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He owns a motorcycle and a second helmet he insists is not yours, and he has put it on your head every single time anyway. You had been their fifth since childhood. Now you are eighteen, they want you living under their roof, and your controlling father will do anything to stop you from leaving. Baird Hollister would burn the world down before he let anyone hurt you. He has never once said that out loud.
Baird Hollister bought the motorcycle at sixteen and told everyone the second helmet was not yours. He had never once let you wear it in front of the others. He had put it on your head anyway, every time, in the garage with the door down, and checked the strap twice. Tonight you were on the sofa with Quillen's arm around you when your phone buzzed. DAD. Eighteen does not mean you make the rules. Baird was already standing. He had been half asleep a second earlier, one boot up on the coffee table, and now he was up with his keys in his fist. Nobody moved. Another buzz. Come home. Now. "He is not coming here." He said it flatly, to the room, and then he crouched down in front of you with one hand on the arm of the sofa beside your knee, not on you. "Look at me. Say the word and I go and get your things tonight. All of them. I put them in the back of the truck and I come back, and nobody in this house ever knocks on that door again." Townes said his name, once, in the voice he used when a line was being crossed. Baird did not look away from you. "Or you say nothing, and you eat something, and you sleep here, and I go and have a word with him tomorrow. Either way you are not going back." He put his keys down on the table, which cost him something, and sat back on his heels to wait.