She took the second slip of paper and then gave me the heated death stare. “A speeding ticket? You’re joking.”
“Pulled you over going fourteen over the limit,” I reminded her.
She was so mad she sputtered. “You…you…”
“You’ve got two weeks to pay it or contest it. Though, if you’re thinkin’ about fightin’ it, I wouldn’t. Seein’ as how I was the one who pulled you over and I’d have no qualms about taking a day off to sit in traffic court.”
She took a deep breath and, when that didn’t seem to calm her down, sucked in another one. Fury radiating off her, she pointed at me and shook her head before backing through the door.
“You sure you know what you’re doing there, Chief?” Grave asked.
“No fucking clue, Hopper.”
Instead of going home where I didn’t trust myself to leave Lina alone, I took my bad mood out of town. My tires kicked up a cloud of dust into the night sky as I sped down the dirt lane. The lights were on in the big house, so I slammed on the brakes and got out of my vehicle.
I stomped up onto the porch and pounded on the front door until it opened.
“Christ. What the hell is—？”
I didn’t give my brother the chance to finish his sentence. My fist connected with his jaw and snapped his head back.
“You fucking fuck!” he snarled.
One punch didn’t feel like enough. I was happier than a pig in shit when he barreled into my gut with his shoulder. We went flying, smashing through the porch railing and landing on a leafy bush.
I kneed him in the general vicinity of the crotch and flipped over to get on top of him.
He let me land another punch to his face before sneaking one past my defenses. I tasted blood and anger and frustration in a delirious cocktail.
“What the fuck is your problem?” he demanded as I smashed his face into the shrubbery.
“You left her alone to handle a criminal.”
“Jesus Christ, you idiot. Did you get a look at him? Lina eats guys like that for breakfast.”
“He fucking hurt her.”
I landed a jab to his ribs. My brother grunted, then rolled me off him with some fancy leg sweep move.
He grabbed me by the hair and bounced my face off the mulch. “He bruised her. You’re the asshole who hurt her.”
I threw an elbow over my shoulder and felt it connect with his jaw.
Knox grunted, then spit. “If anyone should be kickin’ anyone’s ass, it’s me kickin’ your ass for messin’ with her head. She’s my friend.”
“And I’m your fuckin’ brother,” I reminded him.
“Then what are we doin’ fightin’？”
“How the fuck should I know?” The mad was still in me. The helplessness. The need to touch her when I knew I didn’t have the right anymore.
“Knoxy?” Naomi sang drunkenly from somewhere inside the house.
“He’s outside fightin’ with Uncle Nash in the yard. They broke the porch,” Waylay reported.
“Great. Now you’re gettin’ me in trouble,” he complained.
We both flopped over onto our backs on top of the crushed greenery. The stars were brilliant pinpoints in the inky black sky.
“You left her alone,” I said again.
“She can handle herself.”
“Doesn’t mean she has to.”
“Look, man, what do you want me to say? She needed me to take Daisy and Sloane, who were both three sheets to the damn wind. If I don’t ever hear another Spice Girls karaoke song in my life, it’ll be too soon.”
Lina needed Knox. I let that fact rattle around in my head.
When she’d gotten into trouble, she’d called Knox and not me. For good reason. I wasn’t stupid enough that I didn’t see that. Yet here I was, lying in the dirt, pissed off that I’d created a world where Lina went to someone else when she needed help.
“How did you fuck it up?” Knox asked.
“What makes you think I fucked anything up?”
“You’re here rolling around in the landscaping with me instead of giving her hell. What did you do?”
“What do you think I did? I pulled her ass over and gave her a speeding ticket and a ration of shit.”
He was silent for a long beat and then said, “You’re usually better with women than this.”
“Fuck you.”
“If you want my advice—”
“Why the hell would I? You couldn’t tell Naomi you loved her until she got abducted in sex handcuffs by her sister and that asshole.”
“I was working through some shit, okay?”
“Yeah, well, so am I.”
“My advice is work through it faster if you want a shot with her. She was packin’ a suitcase today. Naomi said she and Sloane had to practically twist her arm to agree to stay long enough for them to go out.”
“Packing?”
“Said she was gonna move back into the motel until someone else could replace her on the case. Then she was going home.”
Leaving?
Absolutely fucking not.
Lina wasn’t going anywhere. Not until we’d hashed this out. Not until I figured out why she was under my skin and in my blood. Not until I found a way to either get her out or keep her close.
But these were not things Morgan men said out loud.
Instead I stuck with our comfort zone. “So now you’re fine if I hook up with your friend? Christ, man, you’re fuckin’ mercurial.”
“Bite me, asshole. Accordin’ to Naomi, Lina feels something real for you. Something you didn’t fully fuck up yet. Unless that speeding ticket put the final nail in that coffin. And since you’re over here makin’ a fool of yourself over her, I’m thinkin’ maybe there’s something there worth exploring.”
I scraped a leaf off my face. “Lina feels something? What did she say?”
“I don’t fuckin’ know,” Knox said, irritated. “Daze and Sloane were singin’ it with British accents between verses of ‘Wannabe.’ Ask them once they sober up and leave me the hell out of it.”
We were quiet for a while. Just two grown men lying in a ruined flower bed staring up at the night sky.
“Heard Naomi threw dog shit at the guy Lina was chasin’ and then Sloane distracted him by flashin’ him her tits,” I said.
Knox snorted next to me. “Jesus. No more girls’ nights out. From now on, the three of them go out together, it’s with a goddamn escort.”
“Agreed.”
We heard the creak of the screen door but never saw the bucket of cold water coming. It hit us both in the face.
Sputtering and swearing, we got to our feet to face the enemy only to find Naomi, Waylay, and Waylon on the porch looking down at us.
“No more fighting,” Naomi said regally. Then she hiccupped.
Waylay snickered as she turned the hose on us.
TWENTY-SIX
NASH WHO?
Lina
Nash Morgan no longer existed to me.
That was the mantra I chanted as I powered my way through the last set of back squats. I could focus entirely on my workout and not the sweat-slicked chief of police who, from the tingle at the base of my spine, hadn’t stopped glaring at me since he got here.