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)
“Hey,” I said. “My car’s a bitch in the rain.”
Dane smiled. “You should get a new one. You can afford it now.”
I could. But I didn’t want to waste my hard earned money that I was saving to buy a house on a car. That wouldn’t be practical.
I mean, I already had a car that worked. What was the point in getting something new?
“I know, I know. You’ve been telling me that every day for a month. I just don’t want to get a new car,” I said. “I’m saving up for a house.”
In reality, I was saving up for a house that I could pay outright, seeing as everyone in this stupid town thought that I wasn’t good enough to be here.
Apparently, they looked upon a convicted killer with vehemence.
My husband, Bender, had been a real asshole.
He liked to beat me when he drank.
Beat me when he didn’t drink.
Beat me when he was mad.
Beat me when I looked at him funny.
Beat me when I forgot to wash his uniform.
If you could think it up, Bender beat me for it.
He literally hated everything about me.
But he’d knocked me up when I was eighteen, and his parents had made him ‘do the right thing.’
And he’d hated that.
He wanted to marry another woman. Had had his sights on Lily Brianne, my best friend since I was twelve.
I hadn’t known that, though.
Lily and I had gone through a lot together.
We’d been in the same foster home until we were eighteen and kicked out since our foster mother was no longer under any obligations to allow us to stay there. Plus, she wasn’t getting any more money for us, so what was the point?
I stowed my things in the locker, and headed to the front counter and thought about Lily and me.
Lily and I had moved into a women’s shelter in Monroe, Louisiana the same night we landed in Monroe.
We’d started working shortly after that, and then we shared a one bedroom apartment.
Then we started going to school, where we met Bender.
Well, we’d met Bender before, of course. We’d all gone to the same high school. Bender had qualified for a full scholarship at the same college we had randomly picked to attend.
Yet, we were in such different social circles that we never got a second look from Bender and his peers
Or so we thought.
Lily obviously got a lot more attention from Bender than I did.
Bender got a lot more attention from me rather than Lily, who had her sights set on another man at our college. Bender’s best friend.
And Bender hated that. Absolutely hated it.
So he moved to little old me in hopes that he’d catch the attention of Lily.
I, of course, didn’t know that at the time.
I was too busy being on top of the world that the man that I was half in love with was giving me the time of day.
Too young and eager to please, I slept with him on the first date.
He left once he realized that the tactic wasn’t going to work with Lily.
He never spoke to me again until six weeks later when I told him that I was pregnant.
I still wasn’t sure how his parents had found out.
Whatever the reason, I’d been done with him because I wasn’t into trapping men.
But I had had a difficult pregnancy at the beginning.
Medical bills started piling up.
And then Bender’s parents got involved, forcing us to marry.
The bell above the door rang, and I looked up, smiling at the man that came through the door.
“If it isn’t Mr. Baseball!” I crowed.
Sterling flipped me off.
“You’ve got the wrong guy; that dumbass is behind me,” he said. “I’m just helping him look the part.”
“I take offense to that, you big dick muncher,” a voice said from just behind Sterling.
I stood on my tip toes to see his two brothers following close behind him.
Cormac was the ‘baseball’ player.
He was about a month away from starting his final season of baseball at ULM.
The University of Louisiana of Monroe was lucky to have him, from what I’d heard.
He was older than all the other players, at twenty five, having not started attending college until he was twenty one.
Cormac was six foot of lean muscle and sinew with black hair and a quick smile.
Their other brother, Garrison, was the same age as Cormac.
Although that’s about where the similarities ended.
Garrison wasn’t what I would call ‘cute.’
He was too mean looking to be called cute.
He had a perpetual scowl on his face that rarely could be seen through his bushy beard.
He was in shape, though.
Very good shape.
He’d have to be to keep up with the other two.
He was currently a high school science teacher and baseball coach for Shreveport High School, and probably the most feared man in the school.
I would’ve shit myself had I been sent to the office to have to deal with him.
But he really was loved.
He was a sweet man, from what little I’d spoken to him at Halligans and Handcuffs and here.
But my heart belonged to the man that came up to the counter to talk to me instead of grabbing his drinks.
“How ya been?” He asked.
I smiled at what I now counted as one of my best friends in the world.
“My car doesn’t like the rain. I think I need new tires or something. They wouldn’t grip the pavement for nothing,” I said, shaking my head and reaching behind the counter for a package of sunflower seeds I kept back there especially for him.
Dane didn’t like selling sunflower seeds.
I didn’t know why, and I didn’t ask.
But I bought them at the Sam’s store and brought them up here every day for him.
He smiled and shoved the package into his front pocket.
My eyes followed the movement, mouthwatering as I watched the front of his elastic shorts dip down, exposing the taut side of his stomach before disappearing once again as his hand came out of his pocket.
“Wanna play a game of baseball with us this evening?” He asked.
He asked me every time.
And every time I told him no.