Chapter 13

Why are there upper and lowercase letters, but not numbers? Sometimes I want to write loud numbers, and I can’t do that since there aren’t any uppercase numbers.

-Text from Kayla to Parker

Parker

“So why did your parents get divorced?” Kayla turned her eyes to me.

We were lying in bed the next morning.

The alarm clock that I set every night to wake me up at five for my run and workout had been turned off. However, neither one of us had moved.

I physically wouldn’t until she got up off of me.

There was no man in the world who would be capable of leaving her in the bed and go to work out. I’d do that tomorrow. Maybe.

“You want to know the lie my mom told people or the actual truth?” I asked.

She seemed to consider it for a moment as she ran her fingers over my chest hair, first smoothing it this way, then smoothing it that.

“Well, how about you start with the lie your mother told and then tell me the truth,” she suggested.

My grin kicked up at one corner.

How did I know she would choose that?

She was always thinking outside the box, and I loved that about her.

I sighed and turned to my side, taking her with me. Her back was to my front, her sweet, supple ass pressed almost to my crotch. If she scooted back an inch, she’d feel the column of my cock—and just how hard I was for her.

Her head was resting on my bicep, and she had both of her hands wrapped around my forearm.

I practically itched to yank her panties down and shove two fingers straight into her delicious pussy.

“My mother’s lie went like this: my father expressed his willingness to cheat, and they decided to divorce.”

“That’s kind of boring,” Kayla admitted.

I snorted.

“It’s not that far from the truth, honestly. What happened was that my father decided about a year into his marriage to my mother that he wanted another wife.”

Kayla’s brow went up. “Oh really?”

I nodded. “The problem my mom had with that was not that he wanted another wife—which, technically, she did have a problem with—but that he still wanted to keep her as his wife too. He wanted two wives because, apparently, he had needs that weren’t being met by her alone.”

She rolled over in my arms, and her face came into view. The glow from the streetlight at my back lit up her entire face, and the look on that face made me smile.

Kayla’s eyes were as big as saucers.

“Your father is a sister wife guy?”

My brows went up. “Sister wife?”

“There’s a TV show on TLC. Sister Wives…or something like that,” she said. “How many wives does he have?”

“Legally? One. Illegally—he has three others.”

“Your father has four wives,” she repeated, sounding in awe.

I nodded.

“That’s…that’s actually kind of cool.” She paused. “In an interesting sort of way. I have never in my life known anyone who has multiple wives. Do they act like they’re all married? Are there any like ménage things going on?”

I shuddered. “I have no fucking idea, and I really hope to never find out.”

This subject made me extremely uncomfortable and always had. It was hard to explain to your friends that your family was fucked up—and why.

To hide my annoyance at the situation, I reached over Kayla’s shoulder for the television remote and flipped it on.

She would think that this was just my morning routine—which it was. But at this point in time, I needed to not talk about my father, and the morning news would be perfect for that.

The TV came on, and I searched for my preferable news station until it appeared on the screen.

I didn’t like talking about my mom. I didn’t like talking about my sister. And I definitely didn’t like talking about my father.

Out of the three, he was the worst one that I had to think about.

It was hard to know that you would never be good enough in the eyes of your own father.

But I wasn’t.

I was, and always would be, hated by him.

He had ten other children by four different women, and all of them were loved more than me.

My dad couldn’t even stand to look at me.

“Gotta watch the news as I get dressed to work out,” I told her.

I wouldn’t be getting much of a work out in, considering I was still in bed instead of out on my run, something I should have left for twenty-five minutes ago to do, but I could go for a quick mile.

Reluctantly, I got up and started for my bathroom, only for her to change the channel the moment I was out of bed.

“This movie is better,” she said. “And your news doesn’t come on until six. We still have eight minutes and thirty seconds.”

I rolled my eyes and walked into the bathroom, pulling the door closed behind me.

That didn’t stop her from talking to me through the closed door.

“I would definitely love a man if he brought me a chicken burrito.”

I snorted through a mouth full of toothpaste and removed the brush from my mouth long enough to answer her. “He went to jail, nearly got kicked out of his brother’s house, and then was forced to either go into the military or lose everything. He was a stupid son of a bitch, and honestly should’ve never been in that position in the first place.”

The movie she was referencing was Battleship, and for some reason, it was her absolute favorite.

I put the brush back into my mouth and continued to brush, but waited for her follow up comment, knowing it was coming.

She grunted. “I once got kicked out of my college psychology class for bringing a burrito.”

My brows rose. “Normally professors don’t give a fuck in college. That surprises me.”

She shrugged. “The teacher hated me. With a passion. She didn’t like that I always had something to say and disliked it even more that I was always available to offer up my opinion. Especially when I thought she was wrong.”

“You said she was wrong?” I questioned.

She shrugged. “Not in so many words, I just wanted her to explain it to me. But she couldn’t give me an explanation to the question I’d asked, causing me to believe that she didn’t know the answer. Not that she wasn’t willing to answer. If she’d just have said she didn’t know the answer to that, I would’ve been all right, but she didn’t. She just kept talking her way into a hole…and I took advantage of that.”

I washed my face and mouth free of residual toothpaste, and then headed back out.

The moment I returned, she flipped it back over to the news station that I usually watched.

Neither one of us watched it though.

I went to my closet and started getting dressed.

She watched me get dressed.

Both of our attentions were caught, however, when the weatherman came on.

The weatherman was telling us how we could possibly see a quarter of an inch of snow over the next couple of hours, which had me shifting into a better mood instantly.

Why?

Because I loved how people reacted to the snow.

They turned into one of two things. Complete and utter children. Or complete and utter idiots.

There was no in between.

Plus, people in the South didn’t know how to handle snow. Especially Texas, which literally got snow maybe once every four or five years.

Hearing the damn weatherman telling everyone that there would be snow meant that everyone and their brother was going to go to the store to buy bread. Everybody would be at the home improvement store buying faucet covers despite the fact that it’d been below freezing for eight days now. Oh, and let’s not forget hearing that there could possibly be bad driving conditions which meant that everyone and their brother would be out on the goddamn road just because they were nuts.

“Why are you grinding your teeth?”

I looked over to see Kayla staring at me in concern.

“The thought of getting snow in today is making me worried,” I admitted. “I don’t like having to go dig people out of ditches and shit on the best of days. If it snows or ices like they say it most likely will, I’ll spend my whole goddamn day digging these people out.”

“Can I come with you?”

I frowned over at her.

“Why would you want to?” I questioned.

She shrugged. “No reason, really. I just think it’ll be interesting. Do you do repossessions often?”

I turned my head back to the screen, swallowing at the excitement she possessed at just the thought of going out and towing cars with me.

She didn’t realize how unglamorous it was, but the thought of her being there with me while I worked was enough for me to get practically giddy at the idea.

“I guess you can come.” I paused. “And I don’t do repossessions all that much anymore. They kind of banned me from them.”

She frowned. “Why?”

“I was apparently being mean to people whose cars I repossessed. And Dante thought that maybe I shouldn’t do those kinds of pickups anymore,” I explained.

Kayla stared at me a few moments.

“What did you do?” she asked.

I licked my lips and started to reply, but was cut short when an excited voice filled the air.

The two news anchors, who had been cut off so abruptly earlier, stared at the both of us with haunted eyes.

“Breakings news. A forty-nine-year-old male was discovered dead in his brand-new house in Hostel’s newest subdivision today.” The female news anchor broke into the silence. “We’re going to connect with Shannon Montgomery who has the full story for us at the scene. Shannon?”

“Thanks, Roger. I’m currently standing at the hastily erected police barricade,” Shannon said in her news-anchor voice. But I could see in her eyes that she was shaken by what she knew was about to be relayed to us. “As you know, the suspected serial killer that has been laying waste from Florida to Texas has made their way to Hostel. Today, a second suspected murder has rocked this small town…”

“Turn it off!”

I turned it off, then immediately looked at her in confusion, wondering why I’d obeyed her so quickly when it wasn’t in my nature to do so at all.

Though, it was likely the fact that she’d sounded so freaked out that I was reacting to rather than the news of another murder.

It sucked, yes. But it was also something that I didn’t give myself time to contemplate when there were other things in this world that I could change.

But, as I watched her shut down right in front of me, I realized that this meant much more to her than I realized.