Текст книги "Under Locke"

Автор книги: Mariana Zapata

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

I had to hold back the shuddering sigh that had built up in my chest at the realization and calm down. "Pretty good. You got my emails I guess?”

Will paused before making a grumbling noise in his throat. “I read them before I called. I figured I’d get all caught up so we wouldn’t waste time."

Maybe I was just being too sensitive but his comment about wasting time scratched at me. Like writing me an email or talking to me for five minutes longer once every other month was a hassle. Like what Sonny was doing—taking time off from work and traveling around the country—wasn't a waste in its own way. I bit back the smart ass comment that floated into my vocal chords and tried to appreciate the fact that I had him on the phone finally.

“Are you still staying with Sonny?”

I needed to quit being a baby. “I was, but he had to take a little vacation so I'm staying with a friend until he comes back," I explained to him vaguely, suddenly not in the mood to really share with him more than I needed to. What was the point? Why had I been fighting Will growing up and moving on with his life, so much?

Will knew even less about the Widows than I did. Growing up, it was as if he'd just cut our dad out of his memory and life. Existing without him, while I'd been the one stuck with the memories and the wishes.

"Huh. I have leave coming up in a couple of months, are you gonna stay there?"

Where the hell else would I go? "I'll be here."

The awkward silence that followed left me feeling weird. Since when had talking to Will been a strain? Was this what Sonny and I sounded like when we talked on the phone? No way. Speaking of Sonny... "Hey, umm..." I really didn't want to tell him. A part of me genuinely didn't think he'd care but that was the difference between us again. Will liked Sonny enough but then again, did he even like me now? I didn't want to answer that.

The point was, he deserved to know so that it wouldn't the same situation I found myself in with Sonny. "Dad had another kid." Shit. That wasn't exactly the way I wanted to blurt it out.

The disheartened, uninterested "Oh," confirmed that my brother didn't give a crap. “That's... cool."

Yeah, he didn't care. At all.

When he immediately started talking again, I knew I'd messed up. I'd pushed too far. He'd done the same thing when we were younger and I thought he wanted to talk about Mom. Will would bring up something else or suddenly remember that he needed to do something. "I need to go, Ris, but I promise I’ll call or email you as soon as I know when I’m going back to the States, and we’ll figure it out, all right?” he mumbled out the sentence so quickly it made him sound desperate.

Maybe I wasn't the only chicken in the family.  “Deal. Love you.”

“Love you too. Be safe and we’ll talk soon,” Will said right before disconnecting the line.

I sighed and pocketed my phone, immediately sensing Dex’s hulking presence behind me for the first time. His lips were a hard slash, eyes deceptively distant on me before he spoke. “Your brother?"

"Yeah."

There was so much about our phone conversation that bothered me. It wasn't that I wanted or needed to have a long conversation with my brother, but it'd been so long since the last time we'd spoken, getting rushed through a five minute conversation didn’t seem fair.

Dex narrowed his eyes. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

He rolled his eyes. "What is it? Looks like somebody just told you Santa wasn’t real."

Oh lord. The man who got pissed off about his property taxes going up wanted to make a statement by comparing us? Please. I snorted. "Nothing," I insisted.

"Somethin's botherin' you. Tell me."

Dex wasn't going to drop it so I groaned. "I haven't talked to him in months. I've emailed him at least a dozen times and he never responds." I rubbed a hand over my forehead. "I mean, I know he's not a kid. He's a grown man, he doesn't need me anymore. I guess I'm just being a girl and getting butt-hurt that he has a life without me."

His nose wrinkled but he didn't comment on my rant.

I took in a deep breath and shrugged, forcing a smile onto my face. "Anyway, let me know when you want to leave, okay?"

~ * ~ *

If I thought for a second that I'd have the ability to think about something other than my conversations with my brothers and whatever was going on with Dex, I'd have been terribly wrong.

I'd be in the middle of logging the number of hour sessions that one of the artists had done for the week and suddenly, I'd think of the action hero Dex had in his spare bedroom. Or I'd be sitting in the front, uploading pictures onto the shop's website when I'd hear Blake on the phone with his son and I'd start imagining what the little boy in Colorado looked like.

My whole day went like that after the two hours I'd spent in the pool and the aerobics class at the YMCA I took.

Dex, Dex, Sonny, Dex, Will, Brother, Dex, Dex.

And then some more Dex.

My gut told me that I was insane. That constantly thinking about him wasn't normal. Then again, what was normal about Dex?

Nothing.

The only good thing I could come up with was that he'd been giving me a decent amount of distance. That wasn't to say every time he walked past me or stood by the receptionist desk that he wouldn't send a heated look my way or put his hand somewhere on my body when he was close enough. Whether it was the back of my neck, my hip, or the small of my back, his hand was always there in some way or another.

I didn't do a single thing to move away from him.

My brain said “No!” Yet everything else in me screamed “Yes!” obnoxiously.

Yeah, I was a friggin' mess. A mess that had no hope of getting sorted out properly. There was no point in me even trying to fight it or figure it out.

I sighed and got up feeling defeated, to see if Slim and Blue needed anything. I'd been putting off eating something for at least an hour but my stomach had started grumbling so much I figured it was time to quit procrastinating. "I'm going next door before they close, you guys want anything?"

They both shook their heads. Slim had been messing around on his tablet and the last time I'd seen Blue, she was working on a tattoo for her next customer. Even at seven at night, it was way too hot. Definitely too warm for the sweater I'd pulled on before riding to Pins on the back of Dex's bike.

I ordered a Mediterranean wrap from the deli and tried my best not to think about what Sonny had told me. Another brother. Well, shit. A little one at that. I didn't even want to consider what other kind of mess my dad was in that he'd be hiding. What had started as a headache didn't need to become a nightmare.

Especially not if whoever he owed money to decided to come after someone who didn't have Sonny to watch out for them. Someone like my new little brother.

God.

I was so entrenched in the idea of actually having another sibling that I didn't see the silhouette of a man leaning against the stonewashed wall until his heavy black boot hit the top of my thighs.

"Doll," that rumbling low voice I'd only heard once before, greeted me.

My body didn't react immediately to it. It took a second for me to accept what the voice meant.

It meant my friggin' death if any of the Widows saw me.

Shit!

The brown bag I'd been holding with my wrap in it slipped out of my hand, and I'm sure my face went pale. "What are you doing here?" I squawked. Yes, squawked of all friggin' things. I didn't even know I was capable of making such an ugly noise but in the face of my potential death, nothing was impossible.

Liam looked at me coolly, like he wasn't on the wrong side of town. "What do you think I'm doing here?" he asked, straightening up off the wall.

God, he was a big guy.

But that wasn't the point or the time to notice how broad he was. "Trying to get us both killed," I hissed at him, taking a step away.

"Nah," he mumbled, eyeing me with way too much interest.

I looked down both sides of the street to see if anyone I recognized was coming along. The only good thing about the Widows was that I'd hopefully be able to hear the loud roar of a bike before I saw it.

I hoped.

To God.

And maybe even a few other deities.

"Look, I'm sorry for going to bother you before but it won't happen again."

Liam ran a hand over the closely cropped hair on his head. "I'm thinking it's okay if you come bother me again, doll."

Oh, whatever. I had to fight back the urge to roll my eyes and cry bullshit. Something in the pit of my stomach said that this man didn't have the same kind of control—or it might have been fondness—that allowed me to talk crap to Dex and get away with it. For the most part at least.

"Umm, yeah, I don't think that's a great idea." My smile was more creepy-awkward than convincing.

Apparently, Liam either didn't pick up on it or didn't care because he kept going. "I'm also thinking that you and me can work something out with your daddy's debt."

Infinite amounts of the word shit flew through my brain in a long rant.

I'd been stupid for going to the strip club on my own, but standing here, talking to the president of the Reapers MC when I had a temperamental Widow less than thirty feet away, was even dumber. Way dumber.

Extraordinarily stupid.

My silence as I thought about how much of an idiot I was being, was taken as a token of a possibility when the rough man in front of me kept going with his proposition.

"You wanted a solution, I got you one, Miss Taylor," he purred easily, taking a step so close to me that he managed to reach out and almost touch my face.

He didn't because I dodged his hand, but when he laughed, I figured it wasn't really a deterrent.

"How bad do you wanna make sure we don't have to go after your bro when your daddy doesn't pay up this week?" Liam asked.

This week? "What do you mean this week?" I asked him carefully.

Liam licked his lips in a move that most women would probably find sexy, but I found overkill. "Your daddy's got till the end of the week to pay up." He grinned. "I'm offering you a chance to help him out. Help your brother out, too."

If I'd screamed “Shit!” out of my mouth at the same volume I screamed it in my head, it would have been heard across two city blocks. Instinctively, I wanted to panic but I didn't. I took a deep breath and made myself calm down. This guy could be bluffing. That wasn't out of the question. He could also be taking advantage of the bout of stupidity that had ganged up on me when I’d gone to visit him last time.

The point was, I realized how dumb I'd been in going to Busty's, the strip club, now. Sonny would probably kick my ass if he found out that I was bargaining with the bald devil in front of me.

The sudden image of Dex's face was my second warning. He'd kill me.

And if he happened to walk out and see me talking to Liam, he'd probably kill us both. Or, at least beat the crap out of the other man, which was something he had no business doing because of his record and his career.

Did I really want to risk him getting in trouble just because I'd been an idiot?

No. I didn't.

I also didn't want to offend Liam more than necessary but I had a feeling that he was the type of person who didn't deal with rejection well. Which meant I was totally screwed. But better to save myself from the devil I knew than the one I didn't.

"How much does he owe you?"

"The same thing he did last time," Liam snickered. "But I'll take you for six months in exchange for some more time."

What. The. Ef.

Any sense I had in handling the biker gently went right out the friggin' window. Six months with me in exchange for an extension? My virginity. My pride. My honor. My friggin' common sense.

No.

Absolutely no.

If I didn’t let my ex pop my cherry after we'd dated for four months, then I sure as hell wasn't going to let this manipulative jackass do it.

"No." I told him calmly. There was no, "No, thank you." No, "I appreciate the offer, but no." None of that. Nothing to ease my way out of the situation.

Sonny would never forgive me for doing something so stupid for him, and especially not for the sperm donor. Most importantly, I wouldn't be able to forgive myself. I wasn't a prostitute and I wasn't a pawn in whatever game this psychopath wanted to play.

His eyes flashed in brief anger. "No?" he scoffed, incredulous. "You're telling me no?"

Well, there was no graceful way out of this. "My dad doesn't give a crap about any of his kids." I watched him carefully, seeing that he wasn't taking that as enough of an excuse. There was only one thing left to do: lie. Desperate times call for desperate measures, dang it. "Either way I don't think you'd want sloppy seconds."

"What?"

I needed to end this conversation three minutes ago. "I'm with Dex." That was better than saying I'm Dex's, wasn't it? That sounded too possessive. Too permanent and the situation I was in was neither.

The carefully controlled mask that had graced Liam's face morphed into one that barely contained the irritation lurking behind his eyes. He was pissed. "Locke?"

I nodded.

Liam wasn't just pissed, he was incredibly pissed. He straightened to his full height and visibly ground his teeth. "You're right. I'm not a fan of Widows' seconds." He raked his gaze over me one more time. "Didn't know you messed around with trash like Locke, doll."

Trash? He thought Dex was trash?

If there was a word to describe the facial expression that came over me it had to be described as a sneer. I knew in my gut that I shouldn't say anything back to him. He'd been fine and relatively decent before but did that mean he was harmless? No way.

Trying to diffuse the situation I gave me a shaky smile. "Thank you for the offer. I hope you get your money back soon."

The words had barely gotten out of my mouth before grabbing my bag off the floor like a lifeline and darting into Pins. I may have burst through the door a little too loudly, catching Slim's confused expression over his shoulder while he worked.

"You all right?" he asked before focusing back on the tablet below him.

I looked around to make sure Dex wasn't nearby and let out a deep breath. "I'm fine." I wasn't. At least not completely.

What I needed to do was catch my breath and decide whether or not to tell someone that Liam had been outside propositioning me. I didn't want to. My gut said it was a bad idea but wouldn't it be a worse idea for me to keep my mouth shut? Of that I wasn't positive.

Craaaaap!

I hustled down the hallway toward the break room, briefly glancing into the office to see Dex on the phone. That was okay. That was better than okay. It gave me time to keep thinking through what I was going to do, if I did anything.

Keep your mouth shut, Ris, my logical brain said.

Tell him, Ris, the other half—the emotional half—egged on.

Double friggin' crap.

I forced my wrap down though I'd magically lost my appetite for once. It took me longer than it would have if I'd still been starving but I didn't care. With my trash in the garbage I walked out of the kitchen slowly, still debating whether or not to say something to Dex. As I came to the office doorway, I found him sitting at his desk, drawing.

I wasn't going to lie anymore, I'd told myself months ago. I’d failed that, so at least I’d keep it to a minimum.

Oh lord. My fingers shook a little as I knocked on the door faintly.

"Hey."

Those dark blue eyes flicked up in my direction, Dex ducking his head just a bit. "Come in, babe."

The two steps in felt like I was going to the gallows. I started wringing my hands as I stood awkwardly to the side of the chairs in front of his desk. He'd looked back down at what he was drawing, which was the only way I managed to start talking.

"Liam was just outside," I rushed out. "He offered to give my dad an extension if I went with him."

At the mention of the biker's name, Dex's pencil stopped its movement in midair. His entire body tightened, strained, and shifted in ripples of muscle and stress. It was the fact he kept his face down that worried me.

"I told him no. I told him I was with you," I blabbed out.

Oh boy.

The way he slowly looked up at me could have been creepy, but for some reason it just fell short. Instead, he pushed his chair back roughly, smacking the wall with the back of it. In a growl, he rounded the desk and pointed at the chair I stood in front of. "Wait," he said and stormed out the door.

Fudgsicle sticks.

I should have listened to him and waited, but I didn't. I was out the door and going after him a split second later. If Liam was dumb enough to still be outside in front of Dex's shop, on Widowmaker territory, he was a dead man. Or at least a bloody one.

But it wasn't his being that I cared about.

It was the moron running after him that I didn't want to get in trouble.

I could only imagine what Dex had to look like as he ran out of the shop that had the employees and the clients captivated. The door was barely swinging shut when I jogged up to it.

Dex was stalking toward the end of the block, a phone held up to his ear, and I could hear him barking something ugly and low into the end.

Shit.

I gathered up my guts and followed after him, catching bits and pieces of "Motherfucker—at Pins—lost his fuckin' mind—Ritz!"

Oh boy.

The moment he thrust his cell phone into his pocket and made way to start stomping across the street, I slid my finger through the belt loops at the back of his jeans and tugged. "Charlie."

Miraculously, he paused.

"Hey, he's gone," I told him in the most soothing voice I could come up with. My free hand settled on the small of his back. "Calm down."

Dex turned to look at me over his shoulder before gradually turning around, the tips of his boots pressing against the tips of my flats. For once, that carefully blank expression was missing. In its place, Dex's mouth was pulled back in a tight snarl. His eyes narrowed.

Yeah, he was pissed.

I smiled at him, hoping that it would calm him down, and I tugged at his belt loop again. "Chill out." I used the same words he'd used on me so long ago. "Nothing happened."

"Ritz," he gritted out. "He came here. To my shop. On my territory. And tried to fuckin' get you to go with him." He bared his teeth. "That's not fuckin' nothin'."

Sometimes I just wanted to roll my eyes at him. "But he's gone, and I don't want you to get in trouble."

Okay, he was still pissed.

"And I'm here with you, not him, so it doesn't matter."

He stared at me for a long moment, his gaze hard. Then his hands were cupping my face. He tipped my head back to nip at my upper lip, sucking it between his.

Oh my crap.

Dex moved to do the same to my bottom one before I reacted. Before I tried to kiss him back the same way he was kissing me, with the dull edges of my teeth catching his bottom lip. He tilted my head even further back, arching me against him as he wrapped an arm around my waist.

His hot tongue slipped into my mouth the first chance he got, brushing against mine with more force, more possession, than I knew what to do with. But it didn't matter that I'd only kissed three people before him. That his experience more than likely eclipsed mine by hundreds, because he moaned into my mouth. He pulled me tighter against him, gripped my waist more strongly than he needed to.

The kiss was a claim.

His tongue dueled mine in a way that was completely friggin' inappropriate on a busy public street. His hard body curled over me, consuming me.

And I loved it. I let it happen. I sucked his tongue into my mouth like I knew what I was doing. Like I'd cease to exist if he didn't bite my lip again.

"Iris." He gently bit the soft place between my jaw and throat column.

Holy, holy, holy crap.

I was going to go up in a pile of flames. A burning inferno that rivaled hell, that would be worth every second of pain to have Dex's mouth so aggressively on mine.

He bit down again before nuzzling the line of my jaw. "You're mine." His lower body pressed into my stomach. Hard, he was so hard. "Your mouth, your face, your ass, your pussy, Ritz. You're all mine."

Me, who had never even kissed another person in public, was panting. Ready to give everything and more to the man that scared the crap out of me.

And if it wouldn't have been for the throat clearing that yanked me so abruptly from the sexual daze I was in, I would have gladly stayed there with his tongue in my throat and his teeth at my jaw forever.

"Uhh, Dex?"

He sucked my lip one last time, hard, into his mouth before pulling his mouth away reluctantly.

The sound of that same throat clearing came from behind me again.

"Dex, Luther's on the phone." It was Slim talking. Slim that was clearing his throat.

Slim that had caught us making out. In the middle of the sidewalk. In the middle of the day.

Oh. No.

The ginger had a smug look on his face and I really don’t think I imagined him mouthing, “I knew it,” at me.

I'm sure my face turned a kaleidoscope of reds and pinks as I tried to take a step back and away from Dex, but when he kept his arm tight around my waist, it was useless.

"Okay," he finally answered in a hoarse voice, not bothering to turn around.

Dex kept his head down, toward me. His arm was stiff on my back. Sucking in a crisp breath through his nose, he let out a shaky exhale out through his mouth. He leaned in and whispered three words that made me break out in goose bumps. "This isn't over."

I really friggin' hoped not.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

"Tell us what happened."

Ef me.

Sitting across the office from Dex, Luther, and that cute biker that worked at Mayhem, I sucked in a breath and folded my hands across my lap to hide the fact that I was on the verge of panicking. I mean, it wasn't like I didn't know the question was coming. It had to be.

After our brief make-out session outside of Pins, the subsequent phone call that Dex had with Luther in his office, and then seeing at least two motorcycles drive down the street in the opposite direction of Mayhem—I found myself there. In the office. Under the second Inquisition.

Now, I could lie. Or I could tell him exactly what happened outside with Liam. That's what made me panic.

I'd been a moron and I was scared to admit it.

But I hadn't been a liar before this, except for kind-of, sort-of not telling Sonny about my arm for months. Since then, I'd tried not to lie because keeping things quiet by omission wasn't lying. Right? I think it depended on the circumstances, or at least that's what I liked to think to keep my conscience clear.

"Ritz," Dex spoke up, screwing the Rangers cap on his head from side to side in a gesture I wasn't familiar with.

Well, shit.

I was tougher than that. What did I have to be scared of?

Looking at Dex's pissed off face, I knew exactly what but that didn't mean I was going to cower from his judgment, damn it.

"He saw me outside and he said he had a proposition for me," I started. "He said that he had a solution to save my dad and Sonny from the debt that needed to get paid at the end of the week."

Luther looked over in Dex's direction with a wary glance I didn't miss.

"He said he'd take six months with me in exchange for... I don't know, not going after one of them if it wasn't paid. I just told him no." And then told him I was with Dex.

"He didn't say anything else?" The hot older guy asked.

I shook my head. "Nothing important." He just called Dex trash, but I'd be an idiot to bring that up.

Luther blew out a deep breath that made his lips flutter in exasperation. "That son of a bitch."

Hot biker guy shook his head incredulously. "I heard he just split up with his old lady not too long ago."

"I heard the same," the president of the MC agreed. "But why the hell would he try and take Ris as an exchange? That doesn't sound like their style even if he's trying to piss us off doing it."

Now that question, I had no answer for. And all of a sudden, I felt guilty that I hadn't agreed. That I wouldn't do my part to assure Sonny's safety but...

"I’d do almost anything for Son, but I don't want to go with Liam," I tried to explain to them in a small voice.

"You're not goin' with anybody," Dex interjected quickly. "Not for Son, your dad, for nobody, Ritz. Ever."

I happened to be looking at Luther while Dex spoke and I could see his mouth twitch.

"This is Taylor’s shit. You shouldn't have gotten dragged into it," he said.

There went my guilt.

If I kept the truth to myself it would bother me forever.

"I did something stupid," I blabbed, looking up at the ceiling because any balls I had beforehand disappeared.

Just rip it off like a Band-Aid. Quick, quick, quick.

"I went to Busty's last week to talk to the Reapers to see if I could talk them out of going after Sonny. That jerk said it wasn't any of my business." I let out a weird breath continuing to damn myself. "He kissed me and I ran out of there."

Silence.

Complete, mind-numbing silence.

"I know it was stupid but I'm fine." Like that was going to help the situation but something was better than nothing. I hoped. Holding up my hands, I flipped them over. “See? Nothing happened.”

The first thing that came out of anyone's mouth was a long, drawn out, "Fuck." It might have been the hot guy or Luther.

The second thing that came out of someone's mouth was, "Get out."

Dex.

"Excuse me?"  I asked, still looking up at the patterned ceiling.

"Get out, Ritz," he repeated.

What the hell? I lowered my gaze down, suddenly more confused than scared at his response. Dex had pulled the lid of his cap down tighter on his forehead, his fingertips white and pinched. "Why?"

"Get the fuck out," he snarled.

Ouch!

"Dex—"

"I said get the fuck out!" he yelled.

My heart started pounding so fast, I thought it was going to explode. My face went hot. My chest started to hurt. It was like my skin was being flayed.

I felt awful. So friggin' awful. Why the hell was he yelling at me like that?

So I snapped back for the first time in my life, because here was this stupid dick-brain of a man that I’d slowly started to like, started to feel something for, and he was going to act like a complete friggin’ dick? "Go fuck yourself, you...you...mean asshole!" And then I let out a breath that could probably rival a dragon minus the fire and bad breath. "Don't you talk to me like that."

I was embarrassed, so embarrassed that I felt a lump in my throat. I was mortified. No one had ever talked to me like that, and he was out of his mind if he thought he could get away with it.

Getting out of the chair like my joints were those of a senior, pissed and hurt, I shook my head but didn't bother looking at him. I didn't know how I'd feel if I saw his face. Right before pulling the door open with a little more force than was necessary, I muttered, "Dickface," under my breath.

The moment I was out of the office, my heartbeat tripled. The urge to throw up and cry was so overwhelming, I managed to stifle the gag and settle for sucking in a ragged breath that did nothing to keep my eyes from tearing up.

Those damn traitorous tears slipped out in sporadic pairs, streaming weak lines down my face before I wiped them off.

I wasn't going to cry.

You are not going to cry, Iris.

Wiping at my face again, I sucked in a breath that sounded strangled and weak but it worked.

The hallway seemed shorter than normal, and when I immediately spotted Blue, Slim, and a customer sitting on the couch, looking in my direction with pity in their eyes I wanted to bang my face against the nearest wall.

I couldn't catch a friggin' break.

Slapping a shaky smile onto my face I marched straight toward the exit, promising myself that I wouldn't burst into tears before I was out of sight. I wouldn't do it, damn it. I wouldn't.

"Iris!" It was Slim calling out after me as I stopped at the door, hands planted flat on the glass to push.

I looked him in the face, keeping hold of the reins that fisted my smile closely.

"Here," he said right before digging into his pocket and tossing something underhanded at me.

His car keys.

That made me want to cry even more. I gripped them in my hand, ready to toss them back, already shaking my head. "He'll get mad at you."

My sweet friend Slim shrugged, not worried at all. "He'll get over it." Tipping his chin up, he winked. "I can catch a ride home with Blue."

Blue opened her mouth but didn't say anything. Her gaze slid over to me and she nodded, solemnly. "Get outta here, Ris."

Ahh, crap. I had to wipe at my cheeks again to catch the tears that had slipped out like sneaky ninjas.

"Thanks, guys." My voice sounded all wobbly and raspy. I sniffled and gave them the best smile I could pull out of my battered emotions. "You guys are really good friends to me."

Not wanting to waste any more time at Pins, I waved at my two coworkers quickly and rushed out the door. Slim's Scion was parked in the furthest corner of the lot. Taking in a deep breath, I tried to steady my breathing as much as possible before pulling the car out of the lot.

I didn't know where I was going. It took me all of a second to decide that Sonny's was out of the question. My keys were at Dex's and I wasn't fond of the idea of trying to stage a break in. There was also no way in hell I'd go to Dex's. At that moment, the last thing I wanted to do was even think about that asshole.

Well, that was a lie, as soon as I thought of him, my blood pressure went up.

I mean, what the hell was his problem? To yell at me like that. To talk to me like that. Maybe he was used to being able to talk to people in that way. He hadn't exactly been kind to most people I'd seen him interact with but still. His little temper tantrum had gotten the best out of him—out of me, too.

I drove around for a while. I didn't know where I was going and half the time I didn't even know where I was. I'd have to fill up Slim's gas tank before I drove his car back to the shop later, or tomorrow, whatever my mind decided.

That was when I remembered that I'd left my purse and phone at Pins. That's how pissed—err, upset—I'd been. I never even went to the bathroom without my phone.

The only money I had on me was the twelve dollars and change I had left over from the deli in my back pocket. Well, that kind of screwed me over.