Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 75754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Let’s just say, it only digressed from there.
Thirty minutes later, the entire city block was the proud new owner of a parking ticket, and the neighborhood drivers who were unlucky enough to park in the road were not happy campers.
Especially the ones I assumed called in the first place.
There were a trio of women staring at us from the front porch, two houses down, and I could tell from the way they were pointing and sneering that they thought this was a joke.
But Silas and Loki hadn’t been joking.
And the chief wasn’t joking.
Since Ryan refused to take back the ticket, he was forced to give one to everyone he saw parked overnight, and that was something easily resolved by pulling his dashboard cam.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Ruthie said quietly at my side.
I wrapped my arm around her shoulder and pulled her into my side.
“I know,” I said.
And I did.
It would only make the entire situation worse.
Way worse.
“I have to go to lunch,” she whispered. “Do I go pay the ticket on the way home?”
“I wouldn’t,” I said. “The officer has to send his paperwork in, and my guess would be he won’t turn any of this paperwork in at all. It would be too much work for him to. And I bet every one of you protest the ticket. The law is stupid and shouldn’t have been made into one in the first place. It’s too hard to enforce it.”
She nodded at my side.
“So I just wait for the information in the mail to see if they process it?” She asked.
I nodded. “That’s what I would do.”
“Okay,” she said. “Can I get out of here without hitting anybody?”
“I’ll pull it out for you,” I said.
She was boxed in on three sides. The back side with bikes, the front side with a cruiser, the left side by the curb, and the right side by Trance’s K-9 unit.
She handed me the keys to her car, and I had to laugh at the sheer amount of key chains she had on it.
“You know,” I said. “This isn’t good for your ignition to have a key chain this heavy hanging from it.”
She glared at me.
“I don’t remember asking your opinion on the state of my steering column,” she griped, turning on her heel and walking back into her house.
“Testy,” Loki said.
I nodded. “She’s upset that I butted my ‘fat head’ into the problem and made it ‘ten times fucking worse.’”
I used air quotes as I repeated what she’d said to me, causing him to laugh.
“Sounds like a good woman you have there. Better hold onto her,” Loki said.
I winked at him.
“Plan to.”
“Come down to the station and let the chief know what happened for me. He wants to keep on top of it. Says we may need to call the PAR officer out here,” Loki said, looking up at the rain.
We were standing under the awning of Ruthie’s front porch now that it was raining harder than it had been, waiting for the rest of the officers that’d been called in as backup by the neighbors to disperse.
Not to mention riding a motorcycle in the rain wasn’t something that we did if we didn’t have to.
And apparently they were all off today.
“Okay,” I said.
I didn’t like the PAR officer for this area; she was rude and treated everyone like they were beneath her.
She also hated me because we’d been in the same foster home. For a year, at least.
If she’d only known how bad Garrison, Cormac, and I had had it, she wouldn’t hate me.
Except she didn’t know.
She was blissfully unaware because she was the chosen foster child.
The one kid that never got beaten.
That never had to do chores.
She thought we were always getting to go out with our ‘foster dad.’
What she didn’t know was that when she thought we were ‘going out,’ we were actually getting the shit beaten out of us one at a time.
When she thought we used to go get drunk, we were actually so beaten to shit and back that we couldn’t walk straight.
“I’m not calling that bitch. She can go fuck herself. I’ll move Ruthie out of here before she gets involved,” I growled.
“She’s already involved,” an amused woman’s voice said from in front of us.
I wanted to throw Ruthie’s five pounds of key chains at her.
Instead, I closed my eyes and counted to ten.
When that didn’t work, I counted to twenty.
Then I walked inside and slammed the door.
Ruthie was standing there, eyes wide.
She looked to be close to coming out of the house, almost as if her fingers had been on the door handle, and she’d jumped back when I’d thrown it open.
“What’s going on?” She asked.
“The devil’s on your front porch and I don’t want to talk to her,” I answered, leaning my back against the door.
Ruthie’s eyes roamed down my chest, stopping at the bulge in my pants that seemed to come alive anytime she was near.
“I thought the devil was a man,” she said lazily, moving closer to me.
I shook my head. “All devils are women.”
“How do you know?” She teased, leaning into me.
Her soft breasts pressed into my diaphragm, and I inhaled swiftly, drinking her scent in.
“Because women are the torturers. Men can torture, but women know how to do it wayyy better than men,” I answered her, snaking my arm around her back and pulling her into me roughly.
“And what’s this devil ever done to you?” She asked.
“The devil, her name is Thomasina Daniels, and she made the last year of my life a living hell on an island of viperous snakes, with a constant firestorm devouring it. I’d describe it as worse than hell,” I informed her.
Her lips moved forward until they hovered over mine.
“And what are we going to do about her being out there?” She asked. “What’ll make her go away?”
“Nothing,” I answered honestly.
It was honest, too.
Brutally honest.
I avoided the bitch because she never left me the fuck alone when she saw me.
And I knew it’d take a miracle to get her to leave.