Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 118125 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 591(@200wpm)___ 473(@250wpm)___ 394(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118125 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 591(@200wpm)___ 473(@250wpm)___ 394(@300wpm)
“I’m sorry.” Rian felt like he was crumpling; like he could say it over and over again, say I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry and it wouldn’t be enough. “Then...then what did you want?”
“I wanted—”
Damon didn’t get a chance to finish.
Not when the flash of headlights swept over them, bright against the descending dark, and now Rian’s heart skipped for a different reason as Damon dropped down, flattening himself atop Rian and beneath the line of sight from the windows; Rian tried to peer past him, while Damon twisted to squint over his shoulder.
“Shit,” Damon whispered. “Think we’re far enough out of sight?”
“Depends on who that is,” Rian hissed back, stomach lurching nervously, body tightening with an adrenaline-fueled rush of tingling nerves. “But we should probably pull ourselves together and find out.”
Chapter Eighteen
Damon dragged his jeans up around his hips and twisted back into his shirt before zipping up and angling his body to block line of sight from the front windshield to Rian, while Rian hurriedly squirmed back into his clothing. As Rian hissed and struggled in the back of the Jeep, Damon leaned forward between the driver’s and passenger’s seats, watching an oversized Ford pickup on monster truck wheels, bouncing on its elevated shocks, come rumbling into the cleared stretch of dirt that pretended to be a parking lot.
With the Hank’s Roadhouse logo on the driver’s side door and the fact that Damon knew that beat-up testosterone-fueled junker from the obnoxious way it roared whenever, over the years, Gordon Drew had come trundling into town for some shopping or just to be fucking loud because he thought he was someone important and everyone needed to look at him...there was no mistaking who it could be.
Especially when Gordon Drew carried himself with that same self-assigned importance, including the arrogant swagger in how he moved as the Ford’s engine cut off, the headlights went dark, and he pushed the driver’s side door open to lever himself out. He was an angular man who looked as if someone had taken a better man and sucked all the goodness out of him to leave him a sunken, ropy collection of loose limbs and sallow skin, with his wide mouth twisted into an almost permanent thin-lipped sneer and a nose that pinched to a needle point at the tip. His eyes were hard and flat and small, sweeping over the dirty bar’s exterior with the proprietary sense of a king surveying his land.
Rian’s head popped over Damon’s shoulder abruptly enough to make him recoil, jerking from glowering at Drew to look over his shoulder at Rian instead.
“Is that him?” Rian whispered. “Gordon Drew?”
“Uh. Yeah.” Damon arched a brow. “You don’t have to whisper. He can’t hear us from over here.”
“Oh. Um. Right.” Rian coughed a little. “So what now?”
“Well...” Damon frowned. “We can wait. Watch. See who comes through here tonight, if they give anything away. Or...”
“Or?”
“We can just outright ask him. He’s a dick, but if he’s seen a kid hanging around here he might say something just so he doesn’t get his liquor license suspended.”
“That,” Rian said firmly. “Let’s do that. I want to do that.”
Damon eyed him sidelong. “Since when did you get so confrontational?”
“Damon,” Rian said primly, “I have had a child collapse in my class, had to deal with Walden’s attitude for weeks, been buried in an avalanche of pure trash, and had my brains fucked out by the most objectionable, rude man I have ever met. You’ll excuse me if my temper’s a little short.”
With a grin, Damon asked, “So I’m rude and objectionable, huh?”
“The worst.” Rian smiled wickedly at him, eyes flashing, then twisted away from Damon, reaching for the rear passenger door. “Let’s go.”
Damon just blinked after him, but couldn’t help smiling.
Falwell really was something else.
But Damon thought he was really fucking starting to like whatever that something else might be.
He followed Rian from the car, pausing to lock the Jeep and catching up to Rian just as he snagged one skinny sandaled foot on a fallen branch and wobbled forward. Damon gripped Rian’s arm, steadying him. “Careful there,” he murmured, and kept a light hold as they both picked their way through the brush and trees to emerge out into the twilit lot.
Reluctantly, Damon let Rian go while Rian brushed himself off, straightening his still disarrayed clothing before clearing his throat and lifting his chin. Gordon Drew slammed the door of his truck closed, turning toward them with a startled jerk—then frowning warily, fingering his keys.
“Doors don’t open for another hour,” he said, his thick voice gruff with an ambiguous drawl that could have been from anywhere. “Come back then. No loitering.”
“Not here for that, Drew,” Damon said, shoving his hands into his pockets, slowing as they drew closer to Gordon. “Damon Louis. Rian Falwell. We got a few questions to ask you, that’s all.”