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“You’re such a fool.” The whispered hiss had Ray’s shoulders stiffening. It took him a moment to realize the aunt who had raised him wasn’t actually speaking to him. This time.
It shouldn’t have surprised him; it was usually his uncle that drew her ire. If he hadn’t needed to stay on her good side Ray would say something to break up the inevitable. His aunt and uncle couldn’t be within fifty feet of each other without fighting.
He didn’t want to fight with them—he needed to live there with them for a while.
It was a part of the conditions of his parole. Ray didn’t want to go back to prison. As it was, his aunt had pulled strings to get him out early.
She’d made it perfectly clear to him that he was going to toe the line in every possible way. She’d made his uncle get him a job at the hospital. The only options had been janitorial and security. Ray had chosen security. Being actually inside the hospital would be too much temptation for him to slip into his old ways again.
With drugs. And with women.
As it was, he didn’t have that much contact with beautiful women except in passing.
In passing was enough most days.
He knew he had problems. Sexual problems. He shouldn’t focus on women as much as he did. Or at least, he shouldn’t focus on the wrong sort of women for him. Nurses, doctors, X-ray technicians—they weren’t for an ex-con like him.
His aunt had made that abundantly clear.
He was to keep his hands—and his eyes—off the women who worked inside the hospital. He wasn’t healthy enough, his aunt had said, to even think about a woman right now.
She was paying for his therapy. She was letting him live in the apartment over her garage. She was providing food for him that he didn’t have to buy or cook himself.
She had gotten him out of jail. Years early.
He owed her.
If that meant she wanted to nag and bitch at his uncle constantly, Ray couldn’t say a word about it.
And she wasn’t wrong.
His uncle was a fool.
A fool for staying with her, anyway.
Uncle Orin had a choice—Ray didn’t.
Orin could escape—if he really wanted to. Ray had always thought his uncle liked how his aunt ordered him around.
Ray just scooped some more of his breakfast into his mouth and tried to tune them out. Just like he had as a child.