Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
“What does that mean?”
“It sounds arrogant, but he’s jealous as fuck.”
Harry swayed back, and said quietly, “Can’t be the first time you faced that, Doc.”
“Not that ugly, and not from someone I’d call a friend.”
“He’s not in a good place right now,” Harry noted.
“With what came out of his mouth, I don’t care if that fucker was on his death bed.”
Harry gave him a long, hard look before he said, “Shit, brother, I shouldn’t have sent you in there.”
“You didn’t know.”
“It was a bad call.”
“Harry, you didn’t know. One thing I learned the hard way, and it wasn’t an epiphany, my old man spent about twenty-three years teaching me this lesson, people do what they do. We wanna make it about us. With my dad, I actually wanted it to be about me, because, even if it was in a jacked way, something with him would be about me. But it’s never about you. Especially if it’s filth they got that they want to get rid of. That’s not about you at all. You can take that on, but that’s them winning.”
Riggs let out a long breath.
And then he finished it.
“This is saying, I didn’t get dick. He admitted he didn’t get that wine in Sonoma and said that’s all I’d wanna know about it. He also referred to whoever did that to him as ‘they.’ I don’t know if he was being cagey and that ‘they’ was singular. But the state of him, we both can guess there was more than one of them. So your hunch that this is something else, and it’s big, I reckon is right. But that’s all I got for you, brother.”
“It shits me you came all the way out here to do me a favor, and you’re leaving with the look you got on your face right now.”
Riggs shook his head. “Let that go too. I wish I’d learned this when I was a freshman in high school, and I first met Bubbles. At the very least, it would have saved Nadia her back door and a lot of anxiety. But I know now. And that’s also winning.”
“You’re about as fucked up as you are adjusted, and that fucked-up part is only what we talked about last night.”
“Takes one to know one,” Riggs retorted.
Harry grinned at him.
Riggs cuffed him on the arm.
Then he walked out of the hospital and put that scene and his friendship with Bubbles where it belonged.
In his overflowing shitcan of memories.
TWENTY
High Time
Riggs
In a rare moment of coincidental synchronization that, if Riggs had the headspace to give to it, he really should give it that headspace, he rolled up behind Nadia’s Range Rover a little over a mile from his lane.
He found she went a studious six miles over the speed limit on a low traffic, rural road, which had him laughing his balls off.
Something that he also should have given headspace to, considering, after what went down with Bubbles, he’d been in no mood to laugh.
They slid in beside each other outside his house, and he tooted his horn.
He knew she got him instantly when she gave him a jaunty thumbs up, turned, grabbed some stuff, then jumped out of her car carrying a big, brown paper bag with handles, a little, white paper bag he knew held treats from Aromacobana, her purse over her shoulder, and a white paper coffee cup with drawing on it.
She opened the door and leaned in, ordering, “Here, take this.”
He took her coffee and put it in the holder.
“And this,” she went on.
He took the bakery bag and put it between the seats.
She tossed the other bag in the footwell, nabbed the hand hold, put her foot on the rim of the door, then heaved herself up.
And fell to her back foot.
She tried again.
And fell back.
A third time she remained suspended in air for a second.
And fell back.
“Jesus,” he said through laughter. “I don’t have a problem getting in.”
“You’re six inches taller than me,” she snapped.
“Ledger doesn’t either.”
“Huh,” she forced out, then gave it her all and landed in the seat. She turned to him. “There!” she cried triumphantly.
He grinned at her. “Well done, princess.”
She slammed her door, grabbed the bag in the footwell, and demanded, “Look!”
She then pulled out some circular placemats that looked like crushed leather and were forest green.
“Aren’t they perfect?” she asked.
“They actually are.”
She shoved them back in the bag, noting, “You sound surprised.”
He put the truck in reverse. “I didn’t know they made placemats for people with dicks. And belt up.”
She reached for her seatbelt and educated, “They make everything for everybody.”
“Good to know,” he muttered and headed down the lane.
“I didn’t think we’d meet up like that, or I would have gotten you a coffee.”
“I’m good, honey. But thanks.”
“Though, I got treats for the road.”
“Saw that.”
“How’s your friend?”