Read Online Hiding in Plain Sight by J.A. Hornbuckle - Free Book Online

because I was the only girl of the town's fuck-up in that tiny burg, but I was very sensitive to the vibes of those who didn't want to be around me.  So I did what every normal person with a lick of sense would do. Which was to pull back and create as much space as possible between us.
    But the hurt was there.
    I thought he might be different, more forgiving somehow of my upbringing, my family's reputation and my ineptitude.  But I guess that old saw was right.
    Blood tells.
    And the blood that moved in my veins was about as common and as tainted as blood could get.  It was obvious that Bayco saw it and, like anyone in their right mind would do, he pulled away from being sullied by it.  I mean, shit, some of the customers at the Dairy Queen wouldn't let me wait on them, knowing my family's history.  No matter how nice, in spite of using my absolute best customer service skills, some people were afraid of 'catching' whatever it was attached to me and my family. 
    I labeled it 'luck'.  But my family's only luck was of the bad variety.  Well, actually, 'bad' should have been pronounced as 'the worst'.
    My mother, Veronica, had been born with a bum leg.  A leg which required several surgeries and culminated in the removal of the leg and foot below her left knee when she was only thirteen years old.  'Bad blood', her own mother had called it.  'Lost her dag-gummed leg 'cause of her daddy's bad blood,' Granny Teague had said.  Which was why Mama ended up with Grady, my daddy.  Married him when she was only fifteen years old and he was thirty-three.  Which was a whole 'nother story just in and by itself.
    My lazy-assed, excuse-for-everything daddy hadn't ever worked more than six months at a stretch in his life.  That was, of course, if you didn't count his daily exertions to pour Wild Turkey either in his glass or down his throat as work.
    But together, they'd had eight kids.  I was third from the bottom and the only girl.  A girl who, if you read romance novels as much as I did, was supposed to be valued, coddled and taught the feminine graces.
    I almost snorted out loud at the thought as I moved over the cheap carpet to the only window of our room.  Without thinking, my arms reached to wrap around my waist in a move I'd been making since I was really small.  It was a gesture I'd always hoped to receive from someone when I'd been growing up.  But as I grew older, I'd learned that unless sex was involved, it wasn't one I could ever count on getting.  I stood alone, so alone, in that silence with nothing but my own flesh to make me feel better about Bay's rejection. 
    I'd been taught to cook and to clean.  I was taught to move quickly when a demand was barked in order to avoid a well-aimed hand or fist if I wasn't fast enough.  I was schooled at what was important in the whole scheme of things:  that I was only as good, only as valuable as whatever man I was able to reel in with my virgin status while I was growing up.  Females, except for pleasure or procreation, meant diddly-squat.
    I got rid of that little bartering chip as soon as I possibly could.  Even though the romance novels I'd read advised me not to give it up as easily as I'd done. 
    What-the-fuck-ever.
    But the only person that had cottoned onto it, that little flash of rebellion, had been my mama.
    "We've gotta keep this a secret, Reese Ann," she said, her voice almost a whisper in the kitchen throwing together the mix for that morning's biscuits as I turned the thick slabs of sizzling bacon in the cast iron pan.  "I know things we can do so your fella will think he's snagged himself a virgin on your wedding night.  A little blood collected and smeared inside will make your man think…"
    "Mama, quit," I remembered saying.  "I don't care I ain't no virgin.  I don't want no husband."
    She went still as stone next to me, but I kept my eyes on the grease-popping pan.
    "You don't mean that, honey," she finally breathed.  "How you gonna get