Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 77415 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77415 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 310(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
I nodded my head.
“Make him understand,” I grunted.
Ellen caught up with me as I stalked across the parking lot to the guard shack that housed the old geezer of a guard who wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing if any of these kids wanted to leave. “Yo.”
The old man looked up.
“I need the gates opened so my son can leave,” I gestured to where my kid was getting into his car.
The student parking lot was blocked off so they couldn’t leave during the school day, but it was likely that it would only hold them in as long as they wanted to be there. My kid wasn’t leaving the wrong way, though, which would be to hop the curb and drive through the grass. I didn’t want to give this fucking school another reason to keep him from attending classes tomorrow.
“Do you have a pass?”
I just stared. “No.”
He shrugged, then hit a button on his desk that opened the automatic gates without another word.
I grunted in thanks and turned around, only to come to a sudden halt when I saw Ellen standing behind me.
“Are you going to work?” she asked, head tilting.
I nodded.
“You want to grab some lunch first?” she asked.
She sounded so hopeful that it was hard to tell her no, but since I’d already been off work for half the morning due to a toy drive the club was holding, I couldn’t be any later than I was.
“I can’t.” I reached forward and caught her hip with my hand, pulling her in tight. “But tonight, after I have a talk with my son about what went down today, we can…”
She shook her head.
“Club party, remember?”
I grimaced.
“Yeah, now I do.”
She chuckled and wrapped her arms around my neck, pulling me down to her lips.
I went willingly, and kissed her just like she wanted, much to the delight of the school kids around us who’d just run by during some sort of cross country practice.
“Gotta go, baby,” I said against her lips. “I’ll see you tonight.”
She let me go, reluctantly I saw, and walked away, giving her hips an extra sway to show me what I was missing.
“You shouldn’t tease, you know,” I called behind her as I backed away in the direction of my bike that was in the next parking lot over.
She looked at me over her shoulder on her way to the visitor’s parking lot near the front door of the school.
“Teasing is what I do best.”
***
The party was in full swing by the time I was finally finished with work.
The toy drive we’d held earlier had been for a family in our community who’d been displaced due to a fire, and the party was in celebration of nothing specific.
Every once in a while, the club decided to let their hair down and party, though this one would be tamer than most due to the children in attendance.
Though, considering it was a Thursday night, not much would be happening besides light drinking since the majority of the club members and their wives had to go to work tomorrow.
The moment I stepped through the door, all eyes turned to me.
I paused, waiting for it, and shook my head when it did.
“Look who finally decided to play hooky!” Sean crowed from his spot on the couch.
His wife, Naomi, was sitting on the arm of the couch. His large arm was wrapped around her waist, and he was holding her there, not that she would leave even if he hadn’t had a hold of her.
I gave him a chin lift.
“Not everyone has a cushy job like you that gives them off every other day,” I shot back.
Sean’s job wasn’t really cushy. He was a paramedic, and he worked hard while he was at work. He deserved the entire forty-eight hours off after some of the nights he had.
Sean chuckled and I started to scan the room for Linc and Ellen. I found them in the corner of the kitchen. They were both talking and laughing over something. When Ellen pointed, I followed her finger to find the wolf dog on the floor eating a bone that looked like it was the size of its entire body.
Shaking my head, I walked toward them. Ellen brought that wolf everywhere. Literally everywhere.
She treated it like it was a fucking toy poodle despite the fact that we now knew it was a wolf. A week ago, Ellen had finally broken down and taken the dog to a vet. Not wanting to miss the news that the dog was, in fact, a wolf, I had gone with her.
There they’d taken one look at the animal and had said they couldn’t treat a wild animal. When Ellen had said that she’d gotten the ‘wolf’ from a ‘breeder’, they’d relented. Though, she straight up lied when she said that the dog was only half wolf.