Текст книги "Under Locke"

Автор книги: Mariana Zapata

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Such a beautiful man, and he was a complete friggin’ asshole. Go figure.

Only a very small part of me wanted to drop the issue. Pretend that he hadn't lost his mind briefly and said something that I'm sure Sonny and the rest of the Widowmakers more than likely said casually. But I couldn't. I just couldn't. When had I become the type of person who couldn't let things go, I had no idea.

Even when Lanie had taken my car without permission and wrecked it, I hadn't stayed mad for more than a couple of hours. When Will lost my cell phone, I think I'd gotten mad for all of an hour. And when I'd gotten fired, I'd been more sad than mad. Stuff was replaceable, so I didn't bother holding onto my frustrations.

Except every time I saw him, Dex, something ugly churned inside my chest.

I only let myself look at him below the face when he’d walk by, and by that I mean that regardless of whether he was a dick or not, I considered looking at his tattoos—and body—as a lesson in learning about body ink. You know, occupational research and all. After occasional and close observation, I was able to figure out that his sleeves were complete opposites.

His right arm was a matting of solid black ink, broken up by a spiral of rectangular tiles surrounded by an inch of the most beautiful black, gray, and skin tone flower outlines. Outside of the flowers it was flat, almost shiny black ink that made my arm hurt to look at.

Dex’s other arm was as colorful as I figured a guy who wore black shirts three days in a row could be. Trying to be discreet wasn’t exactly a strength of mine, so what I was able to distinguish were the tracings of what seemed to be a black wing that wrapped around his bicep and the upper part of his forearm, with the brightest red, blue, and gray triangles that clustered together at the shoulder and eventually faded out toward his wrist.

I’m not going to lie. The tattoos on his arms, the only ones I was able to see but had a feeling were only the beginning, were really hot. And I mean really hot.

But it didn’t matter how attractive his ink was or how corded and ripped his biceps were when he had his tattoo gun to someone’s flesh, or even when he was just standing with his arms over his chest while I tried my best to ignore him—Dex, my boss, was a prick. And I wasn’t going to pretend like his douche-baggery didn’t bother me. I hadn't seen him crack a single smile or say something nice to anyone but his clients. It was like Blake and I didn't exist, but me especially.

In front of clients, he was relaxed and easygoing. A completely different person. If I wouldn’t have been on such a one-way track with thinking I disliked everything about him, the things he said randomly would have made me laugh.

But I didn’t let myself.

So in my head it made sense that my work day had been spent A) ignoring Dex, B) avoiding Dex, and C) getting to know my coworkers slowly.

On the brief occasion that we’d speak to each other, I’d look at his right ear. Another time I looked at his left. Then I’d focus on the tiny, barely noticeable scab he had on his eyebrow, because I couldn’t bear to look at his face without my heartbeat accelerating. The traitor.

I blamed my period. It was coming and it made my hormones get all out of whack. It’s true. It had nothing to do with his jaw or the fact that I could see the outline of his lateral muscles through his t-shirt when he bent over my desk to type something on the computer. It was my crazy ass hormones. I swear.

Maybe it was childish, but I couldn’t help it. I had hope that in time, I’d forget what I overheard. But obviously, it was going to take some time to let it go and I wasn’t in the mood to rush things with my PMS on the way and all.

And by some time, I estimated it would probably be closer to my retirement age before I purged that moment from my brain.

Instead, I focused on trying to find another job. Which had been useless. Everything I found was too far away or didn't pay enough. All that meant was that I needed to look harder to find somewhere else to work.

What I didn’t expect was how much I liked the two other tattoo artists that worked alongside Blake and The Dick. Slim was a cute, lanky, tall redhead who greeted me warmly. He seemed super sweet and outgoing. Blue, the other artist, was a woman a few years older than me with pink-highlighted hair, so soft spoken I had a feeling I was going to learn to read lips before I quit to understand what she was saying.

The only thing I let myself stew on was Dex The Dick and the fact that I was bumbling around trying to figure things out so that I wouldn't ask him for help.

Friggin’ asswipe.

It was easy to pretend he didn’t exist during the day before work. I’d kept busy cleaning up Sonny’s house slowly, carefully and thoroughly. I think the last time someone had dusted his place had been before he bought it. The dust, unorganized DVDs, and randomly strewn laundry nipped at my borderline obsessive cleaning tendencies.

My day at Pins had at least, while embarrassing the shit out of me, warmed me up to the people I’d be working with until I found another job. Slim had finished up with a customer and sat down on the edge of my desk, crossing one leg over the other like I’d seen him do while sitting at his station alone. I liked this crossing-his-leg thing he had going on.

“Iris, right?” he asked.

I nodded, smiling just a little. “Yeah.”

“First time working at a tattoo place?” He’d smoothed his hand over the longish red hair that curled at the ends.

For some strange reason, I felt comfortable around this guy from the get-go and it might have been his crazy natural red hair, the Harry Potter lightning bolt he had tattooed right smack behind his ear, or the fact that he crossed his legs, but I’m not positive so I blabbed. “My fourth time in a tattoo parlor, but don’t tell anyone.” I bugged my eyes out.

He sucked in a sharp intake of breath and if it wouldn’t have been for the amused grin on his face, I would’ve worried he thought I sucked as a human being or something. “No shit?”

“No shit.”

Slim had shifted his hips to face me more comfortably, one leg still tossed over the other, the coy fish tattoo on his forearm right in front of my face. “No tats?”

I shook my head, a little embarrassed.

“Piercings?”

My face flamed, but I shook my head anyway. “Do my earlobes and cartilage count?”

The grin on his face spread so wide I thought it’d be painful. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m not.” The infectious grin contaminated me. "How many do you have?"

"Not that many." Slim pointed at the wide gauges stretching his earlobes. "Two." He stuck his tongue out. "Three." Luckily, he just pointed at the right side of his chest. "Four."

My eyes went wide.

"Blake! How many piercings do you have?" he yelled, trying to get Blake's attention from the other side of the divider.

"Seven!"

Slim nodded. "Blue doesn't count because she has at least ten, and I think Dex only has three now." He tipped his chin up, giving me a teasing smile. "You should think about getting one." He paused. "Or three."

I put my palms up and shrugged. "Maybe." I almost told him I had been thinking about getting something, but I kept my mouth closed.

He slowly got to his feet, patting around his back pocket. "I'm gonna go get a sub from the deli next door. Want something?"

"No thanks." What a nice guy.

"Blake, you want something from Sal's?" he asked.

"Six inches," was his initial reply before adding something like "salami" at the end of his request.

I didn't hear that though because that was when I did it.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. I had the worst habit in the universe of just blurting shit out of my mouth without thinking. I liked to blame the fact that my mom, brother, and yia-yia were the same way. Hell, even Sonny said whatever came to mind and he wasn't even on the right side of the family.

Some families passed on traits like bad eyesight, receding hair lines, stuff like that. My mom's side of the family passed on diarrhea of the mouth. Add that onto the fact that Will and I used to catch each other with the same joke every chance we had, and it was inevitable.

So I blurted out the dumbest crap I could have said in a mix of a snicker and an amused laugh that everyone in the parlor could hear. It was instinct.

“That's what she said.”

Silence.

Friggin’ silence followed.

Three seconds of quiet time filled the shop. Even the low buzzing noise of the gun was strangely absent in my words’ wake.

And then they all—Slim, Blake, Blue, and the customer at Blue’s station—burst out laughing and howling. Laughing and howling at the same time.

Crap.

Blake pressed his forehead against the divider while his shoulders shook. Meanwhile, Slim covered his face with both of his slender artist hands as his chest vibrated.

“Did that really come out of your mouth or am I imagining it?"

I face-planted the desk. “Oh God, I'm sorry, Blake.” I’d muttered. “It just...came out."

“She got you good,” one of them barked out loudly before making a noise that sounded like a cry right as it dissolved into a cackle.

“What the fuck are you guys laughin' at?” that melodic voice asked from somewhere behind me.

I didn’t have it in me to look up because I was mortified.

Mortified because I was A) an idiot, B) an idiot, and C) an idiot. I didn't know these guys and that was rude, wasn't it?

Luckily Slim managed to get something out when Blake started laughing even louder. “Blake—Iris—six inches,” he gasped.

I tilted my head over to shoot Slim the most withering look in the world. I probably looked more constipated than mad. "I said I was sorry."

“What?” Dex asked again.

Someone patted my head, which was still friendly with the lacquered black wood beneath me.

“Tell him what you said,” Slim urged me. “It’s funnier if you say it.”

I groaned.

“One of you just tell me what's so fuckin’ funny. I don’t need to hear your life story,” The Dick groaned.

With a long, amused sigh, Slim repeated the incident, snickering his way through the beginning of the six inch request.

The original four started laughing really loudly again, which made me start laughing again too because what the hell was I going to do? Cry? Maybe.

By that time, Slim and Blake were wheezing even as I heard the steady hum of the tattoo gun start up again.

“Ritz? What’d you say?” Dex asked in an exasperated tone that sounded exactly like the one he'd used when I had asked him for help my second day.

The reminder of his words the day before cooled me down insta-friggin’-ly. I was sober in seconds, blinking away the embarrassed tears that had come up when I started laughing at my dumbass comment.

“It was inappropriate, I’m sorry for saying it,” I told my boss, averting my eyes to Slim’s still covered face.

“Just tell me what you fuckin’ said. I’m dyin’ here,” he cursed, the tips of his words sounding more curious than angry.

Well, screw it. If he was going to fire me for making a that's-what-she-said joke, then so be it. If I needed to make dumb jokes to get The Dick to cut me loose from this job, then that was a loss I’d take for Team Iris. I'd just been hoping to have another job before then.

My eyes went up to land on the short, dark scruff on his jawline. From those two seconds I was staring at his face, I’d deduced that his facial hair was the same inky black as his head. Which was nice, until you figured out he was a huge asswad.

“I told Blake that's what she said." He blinked. "You know, about wanting six inches." I breathed out, darting my eyes back over to my redheaded coworker for throwing me under the bus and making me talk to my arch nemesis.

But Dex didn’t say anything in response.

Of course he didn't have a sense of humor. I guess you couldn't have a sense of humor if you were missing a soul. The thought almost made me laugh.

He just stared at me for the longest moment, his gaze intense and disarming. Those blue eyes lingered over my face before he told Slim to go clean up his station so we could get the hell out of there as soon as possible. The minute those words were out of his mouth, I sensed that Blake had walked away too.

Since that little chat, he hadn’t ventured further than four words at a time with me until Friday.

It was a little after five o’clock and the shop was dead. There weren’t any appointments scheduled until eight so I wasn’t expecting any customers to walk in until much later. I started going through the catalogues I'd found in the desk drawers, trying to get familiar with equipment. Who did show up instead, were two bikers that pulled up to the street parking like they owned the boulevard the building was on. Wearing heavily patched-up black leather vests, maybe in their mid-thirties or early forties, and each sporting some serious facial hair, they prowled in through the door looking around immediately.

WMC members.

“Hi,” I called out to them.

One of them, the older looking of the two with a belly that had a monogamous relationship with six-packs of beer, tilted his chin up at me. “Dex here?”

I nodded.

The other biker guy, pretty attractive in his own way with his dark hair pulled back in a short ponytail, winked at me. I had a feeling he was the same guy that Dex had been arguing with at the bar my first day in town. “Get him for us, sweetie?”

I wished that it wasn’t The Dick of all people they were asking for, but I nodded anyway and headed down the hall. When Dex was in, I stuck to the front desk so he could use the office. It was only when he wasn’t around or if he was busy with a customer that I slunk in to do whatever was needed that day in peace and quiet. Meaning that I had no clue what the hell I was doing and tried figuring everything out on the go.

Luckily, Dex was stepping out of his office before I made it all the way.

My focus zoned in on his so-black-it-almost-looked-blue hair that flopped out from beneath the rim of the Rangers cap on his head. “There are two people asking for you in the front.”

“I saw 'em in the camera,” he informed me. I didn’t even know there was a camera out front. Dex handed me a big manila envelope he had under his arm. “Do me a favor. Walk this over to the body shop around the corner, will ya?”

Sonny! I still hadn’t dropped by, then again, neither had he. But it didn’t matter. He still texted me at least once a day to make sure I was alive and hadn’t gotten lost or abducted in my new city.

I must have thought too long about going over to the body shop because Dex cleared his throat, raising a heavy eyebrow. This guy really thought I was an imbecile.

I wasn’t about to let him know I was excited to see Sonny by running the errand, so I nodded at his hair instead. “Sure.”

"You know where it's at?" he asked me.

Anger rose up the vertical muscles in my throat. "Yeah, I know." And then I muttered, "I'm not completely stupid."

He didn't say anything as I took the package from his hand, keeping my eyes everywhere but on his face. Not bothering to say anything else to him, I turned around to walk down the hall.

“Make sure Luther gets it, babe," he called out after me.

Babe. Guh.

It was something so far I’d only heard him call me when he wasn't referring to me as Ritz. In the last two days he’d helped other women who came in but he strictly referred to them by their first name or “sweetheart.” Under normal circumstances, I would have thought that was cute but this was Dex The Dick, so it automatically defaulted to douche-bag language.

Either way, he could shove his pleasantry up his pie hole while I went across the street. I had no idea who the heck Luther was but Sonny would.

Dex walked just a few feet behind me, his heavy footfalls—from the black motorcycle boots I noticed he wore daily—echoed on the tiled floor where my flat ballet shoes didn’t make a sound.

Dirty Biker Guy winked at me as I walked passed him. I flushed just a little but winked back and was out the door, making it through before the two men began speaking with The Dick.

It was pretty impossible not to feel relieved to see my only real friend—slash sibling—in Austin during the day. I’d been getting off work so late we only got to talk for a few minutes before he’d pass out on the couch or bid me goodnight if he didn’t stay up watching television while I ate. I had no idea what time he got up, and to be honest, I figured it was pretty early even though he went to bed a lot later than I would have if the tables were turned.

I’d been parking in the lot for days now, but I hadn’t paid enough attention to see just how large the shop was. Which would’ve been my sign, as I walked up to the body shop, on how big the property was. The ratio was about five to one.

And it was owned by a member of the MC, Sonny had explained in the past.

The garage itself could house eight cars. There was another building adjacent to it. One that looked exactly like the main one minus the bays, probably an office and reception area.

As soon as I stepped onto the lot, I saw Sonny standing in the third open bay from the gate. Hauling my butt over in his direction, he attention darted over to me at the same time I saw a couple of guys in the same jumper suit he had on looking over.

I gave him the “princess wave”—a cupped hand that rotated at the wrist—before yelling, “Hey!”

But Sonny, who had rightfully given me the impression he didn’t give a shit what anyone else thought when I saw him walk outside the house in only his boxers one morning when I got up to pee, smiled at me this quick, open grin before walking in my direction too. “Ris, what are you doing here?”

“I have to give this to someone named Luther.” I held the envelope up to his face. “Not that it’s not nice to see you, or that I haven’t been planning on coming to visit you since we work like right next door.”

He shot me an easy smile before gazing down at the package. “This from Dex?”

“He asked me to drop it off,” I informed him, proud of myself for not calling Dex a dick when I had the chance.

"Is he still giving you shit?"

I shook my head. "He just pretends I don't exist and I mess stuff up because I don't ask."

He snorted. "Good girl." Sonny looked over his shoulder, scanning the remaining open bays down the side of the building after he’d glared at some of the employees looking in our direction. “Look for Trip. He’s probably down at the last lift with him.”

I thanked him before remembering what I’d been putting off for days. “I keep forgetting to ask you, do you know where I can get an oil change for pretty cheap?”

Those light brown eyes went blank. “You’re serious?”

“No, you know I just like cracking jokes about car repair.”

"You're a pain in the ass, kid." He let out a deep sigh, placing a hand on top of my head and shaking it. “Ris, I’m a mechanic.” I knew this but it didn't mean I wanted to take advantage of him by asking. “We’ll come in the morning and I’ll do it for you tomorrow.”

“Here?”

“Here,” he confirmed. "Your tires need to be rotated while we’re at it. I can do it faster here."

I grinned at him. “Deal. I owe you.” For a bunch of things but I didn’t have a doubt he was absolutely not keeping track of.

With a light smack to his shoulder blade, I told Sonny I’d see him later and made my way across the forecourt to the last open bay. There were two Harleys parked inside with Trip and an older looking man with what had once been brown hair that was now streaked with gray, standing together and talking in low tones.

Settling on being rude over being nosey, I cleared my throat and forced a grin on my face. “Sorry,” I called out over to them.

Trip turned around, his expression smothered in frustration and what I thought could be anger at first before he spotted me. “Hey beautiful,” he murmured with a head nod as the older man turned his attention to me as well.

The man looked to be in his late fifties, face weathered, expression telling me he wasn’t much of a grinner unlike his younger companion. He had on grease stained jeans, a t-shirt that had once been white, and a distressed leather vest with multiple patches. The Widowmakers' vest—or cut, as Sonny had corrected me back at Mayhem my first night.

I figured I probably shouldn’t waste his time based on the fact that he didn’t look happy to see me and probably didn’t look happy to see anyone, period. Ever. Moving my focus back and forth between Trip and the man I assumed to be Luther, I raised the envelope up.

“I’m looking for Luther.”

The old guy took three steps toward me, reached for the envelope with a grunt of a “Thanks” and turned around to open it, shielding me from its contents.

Trip and I both looked at each other and shrugged.

“I’ll see you later,” I told Trip, who looked even more attractive during the day than he had when I saw him at night the week before. In the natural light, my guess was that he was probably a handful of years older than my twenty-four. He had on the same thing that Luther and the other two guys back at the parlor except his t-shirt was black and his jeans looked pretty new.

Trip was pretty friggin’ handsome. Long legs. Nice yellow blonde goatee. Easy smile.

So I knew right then that I really needed to get my ass back to work before I thought any longer about how nice and handsome Trip was. Because it then reminded me how hot and asshole-ish my boss was, and I knew that would only make me bitter.

No thanks.

“You comin’ to the party tomorrow, gorgeous?” he asked when I took a step back.

“There's a party?”

He nodded.

"Well, this is awkward." Both of my eyebrows shot up. I whispered, "I wasn't invited."

Trip laughed. “You're invited. Sonny only parties in one place, and that's with the Club." He crossed his arms over his chest and lifted his chin. "You hafta come. You got it in your blood."

Sonny had used those same exact words to con me into going to Mayhem with him last week. You got it in your blood. Then why the heck had my parents taken me to Florida?

"Me and your boy won't let anybody mess with you," he offered. "You'll come?"

Oh, what the hell. I hadn't been out in almost a year with the exception of the last trip to Mayhem. "Yeah, sure."

Trip grinned.

Glancing down at my watch, I sighed. It'd been twenty minutes since I left the shop and the last thing I wanted was to get in trouble when I got back. "See you tomorrow?"

He nodded, still grinning. "Sure will."

Waving at Trip, I kept taking steps backward. “Bye, Trip.” He winked at me right before I waved once more and speed-walked down the forecourt.

I spotted Sonny bent at the hips with his entire upper body suspended over the motor of a Chevy and since I didn’t see Luther—more than likely the boss– around, I yelled at him. “See ya, Sonny!”

He didn’t move but I heard him call out after me, “Later, Ris!”

It might have been because Trip was a handsome flirty bastard, or it might have been because Sonny went above and beyond the call of being a half-brother who had spent less than a year of his total life with me, but I smiled the entire—short—walk to work.

~ * ~ *

“You ever thought about getting a tattoo?” Slim asked me.

It was a little after ten. Blake was working on the same piece he’d been going at for two hours and Blue had just gotten saddled with piercing a cute but barely legal girl's tongue. I had a feeling she was going to regret that thing tomorrow, but I kept my mouth closed.

Rule number one in working at a tattoo parlor according to Blake—don’t talk customers out of services unless they were a really, really bad idea. Which meant I really, really needed to find out what they thought a bad idea was. Maybe a facial tattoo?

Slim and I had just given each other bug eyes when Blue walked off with the nervous girl and we'd followed after them with our eyes until they disappeared into one of the private rooms. Earlier, a woman well into her thirties had come in requesting to get one nipple pierced. Blue had been in the room with her for ten minutes when a scream pierced through the parlor, scaring the crap out of all of us. It was a miracle that Dex hadn’t messed up the tattoo he’d been working on because I’d whacked the computer mouse across the room in response.

I was fondly starting to call the private room the “torture chamber” in my head.

I nodded my head at Slim. “I wanted to get a tattoo on my lower back when I was eighteen.”

He raised an incredulous eyebrow. “A tramp stamp?”

The guy enunciated the words a little too carefully. Smart ass.

For that, he earned a smirk. “For the record, I didn’t know they were called tramp stamps before I wanted to get one,” I gave him a flat look. “I just thought they were kind of cool.”

“Cool?” He smiled, still enunciating slowly.

I repeated myself with a smirk.

“But…?” Slim trailed off, fishing for an explanation.

“But I couldn’t think of anything I liked enough to get tattooed on me for the rest of my life, you know?” And I'd found out two weeks later that I was going to need another surgery, but I kept that tidbit to myself.

Slim, who from what I’d seen over the last few days, was tattooed from ears to toes, nodded in understanding. “They’re addicting. I was only going to get one when I turned eighteen, and then one turned into two, and two into three—“

“And three into—,” I fanned out my fingers and wiggled them, “Everything?”

He snorted. “Exactly.”

I got it.

Pretty much ninety percent of the clientele I’d seen over the week were repeat customers. They’d mostly all been familiar with one or all of the guys working, and while not everyone had the amount of ink coverage that the artists had, two tattoos was more than my whopping zero.

And they were cool. Almost all of the work that wasn't walk-in was original, hand-drawn and transferred. They really were pieces of art or at least pieces of art in the making.

From what I’d seen in such a short amount of time, the tattoos weren’t just random crap people would regret when they were elderly. The pieces clients got seemed to be so much more than that. They were memorials and declarations. They were outpourings of love and pain. Letters and images, icons and symbolism, personal and eternal.

It was eye-opening for me. The art that they created were badges of honor. It was impossible not to get sucked into the emotion that went behind the artwork.

Well, at least that was the case with most of them. I’d already seen a sketch for a flaming penis that made me cringe.

“You have great skin. It'd be a perfect canvas.” He lifted both of his eyebrows before looking up abruptly and lifting his chin, still grinning but past me. “Done hibernating?”

I tensed up.

“Done with three hours of Club financial shit,” that grumbly, deep voice that I’d learned to associate with Dex’s cool mood answered from what felt like just a few feet behind me.

“Bummer.” Slim made a face.

“I don’t see us gettin’ any more business. Ritz, you’re free to go home whenever you’re ready, and Slim, clean up, yeah?” Dex said.

Slim nodded, hopped off the edge of my desk and walked toward the back. I heard the soft sound of Dex’s motorcycle boots lumber off, and I got up. I’d already cleaned everything about thirty minutes before. The frames, the coffee table, all the free surfaces. My stuff for the day was done.

Blake happened to look over when he took a mini break as I was throwing my purse over my shoulder, so waved at him and mouthed, “See you tomorrow.” He closed both his eyes and nodded before I walked out of the shop.

The street, usually heavy with pedestrian and automotive traffic during the day, was eerily quiet. There weren’t any cars besides the two Pins clients’ and it freaked me the hell out. It was like one of those scary movie scenes before the heroine gets chased by some psychopath serial killer but manages to survive. Survive half-naked, whatever.

Instantly, I regretted not asking one of the guys to walk out with me, but I didn’t want to ask them for favors. I didn’t need to get babysat and plus, I didn’t like being that needy girl. I'd been on my own for years. I could walk to my car by myself.

Sucking in a breath, my feet were brave enough to make their way down the strip, passing the real estate agency while I talked myself out of looking in. The last thing I needed or wanted was to see some masked face staring back at me from the other side.

I’d barely made it to the end of the street when someone yelled out, “Yo!”

Under normal circumstances, if I thought it might have been a stranger instead of someone from the shop calling out after me, I’d start running. But it wasn’t. It took me a second out on that empty street to realize it was Dex's deep voice yelling.

“Hold up!”

I forced myself to turn around and see him jogging over. “Yes?”

He cut the distance between us to stop just two feet away. “What the fuck are you doin’?”

I blinked. What? “You told me I could leave when I was ready.” I blinked again. “I was ready.”

Dex’s amazing eyes, even under the dim streetlight that cast shadows in the shadows, looked incredulous. “Girl, I said you could leave when you were ready but not by your fuckin’ self. You can’t be walkin’ around this side of town all alone so late.”

Did this man just... scold me?

And what the hell did he mean this side of town? This side of town seemed safe enough.

“My car’s just right there,” I told him, pointing in the general direction of the nearby lot.

Dex shrugged. “You gotta have some self-preservation or somethin’, babe. Can’t be walkin’ around here by yourself.”

“It’s right there,” I repeated, pointing again. It was seriously thirty steps away.

“I don’t give a fuck,” he pointed out. “C’mon, I got a business to close. Last thing I need is your goddamn bro callin' me, bustin' my balls over somethin' happenin' to you.” Dex wrapped his fingers—long, not too slim but most, most, most definitely manly—around my forearm and pulled me across the street.

I wiggled my arm in his grasp a little, pointing at my car with my free hand. “You can let go of my arm." I jerked it again futilely, thankful he'd grabbed the good one. "I don’t need a babysitter, but I appreciate the gesture,” I groaned under my breath, shaking my arm in his grasp once more.