Past Regrets

Not too much shocked DJ during his time living in the beat-to-shit group home in the ass-end of Tucson, Arizona, but the sound of helpless whimpering caught him off guard. When he barged into the second-floor bedroom, the four idiots turned, their eyes wary.

“What the hell is going on?” At six-foot-one, DJ easily pushed aside the leering morons surrounding a dark-haired beauty huddling on the floor, shirt ripped, hair tangled.

“Why don’t you mind your own damn business,” Jimmy, the stupidest one of the group, blustered.

Normally, DJ ignored the bullshit. After seventeen years in the system, he’d seen and heard it all and was just counting the days till he could age out of this dump. He spent as little time as possible at the home, and when he was there, he usually kept his distance from each one of them. Six guys and four girls—ten kids total, all destined for disaster—himself included.

DJ grabbed Jimmy by the neck of his grubby t-shirt. “Did you do this?” DJ nodded to the girl clutching her tattered clothes.

“We were just having some fun,” Jimmy mumbled.

“She wanted us to do it,” Jimmy’s pimply-faced friend added. “She was liking it.”

DJ curled his lip. “Doesn’t look like she’s having fun to me.”

“She struts around here acting like she’s better than everybody,” Jimmy countered. “Just trying to show this bitch how things work.”

Jimmy put all the new girls through “his version” of an initiation, and the sick fuck got off on it. Most of the other girls were tough enough to hold their own, but this innocent with the wide ebony eyes was way out of her league.

“Leave her alone,” DJ warned.

“What the fuck do you care? She ain’t nothing to you.”

Jimmy had a point. DJ had never seen her before this minute. He didn’t know what wicked twist of fate dropped her in this shithole, but she clearly didn’t belong here.

“I ever see you touch her again, I’ll fuckin’ kill you in your sleep,” DJ spat out the harsh words as a threat, but the pounding of his pulse and the fierce anger bubbling in his gut surprised him. He’d made it a firm rule to stay detached and away from the drama that haunted this rat-trap.

The adults who were supposed to be supervising the kids were either preaching how the world was about to end or buying sex toys off some porno channel. In short, the animals in this zoo roamed free.

The moron’s eyes bugged out, and DJ gave him an extra shake for good measure. Jimmy’s buddies were already inching their way toward the door when DJ shoved him in the same direction as the others.

He turned to the girl and extended his hand, but she hesitated. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

She grabbed on to DJ, her slender fingers firm inside his large palm. Her chest rose and fell with choppy breaths, and as she struggled to pull the torn blouse over her breasts, her cheeks reddened against her tawny skin.

“You don’t have to be embarrassed; I ain’t looking.” A shitty lie because he couldn’t help but notice how the soft curls of her midnight black hair fell over her rounded breasts.

“Thank you for helping me.” Her soft voice made his chest ache. It would’ve been much better for her if she was some hardass chick telling him to fuck off.

“Those guys are assholes. You gotta stay far away from them. Stick with the other girls.”

“I don’t think the other girls like me very much either.”

Probably true. “They’re jealous.” The three other females in the house had bad skin and stringy hair. “You don’t look like you belong here.” It scared DJ how those thoughts popped out of his mouth, but her innocence floored him. She was like a beautiful flower in the middle of the Mojave Desert—unexpected, out of place, and sure to die.

“I’m Zelda.” She held out her delicate hand as though they were meeting at some society ball, not this group home where she almost got raped by lunatics.

“Dwayne.” Where the hell did that come from? He never divulged his real name. “But everybody calls me DJ.”

“Neither do you.”

“What?”

“You don’t look like you belong here either.” Zelda’s gaze roamed over him. “You’re nothing like the others. You’re good.”

That floored DJ since his caseworker threw him in here as a last resort after he knocked his previous foster-father unconscious for trying to touch his dick while he was sleeping. No fuckin’ way was that happening.

“Nah.” DJ plastered a smirk on his face to hide his embarrassment. “I’m just not a psycho who beats up on women.”

“Today, you’re my hero.” She squeezed his hand, and his chest constricted.

Zelda’s soft voice and the word “hero” made him envision the fairytale stories that never came true.