid's name. There were five kids total crammed in the small trailer home. It was impossible to keep up with them all.

 

"Momma says you better not be planning to stay here forever," Aaron said, sounding surprisingly like his mother's voice.

 

"Yeah," Brittany, the tallest and dirtiest of the three, spoke up with an added little nod. "She's mad that you're ruining our couch."

 

Garrett fixed a tired look at Bethann's back as she juggled cooking something on the stove, adjusting the baby at her hip, and occasionally leaning out the open kitchen window to blow out her cigarette smoke.

 

"Ruining it, huh?" he asked as he stood to his feet, all three children now staring up at him as if he were Godzilla.

 

They nodded in reply.

 

That was rich, he thought with a grim smirk as he glanced back down to the sagging sofa that looked as if it had never seen better days. Walking past the trio, Garrett could feel a slight flex in the floor under each step of his boots as he grabbed his bag on the way to the bathroom and shut the door on his newly formed posse trailing behind him.

 

Ernie, his cousin and father to all the kids, had been saying for years he was going to get him and Bethann a new trailer. Another typical failed promise in the Kreager clan. One of many. A family of pipe dreams and fuck ups, his uncle would say.

 

Garrett paused, with his toothbrush hanging halfway out of his mouth, and reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. Speaking of his fucking uncle, Garrett pressed the icon for Sebastien Kreager on his phone and listened to it ring.

 

It only rang twice before his uncle's smiling voice came over the line. "I was wondering when you were going to call me."

 

Spitting out the last of the toothpaste, Garrett leaned against the counter and glared at the warped wood panel wall ahead of him. "Either you give me what you promised or I walk," he said, cutting him off.

 

"Not sure where the hell you're gonna go since the Sheriff specifically told you that you can't stay in your daddy's trailer anymore," Sebastien's voice oozed back at him and he could imagine his uncle's shit-eating smile.

 

Garrett clenched his jaw. It wasn't his dad's trailer—it was his goddamn trailer. It had been since he was fourteen when he took over the payments after the piece-of-shit drunk of a man, also known as his father, just stopped working altogether.

 

"I'm only here for one reason," he ground out, doing his best to control his fraying temper. "You told me that you would give me her number if-"

 

"Your birthday's tomorrow," Sebastien cut him off and Garrett felt the tendons in his jaw pop as he began to lose his patience. He glared at his own reflection and willed himself to calm down. "How old are you gonna be?" Sebastien continued. "Twenty, and you're still in high school. And here I thought you would be the one to break the Kreager curse."

 

Garrett's hand tightened around his phone. Looking out the bathroom window, he envisioned the oil rig nearly three miles off the Texas coast where his uncle was currently working and pictured himself punching the bastard.

 

Sebastien laughed as if sensing Garrett's thoughts. "Calm down, I sent you a present that should put me back in your good graces. It should be arriving there any minute now. Just be patient."

 

The line went dead before Garrett could reply. Annoyed, he grabbed his things and exited the bathroom, nearly running over the small group of children camped outside the door. Their numbers were growing, he observed.

 

"Shouldn't you guys be in school?" he asked, stepping past them.

 

Brittany stood with her hands on her hips. "Shouldn't you?"

 

Garrett narrowed his eyes and all four children ran away with a mixture of screams and laughter.

 

"You guys come back here right fucking now!" Bethann yelled out after them as the screen door slammed against the house. "Goddammit," she muttered and turned to glare at Garrett.

 

She was opening her mouth to no doubt tell him about her feelings on his visit when a small knock sounded on the door. They both turned to see a small woman standing on the steps wearing an unsure smile on her face.

 

Garrett's senses narrowed, and sharpened until the woman with her gentle smile and kind eyes was the only person in focus. Finally, after months of searching she was finally within reach, and this time nothing was going to make him let her go.