Chapter 3

I wish I could copy and paste you into my bed.

-Not a good pick-up line

Evander

“Hello?” I answered, looking at my watch to see if I’d have enough time to hit the grocery store before I had to go pick up Dalton.

Dalton was my sister’s stepson, and a complete and utter asshole to anyone who wasn’t his father.

But, like the total sucker that I was for my sister, even though she treated me like shit, I’d offered to pick him up and take him to baseball practice despite not really liking the kid all that much.

I’d missed a lot, being gone for the last four years, and one of those things was my sister’s remarriage to a man I wasn’t sure I liked.

Not with the way he allowed his kid to treat my sister like a total piece of trash who wasn’t good enough to make him food, let alone spend time in his house while his father was away at work.

Seriously, there was one person in this world who I’d do anything for—had done anything for—and that was my sister.

Sure, she never returned the favor, but I was her big brother. And no matter what she did and how she treated me, she’d always be my little sister.

If she wanted me to take her punk step-kid to the baseball park for practice, then I’d fuckin’ do it. But I sure the fuck wouldn’t enjoy it.

“I have an abandoned car for you to pick up,” came the annoyed voice of the woman who worked in dispatch. “I tried to call the towing side, but they’re all busy at a wreck on the interstate.”

I sighed. “I’ll pick it up, but I won’t be delivering it to the yard until tomorrow morning. I have a baseball practice at six I have to take a kid to and that’s in less than an hour.”

“Thanks,” Cindy’s said, and then she hung up.

Rolling my eyes at the way she spent as little time talking to me as possible, I started the truck and pulled out of the grocery parking lot.

Guess those would be waiting until tomorrow, just like the rest of the fencing I’d yet to pick up from the feed store.

But, I had a busy life, and busy meant I couldn’t get myself into trouble, thank God.

Hence the reason I didn’t complain to Cindy like I would’ve done four years ago.

I didn’t work for the towing side of the business, and she damn well knew it.

There were multiple people that she could’ve called, one of those being the motherfucker on call for the towing side, yet she’d called me.

That was likely more due to the fact that she was still irrationally angry with me for ‘dumping’ her.

I hadn’t dumped her, though.

I’d gone to prison.

Sure, I guess I could’ve stayed with her, but no woman needed to wait four years on a man who was in jail.

Although, now that I had time to think about it, I knew that her loyalty hadn’t been that great. It’d taken her all of a month to move on, thanks to the fact that she’d had what was left of my last paycheck to live on before she made any drastic decisions.

Not that we’d have made it much longer had I not gone to prison.

Cindy was a good girl, but she was too clingy.

Even now she called with some bullshit excuses just to see what I was doing even though I hadn’t had to answer to her in well over four years.

Grumbling to myself, I turned down the street that was indicated to have an abandoned truck on it, and started to cruise down the road, hoping to find the truck and get it loaded up quickly before I had to be at the baseball practice.

After another two minutes of driving, I rounded a corner to find a familiar Ford sitting there, almost mocking me.

I hadn’t been able to get the woman out of my thoughts since I’d seen her at the feed store.

Then when we’d sat next to each other at Maple’s, that’d just been the icing on the cake.

Now, two days later, I was looking at her truck without her in it, and I started to get a really bad feeling about it.

I pulled over to the side of the road, directly in front of her truck so that we were nose to nose, and hopped out, my eyes scanning the immediate area.

What was her name? I hadn’t actually thought to get it, and now more than ever I was kicking myself for that.

“Hey, girl!” I yelled out. “Are you okay?”

Hey girl? What was I, ten?

I called out again and again, until I finally started to think I was going to have to tow her truck because she wasn’t actually there, but before I could head back to my own, branches snapped somewhere in the distance, drawing my eye.

I turned to face the woman as she came out of the woods.

She looked different.

Less put together, maybe.

When I’d seen her the day before, she’d been wearing these ridiculously tight leggings, a black t-shirt, and rain boots with chickens on them.

She’d looked fucking adorable with her hair up, and her face sun kissed. It was as if she’d just come in from a hard day of working outside. She even had a slight sheen of sweat on her face.

Today she was in something that was more formal. Black dress pants, a blue silk shirt, and low-slung heels.

Today, though, her smile—the one thing that’d drawn me in despite not wanting to be immersed in anything that had to do with a woman ever again—was missing.

“Hey, you okay?”

She looked up, looking almost surprised to see me, and frowned.

“What are you doing here?” she whispered, swiping at her eyes.

I continued to stare right at her.

“I’m here because there was a call about an abandoned vehicle,” I gestured with my head to her truck. “Apparently, it was too close to the road for someone’s liking.”

She shook her head. “I’ll move it.”

I stopped her with a hand on her arm, or more like just my fingers.

I knew I shouldn’t, but I did anyway.

“So, why did you pull over and start crying?”

She looked at me, and my breath hitched in my throat.

“My sister,” she murmured after a while. “We found out that she has cancer.”

My stomach sank.

“I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” she admitted. “My mom and older sister both died of it. It was only a matter of time before either she or I got it.”

She sounded so lost and upset that I wanted to pull her into my arms, but I didn’t.

It wouldn’t do to let her be seen with the criminal—a man who was arrested for assault and then sentenced to four years in prison.

Yeah, it’d sucked. Big time.

Though, I wouldn’t stop myself from carrying out that assault again—even though the one I’d been charged with hadn’t been one that I’d committed.

What I would’ve done, however, was make sure that the asshole who doctored up the footage would’ve had that camera shoved up his ass instead of assuming that the little shit had even the slightest amount of morals in his slimy little body.

I stepped away from her. “See you around, Ma’am.”

“Thank you,” she murmured. “See you around.”

Then she got into her truck and drove away, leaving me staring after her with worry starting to fill the pit of my belly.

***

An hour later, I’d just pulled the truck into the parking lot of the baseball fields, and pulled into a parking spot at the back, when the kid I was transporting grumbled something rude under his breath.

“What was that?” I asked.

“Can you park any further away?” Dalton snapped.

I narrowed my eyes.

“Probably,” I muttered darkly. “But this is good for me. It’s not for you?”

Dalton didn’t say anything, lucky for him, and instead hopped out of the truck and yanked his bag with him.

The bat hit the metal of the truck, and I had to grit my teeth to keep from snapping at the little asshole.

“You know where you’re going?”

Dalton didn’t bother to reply. Instead, he shrugged his bag high over his shoulder and started stomping across the lot to the field.

I sighed, and started to close the door to the truck when I saw a familiar blue Ford pull into the parking lot, finding a much closer spot than I’d found, and park.

The familiar woman—looking much more comfortable now in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, slipped down out of the truck and rounded the truck’s bed, stopping at the side to open the door for a boy that resembled her.

Her son, maybe?

I started forward, trying not to look like I was staring, and made my way to the bleachers where I would reside for the next two hours of the boys’ practice.

Which afforded me a great view of the woman—the woman whose name I still didn’t know. At least not yet.

She took a seat three rows in front of me and kept her head straight ahead while she watched the little boy who’d gotten out of her truck.

She didn’t yell and scream, though, like some of the other mothers.

She stayed facing straight ahead, she didn’t speak to anyone, and she didn’t even seem to notice when people spoke to her.

Left to her own devices, she stayed there practically unmoving as the sorrow I felt for her grew in my chest, leaving me to wonder if maybe I should try to talk to her.

“Evander!”

I turned at the sound of that voice and spotted the coach, who was staring at me.

“Would you mind throwing some balls to the boys?”

I grunted in reply, then stood up and made my way down the bleachers.

It wasn’t until I was halfway down that I realized that the woman was watching me.

Her face was no longer filled with sorrow.

It was filled with curiosity.

“Hey,” I mumbled on my way past.

She didn’t say anything, she only nodded in reply.

And I sighed as I made my way to the dugout.

What did I care if she said anything to me, anyhow?

She was Trouble, with a capital T.