Page 1 of Hidden Obsession

PROLOGUE

HOLLIS PORTER

This fucking tin can excuse of a house was scalding hot.

The trailers in the park were placed so fucking close together, down as many rows as could fit in the lot, I doubted a goddamn breeze could push between the old mobile metal homes.

Had I been anywhere else, in anyone else’s home, I would have left. I wouldn’t have wasted a second of my time that brought back old, buried memories. Hell, the place was worse than any I had experienced before I went into the system.

But had it been anywhere else, I wouldn’t enjoy every damn breath I took or the way the sweetened heated air filled more than my lungs. The soft vanilla notes in the warm air wormed their way deep under my skin, clawing into me in an immeasurable way I hadn’t known could exist.

As stifling hot as the damn place was and as damn old, almost falling apart, it was tidy. It was clean and smelled way too damn good. Books sat in the corner of the small kitchen table, not simply stacked but placed with girly decorative pillows on the bench that hinted someone enjoyed sitting there. But then again, there was also a stack of children’s books at the polar opposite end of the trailer past the front door. Those books were surrounded by two bean bags, plush animals, and baby dolls.

The space was… sweet.

Welcoming and comfortable.

Or it would be for people of regular proportions and not men my size. An adequate space for a small family. Not that I had a whole lot of experience with familial entanglements or emotional connections like normal people did. But then again, the way I was brought up was anything but normal.

Given up at three days old, surrendered at a fire station, I’d bounced around from foster home to foster home that looked much like the very place I sat in. Nothing terrible, just raised by a lot of people who had all the best intentions but were indifferent to me or who worked well at keeping me at an arm’s length not to get too emotionally involved, so when I was moved, they wouldn’t get hurt. Or maybe I was just a check for them. Either way, I’d never known little more than indifference.

As an adult, I could understand that train of thought, but as a child, it had been a bitter pill to swallow and caused the anger inside of me to fester, making me feel unlovable. Unworthy. Those feelings simply grew and ate away at me. Thankfully, by the time I turned thirteen, despite being an angry little shit, I’d found my way to the Porters’ home.

The Porters had been kind and patient. With time, not only had I trusted them, but the guys I now called brothers had, too. Five of us in total had somehow been adopted by them mere days of me turning eighteen.

The five of us.

The Porter boys my foster mom, Mom, used to call us happily.

But maybe because I hadn’t had anyone to care about me or for me in my formative early years, I’d always felt a bit aloof to everyone. Not completely connected. Pretty emotionally detached.

Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t that I didn’t love my brothers. Blood or not, I’d take a bullet for each one them, do anything to protect them. But past them and my foster parents, who were now gone… no one had ever got to me.

Not a girlfriend in high school or girls I hooked up with in college. No one.

Except her.

Maryanne and those innocent, way-too-young-for-me blue eyes got through whatever protective shields I’d built as a kid who hadn’t been hurt or pushed around but had been raised with nothing but indifference. Who had once seriously believed I didn’t have the right equipment in me to know what romantic love was or could be. But when those walls had crumbled, the man I’d been disappeared, and left behind was something dark. Unhinged and fucking depraved.

My legs widened and my knees began to bounce. My sweaty palms rubbed against the smooth material of my dress slacks. My head dipped back, and I shut my eyes.

I hated it here.

Hated knowing Maryanne was living in this piece-of-shit place.

Slowly, I pushed myself up to my feet and wiped the sweat off my brow. Walk out of here, the shell of the simple, easy man I used to be whispered, straining for logic and reason. Walk out of here and forget her. Tell Jonas to cancel all the goddamn memberships you insisted on giving his dancers. Common sense was impossible, though.

Completely gone and way too late.

Instead of turning right, opening the old rickety front door, and walking out of there and never returning because breaking and entering wasn’t something I wanted to get arrested for, I stayed.

I wasn’t that simple, sane man anymore. That man who had once been patient and sensible, who strived to move up a small-town political ladder to make the Porter name mean something in the community his parents had given so much to, no longer existed. He was gone, and left behind was nothing but a fucking psycho.

I made a left.

The tips of my fingers traced the small, old but clean countertop of her small kitchenette. I stopped at the end of the trailer, facing the two doors that led to the two small bedrooms. I opened the door furthest into the trailer, and my heart stilled. Stepping inside, leaving the door open behind me, I took in the space.

A small day bed was pushed against the window. The bed was nice and neat. A soft-looking cotton patch-worked quilt with small floral prints of all different pastel shades covered the bed, and perfectly stacked right on top were two pillows with matching pillowcases.