Author's Note: Thank you all for reading. Over 1500 reads now! Please vote and comment so that I know your thoughts. Anyone have predictions of what's going to happen next? I'd like to hear them.

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They were all sitting around a table on the back porch. I found a clear spot on the table and set down my tray like they rest of the girls did. Jimmy was sitting beside Taylor and he had an empty spot beside him. He pulled out the chair and I sat down.

Tommy and Dylan were sitting opposite of us. Dylan appeared to be only fifteen. He had short brown hair and his checks were covered in acne. He had a baby on his lap that couldn’t be any older than a year old.

Charles sat at one end of the table and Noah sat the other. They had the same tanned sagging skin and dark eyes.

“Lindsay, take your child,” Dylan said lifting the baby up in the air. He let out a whine and Lindsay scooped him up in her arms.

“What’s Uncle Dylan doing, Theo?” she asked the baby. He giggled and reached up at her face.

“Where’s Gabe?” Tommy asked.

I looked around the table. I hadn’t noticed before that people were missing, but I spotted two empty seats. One was in front of me and the other was next to Charles.

“Hey, look what I found!” I heard someone yell from below the deck.

It must be Gabe.

He walked up the stairs of the porch and had Jared hanging upside down with one leg. Jared was giggling and his face was turning red. Lindsay looked a little concern like he was about to drop her child, but a laugh came from the table.

Gabe lowered him down onto his back. Jared rolled over and ran to the table as he began to giggle. He took the seat next to Charles. Gabe looked over at me and smirked.

“So, you must be Juliet,” he said.

“Yes,” I said quietly.

“You’re a shy one?” he asked arching an eyebrow.

“Only a first,” Jimmy told him.

I felt Jimmy slide his hand down my leg and pat my knee. I tried my best to give a friendly smile as Gabe pulled out the empty seat in front of me and sat down.

Everyone began to pass the plates of food around. I put a couple pieces of fruit on my plate and a couple of eggs. I handed Jimmy the plate of meat and he put a few strips on my plate before he put some on his. I was going to have to eat it.

The sound of forks clanging against plates filled the air. Gabe picked a piece of the meat up with his fingers and ripped his teeth into it. He stared at me the entire time.

“Three months,” he said. “That must be some kind of record. Who would have thought that it would have come from Jimmy?”

Jimmy scowled at him as Tommy, Dylan and Taylor started to laugh. Gabe glanced over at them quickly before looking back at me.

“He must have got lucky,” he continued. “Not a fighter and beautiful too.”

Jimmy opened up his mouth to say something, but Charles spoke first.

“She did put up quite a fight at first. She’s quick,” Charles told everyone. “But Jimmy quickly helped her realize this is where she belongs.”

I looked over at Jimmy to see he was chewing on his bottom lip. His fingers started to curl into my knee and it was becoming painful. I ran my hand down his arm and he turned his hand over so that he could lace his fingers through mine.

“Three months is still fast though,” Dylan said.

“Jules is a natural to this,” Tommy said smirking. “Aren’t you?”

Jimmy’s grip tightened on my hand. I just shrugged my shoulders at him. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say.

“Sure you are,” Tommy added. “You fit right in.”

“Of course she does,” Jenny told them all with a smile. “She’s part of our family.”

“We’re lucky to have her here,” Lindsay said. I looked over at her to see she had her arms around Jared. She was cutting up his meat for him. “And she’s lucky to be here.”

“Tommy’s got quite an expectation to live up to now,” Gabe said.

“Why’s that?” he asked.

“Jimmy’s the oldest and he tamed his girl in three months, you’ve got to do better than that,” he explained.

Tommy scowled and shot Jimmy an angry glance. Jimmy’s grip tightened even more around my hands. I let out a gasp of pain, but Jimmy didn’t let go.

“I can do whatever Jimmy does, but better,” Tommy said. “I always have and always will.”

Jimmy’s grip tightened and I bit down on my lip to stop myself from screaming out in pain.

“Shut up, Tommy!” he snapped.

His grasp on me managed to tighten even more. I couldn’t stop my body from shrinking in pain as I yelped out in pain.

“Make me,” he said wryly.

“Boys!” Noah shouted out from the end of the table.

They silenced and Jimmy’s grip loosened, but not by much. At least now it was bearable. I straightened myself up and then Jimmy let go of me.

The rest of breakfast went by in silence.

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I helped the rest of the girls clean up breakfast while the men stayed out outside. I washed all of the plates as Lindsay dried them and put them away. Jenny and Emme wrapped up the leftover food and put it in the fridge.

“Don’t let what happened at breakfast bother you, Julie,” Lindsay told me. She had the towel in her hands and was drying the back of a plate. “The boys get a little touchy with their masculinity.”

“It happens a lot?” I asked.

I heard Jenny laugh. I turned around to see her shaking her head. Emme pulled out one of the chairs and sat down, rubbing her belly.

“All the time,” Jenny said. “I was here before Charles and Marilyn moved out to your house. You wouldn’t believe the fights they used to get into.”

“What’d they fight about?” I asked.

“Anything and everything,” she told me. “Something about the farm or comparing girls. But the important part is that after all of those fights they’ve never stopped loving each other once. I think that’s so nice. My birth family was never like that.”

“They weren’t?”

“Nope, not at all. My parents wasted all of their money on booze and cigarettes. I tried looking after my sisters, but it was so hard. They picked up all of our parents bad habits.”

“Isn’t it nice to have someone to look after you?” Emme piped up. I wasn’t sure who she was talking to, so I assumed she was talking to us all. “I have never felt safer than when I am with Taylor. I’ll admit that the meat thing did freak me out at first, but it really isn’t that bad. It actually tastes pretty good. I think more people should do it actually. It’s such a waste not to.”

I had finished washing all of the dishes, I pulled the drain out of the sink. Lindsay quickly handed me the towel so I could dry my hands.

“Jimmy and Tommy don’t normally fight?” Lindsay asked me arching an eyebrow.

“Yea, they’ve gotten into a few fights,” I told her.

“About what?” Emme asked me. I bit down on my lip. I didn’t want to be telling them that Tommy had touched me in that way. Luckily Emme had provided me with a good excuse. “It’s probably because of how different they are. Tommy is really rough and tough, and Jimmy is more of the sensitive kind.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “That’s exactly it.”

“I always felt bad for him,” Jenny told us. “All of the boys use to pick on him because of the way he is.”

“Tommy?”

“Jimmy,” she corrected me.

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“He was always much more sensitive than the rest of him. He helped with the killings, but he never got the same enjoyments out of it as the rest of them did. They picked on him and he got really upset whenever somebody questioned his masculinity. They were really worried about him when he got you. They never thought he would be able to tame you. But looks like he did it the quickest.”

Jimmy didn’t enjoy the killings? Maybe I could convince Jimmy to stop and we could leave the house together. But I didn’t want to live back in the outside world. I wanted to stay safe with Jimmy. I wanted to be in that house down the street alone with Jimmy. No worries about killings and no worries about Tommy.