Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 72442 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 362(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72442 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 362(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Izzy pulled out a card that she’d had stashed in her pocket and handed it to the woman.
“Just text me,” she said. “If you call, I probably won’t answer.”
Harleigh’s face went bright. “I don’t answer my phone, either, so I’m glad to hear that.”
“I’m normally pretty fast answering text messages,” she said. “So if you don’t get one back, text me again. Sometimes I just miss them.”
Harleigh’s smile fell off her face when her eyes met mine, and I felt like the sun had suddenly been stolen.
I looked away and hunched my shoulders a little, causing me to appear slightly smaller.
I was a big guy.
At six-foot-five, there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t look down on most of the people around me.
Seeing the woman that I hadn’t been able to keep my eyes off of look at me like that? Well, I hadn’t realized I could be any more ashamed than I was. Turns out that I could.
Izzy, after a few more words to Harleigh, turned back to me with a smile.
The smile fell off her face when she got a look at mine.
“What is it?” she asked softly.
I shrugged and changed the subject.
“Tell me about Rome,” I ordered.
Izzy’s face went stoic, and she sighed before leaning back in her chair and saying, “Rome’s good. I’m supposed to relay a few things to you, but I’m not sure what they mean.”
I gestured for her to tell me, and she did, looking at me curiously afterward.
“Why couldn’t Bayou just tell you that?” she paused. “Or Rome, at that?”
Rome and Bayou both worked at the prison that I found myself an inhabitant of. It was better not to tell me directly so that they didn’t get seen talking to me.
That, and telling me that I had an inmate that was out for my blood would probably get them targeted.
Nearly a decade ago now, while on the job, my partner had been shot and killed before my eyes. My partner who just so happened to be my fiancée. My fiancée who just so happened to be pregnant.
When I’d found the man that had been responsible for killing them, I’d murdered him in cold blood.
I hadn’t cared that I’d go to jail.
Honestly, I hadn’t been thinking all that straight, but I never once regretted doing what I’d done.
To this day, I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.
“Slate?” Izzy nudged me with her foot under the table.
“Bayou and Rome are busy,” I shrugged. “And it doesn’t look suspicious when my sister talks to me.”
Izzy rolled her eyes and pulled a napkin out of her pocket, discreetly handing it over to me without a word.
I looked at the rolled-up napkin and felt my mouth water.
“Please tell me that’s what I think it is,” I begged.
That was when I felt someone’s eyes on me.
I flicked my eyes to the side, surprised to see the blonde staring at me with a look of concentration on her face.
I quickly looked away before she could read any of the thoughts rolling through me and turned back to my sister before flicking my eyes around the room.
When I didn’t see any of the usual little assholes staring at me—little assholes being the other inmates and not the guards—I opened the napkin and nearly groaned at the two cookies.
“Abuela made these?” I asked hopefully.
“Yes,” she rolled her eyes. “I tried to make some the other day and they turned out like crap.”
I popped the first cookie into my mouth and nearly moaned at the taste that exploded on my taste buds.
“God, these are so good,” I muttered.
One thing I could say about being locked up like I was? My health was on point. I couldn’t eat bad because we were fed ‘balanced diets.’ I also couldn’t cheat, and I had nothing else to do all day but workout and workout some more.
That was, of course, when I wasn’t doing other things like spying on inmates and feeding the motorcycle club, the Bear Bottom Guardians MC, that Rome had somehow talked me into joining, information.
Not that it took too much participation on my part.
Despite my large size, people overlooked me.
I wasn’t sure why, and it’d been something that happened since I was young. That, and people just talked to me. They always had, and it’d been why I’d been such a good cop—you know, before I was convicted of murder and all.
The bell above the doors started to ring, signaling that our time was up.
Instead of standing up and throwing my arms around my sister like I would’ve liked, I remained seated and clenched my jaw.
Izzy caught the look and grinned. “Just a few more months and you can hug me.”
I snorted.
Her version of a ‘few more months’ was more like forty something, but who was counting?
“Be good, Iz,” I said softly. “And don’t let Mom get to you. Put her on the ‘no-fly’ list and make sure everyone at the daycare knows that she’s not to be given access to her. Love you.”