Chapter 11

I can’t fix stupid, but I can give it a court date.

-Ridley’s current T-shirt

Ridley

I stood in line next to Freya and studied the menu board.

We were at McDonald’s.

I hated McDonald’s. With a passion.

But this was where Freya wanted to come, and I found myself unable to find anything that looked even remotely appetizing.

She was upset, which was understandable.

She had just found out that she might lose her house if she didn’t pay the loans on not just her house, but her brother’s house as well.

I’d gone to the bank with her to get information and had left being so pissed off that I hadn’t been able to tell Freya no when she’d asked if we could go to McDonald’s.

The kid behind me started screaming again, and I held onto my patience by the skin of my teeth.

I’d had a long fucking day, and Freya hadn’t made it any better by telling me she forgot to tell me about the little fucker Craddock deciding to buy the loans from the bank, which had been her explanation to why they were trying to take her brother away from her.

How the banker would even have been able to do that, I didn’t know, but he had.

I’d had a talk with Freya’s bank only thirty minutes before and I still didn’t know how he’d done it.

Freya had left heartbroken, sure that she wouldn’t be able to pay the loan in the time Craddock had allowed.

“I want a pie!” the kid bellowed at the top of his lungs.

I turned my head only and stared at the greedy, loud bastard.

He wasn’t even cute.

It was obvious his mother let him eat whatever the hell he wanted to and likely gave him whatever he wanted.

Had that been my kid, I would’ve spanked his ass, ordered my own food, and then eaten it in front of him.

Then I felt the little fucker’s hands on my cut, and I turned quickly, glaring at the kid.

“Don’t touch me,” I growled.

The kid was five or six, at most, but the kid should’ve known better than to just go up and touch random people.

The kid in front of us knew not to. He’d looked, yes, but he hadn’t touched.

He hadn’t thrown a fit, either, when his mother said he could have tea instead of the Dr. Pepper he wanted.

“Don’t talk to Justin like that!” the mother all but screamed.

I snorted and turned around.

“You’re not even going to apologize?” the mother asked.

Freya’s hand on my arm had me tensing, but she didn’t say another thing, only pointed to the lady that was ready to take our order.

“You go first,” I said softly.

“At least he has some manners,” the woman behind me muttered.

The kid kicked the back of my knee and the front of my knee hit the counter.

I turned, slowly this time, and gave the kid the hardest stare I could muster.

I was good and pissed.

I’d had a bad day. I’d had a bad fucking two months. No, fuck that. I’d had a bad two years. I didn’t need this little kid’s bad attitude.

“How about you learn some manners and stop acting like a little asshole,” I informed the little kid who could’ve used some clean pants.

“Don’t talk to my kid! If you have a problem, you talk to me!” the mother yelled.

I crossed my arms and stared at her.

“Well, if I say anything to you, will you actually punish your kid? Or do you find it acceptable to kick strangers?” I asked. “It’s more than obvious to me that you’re not disciplining him. It’s also obvious that you could’ve cleaned him up a little bit before you brought him in here. Have you ever heard of a diaper wipe? Would’ve got that dirt and Kool-Aid stain right off his face.”

The woman was seething, I could tell.

She didn’t say another word, though, when I turned around.

“Mommy, he’s mean!” the kid yelled.

Then proceeded to pitch the biggest fucking fit I’d ever witnessed from a kid of that age.

“It’s okay, baby. I’ll get you an apple pie. Those make everything better,” the woman yelled at the boy.

Instantly, all crying ceased.

“And for you, Sir?” she asked, looking at me sympathetically.

“I want every apple pie that you have,” I ordered.

An outraged gasp came from behind me, but the lady standing in front of the register had to hide her smile as she turned.

When she came back with twenty-two apple pies, I handed over my credit card.

Freya didn’t say a word as we took our food to our seats.

And I laughed when the woman with the shithead kid glared at me.

“That was childish,” she reprimanded.

“I don’t know what to tell you. I’m obviously a child,” I muttered darkly, filling my drink up with sweet tea and ice before walking to the table that had the game console at it just so that woman couldn’t sit there and keep her kid entertained either.

Freya snorted as she watched me choose our seat, then sat down and started eating in silence.

The woman had obviously just told her son he couldn’t have any pie because there weren’t any, since the screaming from the child started up again.

I looked up in time to see the woman point at me, then her smile widened and she headed for the table that was directly next to us.

I watched them come, curious to see what they’d do.

They didn’t disappoint.

She sat her son on the bench that was only a scant foot away from ours, then proceeded to eat her meal while her kid screamed away.

I then took pleasure in moaning about how good the shitty apple pies were, and how much fun it was to play on the stupid, wall-mounted computer game that only worked half the time.

The kid screamed louder.

The mother glared.

I gave her a thumbs up.

The McDonald’s started to empty out after that, and soon it was just the two groups.

I ate more than enough pies.

Freya ate her food, trying her best to look as if she were unfazed and uninterested.

The mother ate half her hamburger, most of her fries, then sighed and got up.

“Let’s go, Justin,” she ordered.

Justin screamed louder.

She growled beneath her breath and threw her trash away before coming back, picking up her tantruming, kicking kid, and carrying him out the door.

“Feel good about yourself?” Freya asked.

I smiled. “Pie?”

She didn’t find that anywhere near as funny as I did.

I threw eighteen pies away.

There was no way in hell I could eat anymore, and I didn’t want to take them home and have to retell the story to my sister.

Holding the door open for Freya, I breathed her in as she passed me, purposefully keeping my arm in the way so she’d have to pass by me closely as she exited.

Her shoulder brushed my chest, and I had to grit my teeth as my body reacted to hers.

“I can’t believe you did that,” she said, completely oblivious to my inner turmoil.

She had on a pair of jeans that looked like they’d been painted on.

There was no doubt in my mind that these were what were called ‘skinny’ jeans.

They landed on her hips just below her navel and molded to her body all the way down to her ankles.

The baggy shirt she’d gathered in a knot at her side did nothing to hide her voluptuous figure from me.

Her ass looked fantastic, and it took everything I had not to reach out and cup it to see if it was as soft and luscious as it looked.

Freya was definitely what I would call ‘curvy.’

There wasn’t a part of her body that didn’t have some sort of curve to it. Her waist was the perfect hour glass, and her thighs looked like they’d feel awesome wrapped around my waist.

Her beautiful white blonde hair was up in a ponytail today, and the tips of her hair were tickling her bra line with each step she took.

The icing on the cake, however, were her cute little Converse sneakers in a shade of muted pink.

Not hot pink, but baby pink.

Her feet looked tiny in them, too.

She had the smallest feet I’d ever seen on a grown woman before.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said in answer to her earlier observation.

She gave me a droll look. “Of course you don’t,” she said. “You also don’t remember what came over you when you threatened that banker, either, do you?”

I shrugged unrepentantly.

The guy was a dick.

After hearing what was going on with Freya’s loans—and how the banker didn’t know how it happened—I’d lost patience and stopped being nice.

He deserved to be scared.

How he could just take someone’s livelihood away like that was beyond me.

He wasn’t God.

“Look at that, she didn’t even put him in a booster seat or anything. And he’s in the front seat,” Freya said without waiting for me to answer.

I looked up to find the woman just closing the door to the front seat where the kid was now sitting.

Instincts kicked in and I started walking her way.

“What are you doing?” Freya hissed at my back.

I ignored her and kept walking, coming to a stop next to the car that was parked next to the woman’s.

“Can I help you?” the woman spat.

“You can’t put him in the front seat. He’s too small, and you still have the airbag on,” I explained, pointing to the place where the key slipped into the dash, enabling you to turn the passenger air bag on or off.

The woman turned her glare on me.

“It’s not illegal,” she said, crossing her hands over her chest.

“It is if you have some place else to put him, such as the back fucking seat,” I said. “If you got in an accident, he could be killed. And I can’t, in good conscience, let you put him in the front seat like that.”

“Listen,” she said. “I don’t have a car seat, nor a booster. I don’t need one. He’s perfectly okay sitting exactly where he’s at. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go to another McDonald’s to get my kid his apple pie.”

Then she got into her car and backed out without another word.

“He’ll be okay,” Freya assured me at my back.

“He may be okay. For now. But maybe not tomorrow,” I murmured.

“You don’t know that,” she said softly.

I did know that.

I witnessed it every day.

People were stupid, and when it came to their kids, they became more stupid.

They always thought they knew what was best for their children, and to be honest, most of the time that would be true.

However, this wasn’t one of those times, and I was going to let her know that.

But she left, peeling out of the parking lot without letting me finish.

“Fucking son of a bitch,” I growled, glaring at the car’s taillights.

Then, like any sane person would do if they knew a child were in danger, I called the cops.

At least the ones I knew, anyway.

“Seriously?” Freya asked, a smile working at the corner of her cheek.

I shrugged. “Shit happens.”

She rolled her eyes and walked to my bike with me.

When her hand brushed mine, I took it into mine before saying, “If you want to hold my hand, all you need to do is ask.”

I could feel her glare, but it didn’t stop the smile from tipping up the corners of my lips.

“So…,” she said when I mounted my bike.

She leaned against the door to her car, her hands pinned between the door and her ass.

“So…,” I urged, looking at my watch before turning my attention back to her.

She grimaced and turned, opening her car door and dropping into it.

“See you later,” she said. “Thank you for your help.”

I didn’t help much.

She was still in the exact same spot she had been in two hours before.

However, now the banker was willing to wait the ten business days that were required for the real check she’d been awarded to come in, rather than the huge, useless cardboard check that’d been handed to her after the record winning shot she’d made.

I nodded at her.

“You’re welcome,” I replied softly.

Starting up my bike, I grabbed my helmet from the top of the gas tank, shoved it on my head, and waved her on.

She backed out, trying in vain not to look at me as she did, and drove out of the parking lot without a backwards glance.

And I was left there reeling.

Why did it feel like this was goodbye?

Because it had been. I was the only one who didn’t know it yet.