Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 98048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 490(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 490(@200wpm)___ 392(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
“That’s a crappy thing to do,” Steph says.
“Hey, I’m just guessing.” Alana finishes her drink and drops her glass on the table. “Another round?”
Everyone nods, and she and Steph leave for a pit stop at the restroom before putting in an order for round two.
After draining the last of her drink, Heidi eyes me warily and makes an uneasy entreaty. “So, listen. This is awkward, but, um, you know Jay and I are sort of dating.”
My eyes widen. “Jay as in my brother Jay?”
“Yeah.”
“Um. No. I did not.”
“Yeah, well, it’s new-ish. Honestly, he’d been chasing me for a date since the fall, but I wasn’t sure it was a good idea. He finally broke me down a couple months ago. I wanted to make sure you’re cool with it. I don’t want things to be weird with us.”
What’s weird is seeing Heidi squirm. Hardly anything penetrates her don’t-mess-with-me exterior or puts her on the defensive. She’d spook a bull shark. So it’s cute, I guess, that she wants to ask my permission to date my older brother.
“You want my blessing, is that it?” I tease, sucking air from the bottom of my glass of mostly ice melt while I make her wait. “Yeah, it’s fine. This town is so small it was only a matter of time before one of you ended up with a West brother. I’m just surprised it’s Jay.”
Jay’s the sweetest of my brothers. Well, after Craig, anyway, but Craig doesn’t count because he literally just graduated high school. Jay is twenty-four and doesn’t have a mean bone in his softie body. He’s almost the complete opposite of Heidi, who’s all sharp edges.
“Trust me, I’m equally surprised,” she says dryly, running a hand through her blonde bob. “I swear, I’ve never gone out with anyone so damn nice. Like, what’s his problem?”
I burst out laughing. “Right?”
“The other night we were on our way to the drive-in and he pulled over to help a little old lady cross the street. Who the fuck does that?”
“Please don’t tell me you screwed my brother at the drive-in.”
“Okay, I won’t tell you.”
“Oh God. I walked right into that one, huh?”
“Uh, hi there, Genevieve,” a male voice interrupts.
Heidi and I turn as a cheerfully nervous guy arrives at our table, dressed in a short-sleeved button-down shirt and khaki pants. He’s cute, in a Boy Scout sort of way, with brown hair and freckles. If it weren’t for a vague feeling I recognize him, I’d say he was a tourist who got lost and stumbled away from the boardwalk.
“I’m Harrison Gates,” he says. “We went to high school together.”
“Oh, sure, right.” The name barely nudges my memory, but now that he’s placed his face for me, he does seem familiar. “How’s it going?”
“Good.” He directs a smile at Heidi as well, but his gaze remains focused on me. “I don’t mean to bother you. I just wanted to offer my condolences about your mom.”
“Thank you,” I tell him sincerely. Whatever my mixed feelings about her death, the nice part about coming home to a small town is that people do generally give a damn. Even people who would have sooner run me over with their car a few years ago have come up to say a few kind words. It’s what you do. “I appreciate that.”
“Yeah.” His smile grows larger and somewhat less anxious as his posture relaxes. “And, you know, I wanted to say welcome back.”
Heidi gives me a look that appears to be a warning to bail, but I don’t understand her alarm. Harrison seems nice enough.
“So what are you up to these days?” I ask, because it seems rude not to talk to the guy for a minute, at least.
“Well, I just joined the Avalon Bay Sheriff’s Department, if you can believe it. Still sounds weird to say it out loud.”
“Really? Huh. You seem too nice to be a cop.”
He laughs. “I hear that a lot, actually.”
Even before the incident last year, I’d had plenty of unfortunate run-ins with the local police. When we were kids, it seemed they had nothing better to do than to follow us around town harassing us. It was a sport for them. The school bullies but with guns and badges. That asshole Rusty Randall being the biggest bully of them all.
“Watch out with this one, Rookie. She’s more trouble than she’s worth.”
As if he heard me cursing him in my head, a uniformed Deputy Randall saunters up and slaps a hand on Harrison’s shoulder.
My entire body instantly goes ice-cold.
Heidi snaps a comeback at him that I don’t really hear above the deafening fury screaming through my skull. My teeth dig into the inside of my cheek to keep me from spouting off at the mouth.
“If you don’t mind,” Randall says to Harrison, “I need a moment of her time.”