Chapter 12

There should be a calorie refund for things that didn’t taste as good as expected.

-Coffee Cup

Travis

I pulled up to the house, took a short look around to ascertain that I was alone, and pulled the wheel hard to the left. Making sure I was in a good position, I backed the tow truck up to the car that was sitting in the middle of the driveway—in a seedy part of Hostel—and got out.

My eyes quickly dashed around the area, noting that there were three people that I could see out on the porches of various houses, and of the three people, only one looked like he gave more than one shit that I was taking possession of a car by force.

Keeping my eye on him out of the corner of my eye, I got all the hooks, cables, and chains attached to the car, and then started to tighten them.

By the time that the back end of the car I was sent to repossess by the bank was safely hitched up onto my tow truck, only five minutes had passed.

However, it was the sound of the winch working that made the right amount of noise to alert the man in the house who owned this particular car.

“Hey!”

I finished locking the car into place and rounded the back of the truck.

I’d just opened the door and was lifting my leg inside when the man rounded the hood of the truck and slammed his hands down on the door.

It closed right on my leg, but I didn’t let on that it hurt.

“Can I help you?” I questioned calmly.

If I’d responded with anything else, I knew from experience that I’d be sparking the man’s ire—even more than I already had.

“That’s my car. Put it down.”

I shook my head. “It may be your car, but since the note hasn’t been paid on it in over four months, the bank that you purchased the loan from is legally free to take it back. Which they’ve done.”

“You can’t do that!” he screamed.

And then he started to reach for his pants.

I chose that moment to slam the door shut, wincing when the first bullet ricocheted off the bulletproof glass that Dante and I had decided to splurge on.

It’d cost us a fucking mint to put it into five new trucks, but at this point, as I looked at the bullet that would’ve gone straight into my goddamn chest, I was grateful that we’d spent it.

And as the next shot bounced off right around where my head would’ve been, I said a prayer.

“Shots fired,” I heard over the radio in the truck.

I was linked into the police ban of the county, and although we no longer had a local police department, we did have a sheriff.

A sheriff that had bigger fish to fry most times then to come patrol the tiny town of Hostel.

‘Shots fired’ however, was going to get the Sheriff, as well as any law enforcement within a twenty-minute radius to head toward the shooting.

The volunteer fire department would’ve also answered the call, but since the shooter was still firing at the truck—surely, he’d be out of bullets soon—they couldn’t come any closer until he was contained.

But when he reached into his pocket and produced another magazine, I realized that this man would literally fire at me for hours if I continued to just sit here.

Which was why I chose to do what I did next—leave.

The man apparently had been anticipating that I’d do it, because the moment the truck went into gear, he threw himself at the car before it could pass.

He yanked the car’s door that I’d had hooked up to the truck open, and launched himself inside head first.

I looked at the ceiling and called into dispatch, using my own code that the sheriff’s department had given The ‘Hail Raisers’ as he’d dubbed us early on in Dante’s and my tenure.

“Dispatch, this is 0224 requesting backup to 20029 Boddy Road. I have a white male trying to remove his car from my possession.”

“10-4, 0224. Backup is on the way.”

I rehung the microphone and stared in my rearview mirror for all of ten seconds before I pulled my phone out of my pocket and started to browse Pinterest.

Don’t ask me why I was cruising Pinterest. Honestly, it was Hannah’s fault. I’d been a Pinterest virgin before Hannah had come into my life, and ruined me.

While I was cruising ‘old collectible cars’ my mother called. I winced, wondering if she would call back immediately if I ignored it, and decided that yes. Yes, she fucking would.

So I bit the bullet and answered it.

“Hey, Ma,” I greeted her.

A jolt had me glancing up to the rearview mirror as I watched the man try to drive his car off of my truck. With the back end suspended by the frame, and the only thing with purchase being the front tires, I had no doubt that he wouldn’t be able to go anywhere.

But to be sure, I lifted the front end just a little bit higher, allowing only about an inch of tire to touch the pavement.

“Hey, sugar,” my momma said. “What time can I expect you and Hannah for dinner tonight?”

I looked at my watch and contemplated telling her no.

I knew better, though. She’d hold dinner until midnight if she had to. Then my father would call me all pissed off because he was made to wait, and I’d never hear the end of it.

“I don’t know…”

“Finley and Leida are here for the weekend. I’d count it as a favor if you deigned to grace us with your presence. I already know that Hannah, the girls, and TJ will be coming.”

I winced, remembering that Alex would be there tonight. I’d forgotten that she was coming, which instantly made me feel like shit.

What I loved, though, was that she had no problem speaking directly to Hannah.

They had a special relationship, and had from the very start.

The first day that my mother had met Hannah had been the day that Hannah had come to my office to tell me that she was pregnant. It’d all been rather awkward, and to be honest, I was fairly sure that my mother fell in love with Hannah, right then and there.

***

250 days ago

“Thanks for lunch, Mom,” I murmured softly. “Are you okay?”

My mom looked every single one of her sixty-six years, and she hadn’t used to. She was a farmer’s wife, and later a businessman’s wife. She’d always aged well, but the passing of Dante’s wife and children, as well as my sister taking her life, had taken its toll on her.

She wasn’t the same smiling woman that she used to be, and I could understand why.

It didn’t mean that it hurt any less to see.

“I’m okay, baby.” She smiled. “I’m heading to see Tobias and Finley this weekend. Was there anything you wanted me to take to them?”

I shook my head. “I sent the stuff I had for Tobias in the mail last week. He got it and sent it back to me already.”

She nodded, her eyes taking on a faraway look as her eyes focused on Dante’s empty office door.

“How’s Dante?”

I didn’t have any good news for her. What Dante was, was not good. In fact, if there was one thing he was, it was a mess.

“He’ll get there, Ma,” I soothed.

I didn’t mention that my brother had gotten rip roaring drunk two weeks ago and fucked some random woman he’d met at the club, and then had skipped town the next day.

Though, it wouldn’t be long before she knew.

Especially since that same girl was the same woman who was the hostess at the club for a little over a month—that was before Dante had broken her with whatever he’d said or did. She wasn’t a gossip by any means. In fact, she was so quiet, I never would’ve expected her to go for Dante in the first place.

She’d lived across the street from me for a little over two months before she’d shown up for a job interview. The man in charge of hiring hadn’t known the connection to me, and had taken her on with exuberance because we were so short staffed.

It would only be later, when Dante was taking her home and showing up at my house the next day hungover as hell asking for a ride, when we realized who exactly she was.

Regardless of what Dante had done, it was a big fucking mess. She knew that Dante was in no place to be doing what they did, and she showed that by leaving the very next day. Everyone in the entire freakin’ town had known about Dante. Everyone, including her.

We hadn’t seen her since.

“I hope so,” she whispered, voice shaking. “I miss them so much. It’s so hard not being able to kiss them. I miss waking them up from their nap and having baby girl ask me to bake something.”

Baby girl was what my mother called Dante’s eldest. She was the second grandchild in the family, and since Leida, her first grandchild, didn’t live here, she’d been the most spoiled. Then came along Dante’s baby, and my mother was in love.

From the moment Dante and his wife had returned to work after having her, my mother had watched them instead of them being taken to daycare.

Now, my mother had time on her hands, and she used that time to think about the things that she could no longer change. Now she used most of her free time to bother me, and visit with our other brothers who lived a couple of hours east.

“I know you do, Mom,” I grunted and stood, wrapping my arms around her. She was smaller than the last time I did this. “You need to eat more.”

She started to laugh a watery laugh, and my belly clenched.

“I want you to find a woman, Travis,” she whispered. “I want you…”

A knock came at my door, and I looked up to see Tate Casey standing there. “You have a visitor.”

I looked past Tate’s shoulder to see Hannah shifting from foot to foot nervously.

Then, her face went pale, and she slapped a hand over her mouth.

My body clenched as I made a move toward Hannah, but before I could so much as let my mother go, she was running toward the front door of the building.

I let my mother go and cursed as I ran after her, coming to a stop outside just as Hannah bent over the flowerbed that my mother had insisted we put in ‘for aesthetics’ and lost her lunch.

“Hannah…” I paused. “You okay?”

She squatted down and placed her hands over the back of her neck. “I’m pregnant. You got me pregnant.”

A gasp left my lips, as well as my mother’s, who I hadn’t realized had followed me out.

“Come again?” I blinked.

She looked at me, leaving her hands on her neck where they were, and nodded miserably. “Yep. You heard right.”

“Oh, my God,” my mother cried, sounding happy, but trying to act like she wasn’t.

I was too flabbergasted to reply to either Hannah’s words, or my mother’s.

Instead, I walked to the huge fucking rock that my mother had insisted we put there in the flowerbed and took a seat, directly next to Hannah’s stomach contents.

“When did you find out?”

She pushed up and then back, coming to her ass on the sidewalk. “I’m so sorry.”

She looked at my mother, as well as Tate Casey who didn’t even try to make it look like he wasn’t paying attention, and then back to me.

I waved her worry away. “That’s my mother and Tate Casey. They both know me well. It’s not a big deal that they know…”

She dropped her head and sighed.

“To answer your question, I’ve been trying to work up the courage to tell you for a week now.”

Then, to add the icing to the cake, Allegra chose that time to pull into the parking lot—fifteen minutes early to drop Alex off for her weekend with me—and got out.

“Son of a bitch,” I muttered darkly.

Hannah looked up, followed my gaze to the parking lot, and stiffened.

I wasn’t sure if she knew the woman getting out of the car, but this was a fairly small town. Allegra was on fucking commercials for her father—who was a used car salesman. She was well known, and still sometimes used my last name because she thought it was funny to torture me.

“Grandma!” Alex cried out. “Hey!”

Alex, my lovely daughter, came running over and threw herself into my mother’s arms.

My mother gobbled the attention up, sending me a gloating look. One that I returned. Only, my look was one of annoyance.

Alex wasn’t my biggest fan since her mother and I had split, and Allegra had a lot to do with that. She loved my mother, though.

My mother obviously didn’t realize how much Alex disliked being with me, otherwise I was sure she wouldn’t have looked so smug. She didn’t like seeing her babies hurting.

Alex was a very intuitive child. One that knew that just last year, her mother and I had been together and what she thought was happy. Now it was all my fault that we were no longer together, and I had no doubt in my mind that Alex heard that from Allegra on a daily basis.

“Hey, Alex. How you doin’, baby?” my mother cried.

Hannah started to look green around the gills again, and I prayed that she would be able to hold it together while Allegra was here.

My luck was that she wouldn’t and Allegra would find out, then things would get even worse.

The good thing was that Hannah was able to keep it together. The bad thing was that apparently, Hannah hadn’t been discreet buying her pregnancy test, and Allegra was already aware of the rumors surrounding the new girl. (Like I said, this was a small town, and people loved to gossip.)

What Allegra hadn’t been aware of was who had gotten the new girl pregnant.

Now, seeing the two of us so close, she put two and two together.

And what I saw in Allegra’s eyes was enough to make my stomach sour.

“Well, well, well,” Allegra drawled.

The words weren’t sing-song. They were sharp and hard. Like a fucking knife.

God. Dammit.