Chapter 2

Never give up on your dreams, you stupid crybaby pussy.

- Words of wisdom from your best friend

Tobias

I was in a truck. With the one woman who I just couldn’t tell whether she hated me or liked me.

I was taking her to my house.

I was practically forcing her to go to a concealed handgun class because I thought she needed it.

I was stupid.

Sighing as I took the last turn into my driveway, I paused long enough to allow the gate to open, and then motored through it.

I chanced a look in Audrey’s direction, grinning inwardly when her eyes were glued to the huge Longhorns that we were passing.

“You have huge cows with massive horns in your driveway,” she pointed out.

I snorted.

“I do. They do what they want,” I said. “Good thing about living out in the country is that I can maneuver around them.”

I did just that, veering off the gravel driveway to the grass to go around one.

“This is a nice place you have here,” she said. “And a big house.”

It was.

I’d come into some money when I was twenty-one, and I’d spent every single penny buying the ninety-two acres that my house now sat on. Over the last ten years, I’d made it mine, and everything I’d ever wanted was now on it.

A two-story farmhouse with four bedrooms, three baths, and a game room. A large equipment shed for my tractors and equipment. A stable for my horses.

“Thank you,” I said. “I like it.”

She gave me a look that I couldn’t decipher.

“I’ve never owned a house,” she murmured. “I was to the point when I was thinking about getting one when Tunnel moved me here.”

I nodded.

What went unsaid was the fact that her parents were practically forcing her to move with them, and Tunnel, or Ghost as I called him, had stepped in, using his muscle, to ensure that she didn’t have to.

She’d then moved in with her brother, and she hadn’t moved out in the nine months that she’d been in Mooresville.

“Didn’t you live by yourself when you were in Louisiana?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No. I had two roommates. Both nurses. We all worked opposite shifts, so we hardly ever saw each other, but it was nice knowing someone was there.”

I thought about Amy, my sister, and felt my stomach start to form into a tight knot.

“My sister was a nurse,” I said. “Pediatric unit.”

Her eyes went to me.

“Was?”

It was asked so softly that I had to strain to hear her.

But I did.

I nodded. “She died a while back.”

She killed herself, I thought to myself, but I’m not telling you that part. If you knew, then you’d pity me, and I’d be reminded of what a fucking failure I was at life.

“Did she work here?” she asked.

I nodded. “Yeah. Tommy Tom actually got her the job.”

Tommy Tom was a fellow member of The Dixie Wardens MC, and a doctor at the hospital.

“I’ll bet she loved it there. I used to want to go into that area, too.”

“But not anymore?” I asked, pulling the truck in beside another vehicle that I assumed belonged to one of my buddies who was helping me put on the class.

I usually had a lot of help on the range on test days. Watching inexperienced people with loaded guns was enough to get my heart palpitating. Having extra eyes on the gun-toting men and women was key to not getting shot.

“No, not anymore,” Audrey confirmed. “I’m not even sure I want to be a nurse at this point. I’m only doing it now because it’s what brings in the money.”

I looked at her.

“Why?”

She looked away and changed the subject.

“I don’t want kids,” she blurted.

My brows rose.

“I don’t either,” I said. “Nothing against them, but I don’t want any of my own. They’re too hard—too demanding. I…” I shook my head. “Just no.”

I put the truck into park and got out, nodding my head at my brother who I could see talking to another guy, whom I assumed was a class attendee.

“You ready?”

She nodded. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

Thirty minutes later, I was talking about where guns were and were not allowed to be taken, when Audrey raised her hand.

“What if, say, you know that at one mall entrance, there’s not a no guns allowed sign,” she said. “But you know that there are signs on other entrances to the mall, there just isn’t one at the entrance that you use. Are you still allowed to take it into the mall?”

My lips twitched.

“Yeah, I guess, technically, you’d be allowed to,” I conceded. “But you’re going to have a hard time proving to me that you’ve never, not once, gone into another entrance.”

She pursed her lips.

“Which entrance are you saying is the one that doesn’t have the no guns allowed sign?”

“There’s not one at the Dick’s entrance or the Sears entrance,” she answered quickly. “Though there are ones at the Dillard’s entrance and the entrance at the main part of the mall.”

I shrugged. “I don’t go to the mall so I can’t verify this right off the top of my head. Is there a sign on the wall at the entrance to the mall?”

She shrugged. “Not one that I can remember seeing.”

“The rule about the no guns allowed sign is that it has to be visible. It has to be on contrasting backgrounds, and it has to be posted somewhere that it will be clearly visible as you enter the building,” I explained. “So this would be a question for the mall owner, and once you made him aware of these disparities between the businesses, he’d likely fix them anyway.”

Her mouth twitched, and I had the oddest urge to drop a kiss on top of her upturned lips.

“Once you get your license, you can carry anywhere that doesn’t have this sign posted…unless the owner of the establishment verbally tells you that he or she doesn’t want you to carry there.”

I droned on, stopping periodically to answer questions, most of which came from Audrey.

Her latest question, though, had me stopping in my tracks.

“What happens, say, if you go into a restaurant and someone has their gun drawn and starts shooting,” she questioned. “What should I do? Can I just pull it out and shoot?”

I thought about her question for a moment.

“Yes,” I said. “But you need to consider what’s in the background behind your target. You have to weigh the possible consequences of shooting. Also, what makes you think that the guy shooting is the bad guy?”

Her mouth opened, and then closed.

“Well,” she hesitated.

I grinned. “You’re not sure now, are you?”

“I was at a class a few weeks ago,” I started. “During the class, the instructor gave a PowerPoint presentation. There was one particular slide titled ‘What would you do?’ that stuck with me.” I leaned against my desk and crossed my feet out in front of me. “The scene unfolds like this: a girl is out with her friends. A group of them exit the mall, six or so in total, and they’re all giggling and laughing.”

“So they’re just about to step into the parking lot from the front exit when a van pulls up. Two masked men get out, take hold of a girl who was with the group. She is kicking and screaming, but despite that they force her, bodily, into the van.”

Audrey’s eyebrows rose in interest.

“What would you do?” I asked. “If you were there watching that happen, would you act?”

She thought about it. Then shook her head. “I don’t know.”

My mouth formed into a grin.

“What about you?”

I asked the guy in the front row.

He was an oil field guy, and the little nametag I’d given him earlier declared him as ‘Dayton P.’

“I’d act. I’d take the van’s tires out. Anything I needed to do to get that girl out of the van.”

“And you’d have been in the wrong,” I told him.

His eyes narrowed, and I clearly saw the anger on his face.

He was one of those guys that I had a feeling would get a hero complex when he finally got that concealed carry permit. He thought he was invincible, and he’d be the type of guy who would act before thinking.

“Why?” he barked.

I stared at him for a long moment and then turned my attention back to the rest of the class.

Today’s class had fifteen students total, the majority of whom were men from the volunteer fire department one town over.

Each of them was looking at the guy in the front of the class. The one who’d been spitting dip into a clear plastic bottle for the last hour of class.

I looked away from that bottle.

It really grossed me out.

There was this one time, as a kid, that my father left his dip spit cup out on the counter. Thinking it was mine, I’d taken a big swig, realized instantly that it wasn’t mine and had promptly blown chunks all over the kitchen, which my father had then made me clean up.

“What you don’t know is that the girl was a runaway, and the two masked men forcing her into the van were her brother and her father. By law, the two men did nothing wrong, but you would have been in the wrong for pulling your gun out on them and discharging it without just cause,” I answered. “So yes, there can be multiple things playing out at once. If you don’t have the full picture, then it’s possible that you could be acting without cause.”

“Plot twist,” Audrey grinned.

She then raised her hand.

I raised my brow at her.

“I have to use the bathroom. Can we have a break?”

I rolled my eyes to the clock, my eyes widening slightly. “It’s only been an hour.”

She shrugged. “I had coffee. And you didn’t let me go before we left.”

Goddamn, she was cute.

“Yeah, we can take one,” I agreed with a sigh. “Everyone, take ten minutes.”

The room emptied of everyone except Audrey.

“I thought you had to pee.”

She nodded. “I do.”

“Then why aren’t you going?” I pushed.

She stared at me.

“I want you to take me to the nice bathroom. Not the one you let guests use,” she ordered.

I cocked a brow at her in question.

“That man just came out of there, and he spent a good ten minutes in there while we were talking about where we could and could not take our guns. I don’t want to go into a stinky bathroom.”

I just rolled my eyes and jerked my head. “This way.”

We passed by the front door on the way, and I saw the people who had left the room loitering outside, smoking.

“What did you do?” she asked as she followed closely behind me. “Hit up some smoker’s anonymous group to get them to come to your concealed weapon class?”

My lips twitched. “No.”

She stopped when she saw a picture of my mom and me.

“Is that your mom?”

In order not to answer her, because I knew she’d have questions if I told her that it was, I said, “And to answer your question about the group, they’re the volunteer fire department.” I gestured to the empty bedroom. “The bathroom’s through there, just hang a left once you go through the door.”

She eyed me warily.

“Is this the master bath?”

I nodded.

“Okay.” She left without saying another word, and I was left wondering what it mattered if it was the master bath or not.

She’d told me to take her to the nice one, and other than the one that was in the horse barn outside, this was the only other one there was beside the one she refused to use.

Though, now that I thought about it, I’d left the lube out on the counter I’d been using this morning before heading out to get the complicated girl who never strayed far from my thoughts.

I absently lifted my hand up to run it over the scar that was now a magnet for my hands when I was stressed.

It was an ugly scar.

A few months ago, I’d been going to Ghost’s house to help him when I was shot in the neck. Some men had been after Ghost and his wife, and I’d never seen it coming.

I probably should have, of course.

I was a fucking LEO—law enforcement officer—after all.

But I hadn’t.

I’d been so freakin’ focused on looking around for Audrey that I hadn’t been paying attention to my back.

My inability to pay attention nearly cost me my life.

“You’re gross.”

My gaze found hers.

“Why?”

She lifted her brows.

“As if you don’t know what I’m talking about,” she sniffed, pushing past me.

I grinned at her back.

“I really don’t,” I lied. “How about you tell me what has your knickers in a twist?”

She stopped and turned. “My ‘knickers’ aren’t in a twist. In fact, I’m pretty sure my knickers are none of your business.”

I winked at her and moved past her, making my way back to the large screened-in back porch where I was holding today’s class.

I could hear Audrey’s hurried footsteps behind me, but she wasn’t quite tall enough to keep up with my stride that took me out into the sunny February day.

“Everybody good?” I asked.

I received nods from the rest of the class, and a grunt of annoyance from the woman who’d passed me on her way to her seat.

“Now,” I pointed at the man who was going to be the annoying avenger. “Tell me. Can you take a concealed handgun, even with your license, onto a college campus?”

Four hours later, I was picking up the trash that was left after today’s class.

Audrey was sitting on the back of my side-by-side off road vehicle, swinging her legs, watching me do all the work.

“You could come over and pick up some of this,” I gestured.

Before she could answer, the sound of a truck pulling into the back pasture of my property caused me to look up, and I frowned.

Handing the trash to Audrey as I moved past her, I walked to my brother’s truck, and stared at him when he rolled down his window.

“What’s up?” I asked him.

Normally, my brother announced himself, but today he hadn’t.

I could tell instantly that something was wrong.

“I need your help.”

My brows rose.

“Okay,” I said. “What’s up?”

He pointed to the seat beside him, and I saw the familiar boxes.

“I don’t want any,” I told him.

He grinned. “I’ll tell your niece that you’re not willing to help her.”

I growled. “Fuck you.”

His smile was contagious, and I shook my head. “How many do I need to buy?”

He shrugged. “I think she really wants to sell them, but I was called into work, and I really, really don’t have time to do it. Do you think you could take her around my neighborhood tomorrow and do it?”

There was nothing I wanted to do less than walk around my brother’s neighborhood selling stuff, but then Audrey caught my brother’s attention, and I realized that maybe there was a silver lining in it for me.

“Who’s that?” he asked.

I grinned. “That, brother dear, is a badass.”

His chin jerked. “Looks like she wants your attention.”

I grunted. “She wants nothing to do with me. Really, she just wants to go home.”

He hummed. “Well then take her.”

I shrugged. “I fuckin’ plan on it.” I eyed him speculatively. “You didn’t have to come all the way out here to ask me this.”

My brother shrugged as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “I really just wanted to know what was keeping you distracted enough that you weren’t answering your phone.”

I glared at him, but wisely chose not to say anything.

My brother didn’t need any more ammo than he already had.

Somebody had been talking.

My eyes went to Audrey, who was still swinging her legs.

“Who called you?”

He shrugged.

“Can’t drive through my neighborhood, bro, and not expect me to know,” he said, winking. “Just you remember that.”

Which meant one of two things.

He’d seen Audrey in my front seat when I’d left with her this morning, or old Mrs. Shoe did.

My guess was that it was Mrs. Shoe.

She had nothing else to do with her life but to sit and watch others living theirs, and it was likely that when I pulled into Audrey’s driveway to pick her up, Mrs. Shoe had been watching.

The moment I left, Mrs. Shoe was probably already on the phone with my brother.

“Anyway,” my brother put the truck into reverse. “You enjoy the rest of your…class.”

I flipped him the bird and returned to picking up the trash.

The entire time, I could practically feel the inquisitiveness prickling Audrey’s tongue.

She surprised me, though, and never said a word.

The only thing I got out of her the rest of the day, in fact, was a ‘thank you’ when I dropped her off.

But tomorrow, I’d be back.

She could count on that.