Chapter 8

At first I cared, but then I was like, ‘Nah, fuck you.’

-Text from Kennedy to Evander

Kennedy

“We need nails.”

We needed nails? Okay.

I didn’t even ask, I just got into his truck with him.

Though, I likely would have stayed if he hadn’t held the passenger side door of his truck open expectantly.

So there I was, in the middle of Lowe’s, walking behind him as he made his way, swiftly and efficiently, to the hardware department where the specific kind of nails he needed were kept.

I’d been in Lowe’s a hundred million times, at least, and I still didn’t know my way around.

Maybe it was a male thing to instinctively know where he’s going.

That, or maybe he’d just bought nails and knew where to find them.

Whatever the reason for his powers of nail location, I wasn’t complaining.

What I did complain about, however, was the fact that he wanted to pay.

“No,” I said sternly, stamping my foot. “No, no, no, no, no.”

He ignored me and handed the lady thirty dollars in cash.

“Phone number?”

He shook his head.

“Don’t got one.”

The checker raised her brows. “You don’t have one?”

He shook his head.

“You can have mine,” I said, rattling off the digits. “Thank you.”

She smiled at me, her eyes going up to the man at my side, and then shook her head.

Her eyes, I could tell, were full of fear.

And she wasn’t so sure what to think about the man at my side.

He was big, yes.

He was dark, yes.

He had a beard, yes.

He had tattoos, yes.

He was scowling, yes.

Okay, he was scary.

But not that scary.

Not the way she was staring at him, anyway.

He grunted something when she handed him the receipt, and then her eyes went wide when he grabbed my elbow and pulled me along.

I went with him, not complaining in the least that he was touching me.

In fact, I quite like that he was touching me. Nobody ever touched me. Not my sister or my father.

I’d had one boyfriend in all of my life, and that one only lasted all of twenty seconds because he couldn’t handle my life.

Then again, not many people could handle my life.

When I was fifteen, my older sister got cancer. When I was sixteen, she died. When I was seventeen, my mom got cancer. She battled it for the last few horrible years of her life before she died, too.

I spent years dealing with cancer, and I still hadn’t recovered, not even years later.

Now, I was dealing with it again. Although Trixie had made it clear that she didn’t want, nor need, my help at this point.

She wanted to spend as much time with her family as she could, and that didn’t include me. Honestly, that hurt.

It hurt bad.

The only thing she was willing to allow me to do was to take my nephew to baseball practice twice a week.

And when I brought him home, Darren met me at the door.

It was obvious that he didn’t want me to come in, so I hadn’t.

My life sucked.

It really did.

Except, the big guy at my side was making it better, even if he wasn’t very cheery while doing it.

We’d just exited the store when he stopped and stared at something in front of him.

“What is it?” I asked.

He gestured to something in front of him.

It was a truck. A big one that looked like it was lifted up so high that I’d have to take a running leap to get into it.

It had a light bar across the top, and I swear to God that it looked like the truck had a unibrow.

Then I noticed all the lights.

“Whose truck is that?” I asked, taking in the multiple bars that resembled red and blue emergency lights on the bumpers.

“According to my paperwork,” he pulled out his phone and pulled up a screen in an app that I didn’t recognize. “It’s Officer Dale Rogers’ truck. He’s behind not one, not four, but six car payments.”

I blinked.

“You’re kidding.”

He shook his head.

“And that means…” I left it hanging, wondering if he’d answer me.

“That means we’re picking it up and taking it in,” he grinned.

He grinned.

Grinned…with teeth showing!

I’d never seen him smile before, but if that grin was anything to go by, it was life changing.

And man, did he have pretty teeth. The smile changed his face, transformed it from mean and scary to sexy and dark.

If there’d ever been a time where I wanted a man, it was now.

I wanted him, and I wanted him bad.

And the scary thing was that I thought he might know it.

“Gotta go get my truck,” he murmured.

I nodded.

“You think you can go in there and distract him while I do my thing?”

I froze in place.

“Yeah…” I hesitated. “But I don’t know what he looks like.”

Evander turned his phone around and showed me the screen.

There was a bunch of writing on the screen. Then, in the top right corner next to his name and address was his picture.

He was a male, in his late twenties, with a cruel looking smile. He was dressed in his dress blues from Hostel Police Department, and I knew the instant I saw him exactly who he was.

“I’m not sure he’s going to believe that I want to talk to him,” I finally said.

His eyes came down to me.

“Why not?” he asked, sounding confused.

His eyes roamed my body, starting at the top of my head, and moving down to the tips of my toes, and what he saw was obviously something he liked if the small grin he gave me was anything to go by.

But it was there and gone so fast that I almost wasn’t sure that what I saw was real.

“Because, just last week, I turned him down for a date…” I hesitated. “And the week before that, I turned him down, also. I’d never willingly go up to him.”

He looked down at me, studied me for a few long seconds, and then nodded.

“Then let’s hope like hell that he doesn’t come out while we’re doing this.”

Then he walked to his truck, and I assumed, expected me to follow.

I did, hurrying behind him to keep up with his long legs, and then came to a stop when he went to the passenger side and held the door open for me.

“T-thank you,” I murmured, walking towards him.

With the way the cars were parked on either side of us, the fit between him and the door was a tight one, making me squeeze so close by him that I felt his body heat all along the length of my back.

I shivered as I reached for the bar to help pull myself in, and gritted my teeth as I started to hop up on one foot while also trying to keep myself from falling on my face.

“You need a step on this thing,” I muttered.

It wasn’t big, per se, but it was compared to my lack of height, and the truck’s taller stature.

I’d just resigned myself to jumping when I felt a tug on my pants, and then felt my ass being lifted by the belt loop of my jeans.

I went with it, not stopping to think until I was sitting on my bottom.

That was when I realized that the man that I found super sexy had his hand near my ass, and I nearly squealed.

“Thank you,” I murmured, managing to keep it at an octave that was conducive with hearing.

He slammed the door shut without a word, and I decided that the momentous occasion of his finger in my belt loop was nothing to him while it was everything to me.

Jesus, I needed to get a hold of myself.

To keep my eyes from being on him when he got in, I reached for my seatbelt and looked toward where the truck was parked.

“Do you think you can get the truck that quick?” I asked him, eyeing the cars all around it.

He started to laugh, and I turned at the sound.

I liked how his throat worked. I liked how he stared at me with his eyes shining. I liked him.

A lot.

“Yeah, honey,” he snorted. “I think I can get it quick.”

And then I watched as he pulled out of his parking spot, rolled up the rows of cars, and then expertly backed up to the big, jacked up truck in under a minute.

Then, I continued to watch as he got out, hooked the truck up, and was back inside in less than two.

“You’ve done this before?” I asked him breathily.

My heart was pounding!

Why could I not breathe, you ask?

Because the man was hot as hell.

Watching him in the truck’s big ass mirrors while his muscles bunched and released was enough to send my libido into overdrive.

The light sheen of sweat on his skin, though? That was enough to send me to my knees.

“Do you think he’ll noti…” I stopped when I saw a man running outside, his loaded down cart full of wood and concrete trailing behind him.

“Yeah,” Evander said. “I think he’ll notice.”

I snorted a laugh, then settled back into my seat as he drove us out of the parking lot without a care in the world.