The moment I heard the door close behind my dad, I stomped to my old bedroom.
I’d intended on throwing myself into my room and locking the door.
I accomplished it, too.
Only, there wasn’t supposed to be anybody in the room when I did it.
There was just supposed to be me.
Not Kristoff, the man that had made a few months of my life in my young teenage years a living nightmare.
“Let me in, Saylor,” Lock ordered.
I twisted the lock on the door unconsciously, and Kristoff’s left eye twitched.
The hand holding the gun pointed at me? That didn’t twitch.
“We need to talk about this like two adults…” Lock trailed off when he caught sight of Kristoff.
His hand went automatically to his back, where he usually kept his pistol when he wasn’t on duty, but it wasn’t there.
It was actually beside the bed behind Kristoff.
I could see it on the nightstand next to the wedding ring bag he’d been carrying around with him all day yesterday.
I could practically read the loathing coming off of Lock’s body as he chastised himself for his lack of preparation.
“Get in here and close the door,” he ordered. “Sit down on the bed.”
We both sat, sadly, on the opposite side of the bed from Lock’s gun.
“Long time no see,” Lock said, eyes narrowing.
I frowned.
“Yeah, it’s been a while since you beat the shit out of me for no reason, huh?” he asked. “All because your uptight sister thought it would be a great idea to lie and tell you that I tried to force her to have sex with me.”
So, this was Ares’ Kristoff, too?
What were the freakin’ odds?
“Lie?” Lock said. “I highly doubt it.”
“I didn’t try to force her.” He seemed as if he was getting agitated, wanting Lock to understand. “But this isn’t about that. This is about her.”
He emphasized the ‘her’ by pointing the gun at my face.
I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach.
Lock tensed beside me.
And then I realized what he was doing.
He was trying to keep the gun trained on him.
That was why he did what he did next.
“This isn’t about you almost raping my sister?” Lock drawled, sounding calm and collected, but his body language saying anything but.
Kristoff dropped his gun slightly, now aiming it around my lower extremities, and not my face.
“Yes,” he said. “This is about her, and her ruining my life.”
He punctuated that by jabbing the gun in my direction.
“Ruining your life?” Lock asked. “How is that?”
Kristoff reached his free hand up to tug at his ear.
“I was happy in Longview. Then she showed up. Even Kilgore is too close,” he snarled.
I blinked.
I hadn’t even known he was in Texas!
I felt sick to my stomach.
“All you had to do was leave,” he said. “I would’ve left it alone.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t.
Lock pricked at his temper, though, trying to keep the focus on himself.
I didn’t like it…but I knew that I wouldn’t like it even more if I had a gunshot wound in my face.
“A town doesn’t belong to anybody,” he said. “The Longview/ Kilgore area is more than big enough to house two people. Obviously since I was able to deal with having your stupid ass in the city all this time, you could’ve dealt with whatever imaginary beef that you have with Saylor.”
“Imaginary?” Kristoff laughed. “What I feel isn’t imaginary! She pushed me away, got me kicked out when I needed someone the most!”
I blinked at his anger.
“So, you thought it was okay to cut yourself and do fucked up shit in front of an impressionable kid, and it was okay?” Lock asked, sounding just as incredulous as I felt.
“Yes!” he said. “It was a cry for help!”
“It might’ve been,” Lock agreed. “But you put his kid in jeopardy. He’s always going to choose his own kid.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Kristoff sneered. “I was dropped like a goddam rock the moment she opened her mouth.”
Lock tensed on the bed.
He reached out and struck me across the face, startling both of us.
Pain exploded on my face, and the orange juice that I’d just consumed threatened to come back up.
Lock cursed and went to stand, but Kristoff turned the gun toward him, telling him without words that he wanted him to stay put.
“I was finally healing. Finally getting my life back on track,” Kristoff hissed. “Then there you are, selling fucking cakes and shopping in my grocery store, acting like you don’t fucking care that you ruined my life.”
God.
I’d had no idea.
How could I?
“Tad was supposed to push you away. Date you. Piss you off. Make you uncomfortable. Make you leave.” Kristoff growled. “Get you out of my city.”
I didn’t say a word, and neither did Lock.
“I sabotaged every single interview you had…making sure that you couldn’t stay.” He narrowed his eyes at Lock. “Then he went and found you a job with his mother and I couldn’t. Get. You. To. Leave.”
He kept right on going.
“So, I thought, maybe if I do this shit to her dad, she’ll go home. Get worried about him.” He banged on the door with his fist. “But no, he doesn’t tell you a single word of it. And YOU’RE STILL THERE!”
I glanced over at Lock to see him staring at Kristoff, death in his eyes.
Lock moved then, taking advantage of Kristoff’s momentary inattention.
He hit Kristoff like a battering ram and the gun went skidding to the side.
Then Lock was beating the shit out of Kristoff, who wasn’t defending himself anymore.
“Lock,” I said softly.
Nothing.
There was nothing penetrating the haze of rage filling Lock’s brain.
“Lock!”
“What the fuck did I tell you about doing shit in my house?” Dad slammed the bedroom door open, gun in hand.
He took in the scene…and froze.
Lock didn’t stop.
Not until my father physically picked him up and forced him into the corner.
Lock’s chest was heaving.
He had blood on his face, his chest, and his hands.
He was also losing his shit.
“Take a deep breath, kid,” Dad ordered. “Breathe.”
I found Lock’s phone that was still on the nightstand and dialed 911.
Chapter 17
After my funeral, someone hack my page and say ‘I appreciate y’all coming out.’
-Lock to Justice
Lock
I was unsurprised to see my parents walk into the room, followed shortly by Ares.
“One more,” I said.
Silas gave me another shot of whiskey, then turned his eyes to my family.
“Downy,” Silas said. “Memphis.”
Mom rounded the small bar and gave Silas a big hug.
“How are you, darlin’?” Silas asked, offering my mom a beer.
A beer in which she took.
“I’d be better if I didn’t get a call from my soon-to-be daughter-in-law saying that my son was drinking himself to death because he beat the shit out of someone,” Mom said, her eyes landing on me.
Dad’s hand came down on my shoulder, and I took another shot of whiskey.
“You got a beer in there for me?” Saylor asked, sidling up to my other side.
Silas handed both my dad and Saylor a beer, and then said, “I think I’ll leave y’all alone.”
Then he was gone, leaving my family and Saylor’s.
“We’re here, moron, because you won’t answer our calls,” Ares said, her eyes training on something across the room. “Who is that?”
I didn’t bother looking up.
Saylor, apparently, did though.
“The one on the left is Ford. The one on the right is a friend of his that just retired from the military. I think his name is Saint,” Saylor said. “I’m going to mingle. Y’all try to talk some sense into him.”
Ares got up and walked with my soon-to-be-wife over to where there was a gaggle of ladies.
My mom kissed my head and walked over to talk to someone else, leaving me alone with Kettle and my father.
“What happened?” Dad asked.
I didn’t say anything, too in my own head to think.
“Got home to a lot of commotion coming from Saylor’s room,” Kettle said. “Went in to find Lock beating the snot out of Kristoff.”
“Why does that name keep popping up?” Dad asked.
“Because it’s the same one that fucked with Mom. That fucked with Ares. That fucked with us,” I said. “Same Kristoff. Spanning across fucking years of time.”
Dad paused, considering what I just said.
“Then why are you so fucked up?” he asked. “You did what you needed to do.”
“I did what I…”
“You protected Saylor,” Kettle said.
“There were no bullets in the gun,” I said.
“Didn’t know that at the time,” Dad said. “What if there were?”
I didn’t say anything to that.
“Kid’s fucked up,” Kettle finally said. “There’s a possibility of brain damage.”
I felt my stomach drop.
At the time that I’d been kicking his ass, I hadn’t felt bad in the least.
It was only after I’d seen the damage I’d done to Kristoff, and realized that was exactly what he’d wanted, did I start to feel bad for going so far.
“The kid needs his brain unscrambled,” Kettle said. “Maybe you did that for him.”
I rolled my eyes.
“He walked into this house and pointed a gun at my kid,” Kettle said then. “If you hadn’t have beaten him, I’d have shot him.”
“He had a kid at home,” I said. “I heard him saying that as I was kicking his ass. Not to kill him. He had a kid.”
“That excuses his behavior?” Dad asked. “I heard from Luke that that kid was left alone for what was likely a day, if not more. He’s two. He had no toys. No clothes. Was in a diaper that had been on so long that he has a raging infection. Tell me…does that sound like a man that needs sympathy?”
When he put it that way, no.
“The kid okay?” I asked curiously.
Dad grunted. “Yes. He’s staying with a buddy from the PD for the time being. They need to look into his background before anything else can be done.”
I rubbed my forehead.
“I’m tired.”
Dad locked his hand around my neck and squeezed.
“Go talk to your girl, bud,” he ordered. “She can’t stop staring at you.”
I looked up to find that he was right.
Though Saylor was standing in the middle of a bunch of women, all of them chattering on, her eyes were on me.
I stood up and felt the alcohol immediately and swayed.
Dad steadied me and I said, “Thanks.”
Saylor watched me walking over, her eyes on me every step I took.
Her smile was soft when I finally arrived at the edge of the group.
“Ladies,” I said. “Mind if I steal Saylor for a second?”
Saylor didn’t give them a chance to object.
Only walked to me and threw her arms around my middle.
I turned us so that we were heading in the opposite direction of all the people.
She guided me to a small pond, and before long, I was sitting on the edge of the dock right next to her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I…I’m just sorry that you had to do that for me.”
I threw my arm around her shoulders and dropped a kiss to her hair.
“I’m not sorry that I did it,” I told her. “I’m just sorry that he made me do it.”
She pressed her forehead to my bicep and sighed.
“I still don’t like that I put you into that situation. Whether you feel it or not, it was my fault,” she pushed.
I snorted. “You’re saying that you wouldn’t want our own kids to tell us that something was happening like that?”
She stayed stubbornly silent.
“I hope that when we have kids, they never experience anything bad,” I said softly. “But if they do, they’re comfortable telling us things like you were with your father.”
She grumbled under her breath, making me smile.
“What was that?” I teased.
I was drunk…but not so overly drunk that I couldn’t feel her softness pressing against me.
It was turning me on.
“I said that you’re right,” she grumbled. “And…just sayin’…but we’re leaving tomorrow. I can’t do this another night.”
I frowned. “Do what?”
“The no touching thing.” She sighed. “I want you.”
A smile broke out over my face.
“We’ll get plenty of that when we get home,” I told her. “For now, let’s just not put your dad into the situation where he has to use his gun. He so obviously proved this morning that he wasn’t kidding.”
I closed my eyes as I let her laughter, her happiness, filter through me.
And realized that this was my life now.
Saylor and I would be married.
We’d have kids.
And we’d be happy until the rest of our days.
“Love you, baby.” I squeezed her.
“Love you, too, whiskey breath.”
I snorted with laughter. Then tickled her until she fell into the pond.
She came up gasping.
“You…” She pulled me in with her.
I let her, of course.
But in the end, it was worth it.
Even if we did smell like swamp rats afterward.
Epilogue
Oh, sweetie. That high horse makes your ass look huge.
-Saylor’s secret thoughts
Saylor
Eleven years later
The phone rang, blaring through the Bluetooth speakers, momentarily startling me enough to let off of the boat’s accelerator.
My boys—who were being pulled on the tube—let out audible groans that I could hear over the engine.
I grinned and brought the boat to a halt in the middle of the lake, holding up a finger for my boys to chill out while I answered the phone.
“Hello?” I answered, seeing on the screen it said, ‘Josh Calling.’
“Hey, is Lock there?” Josh asked.
I tried to place this Josh but found that I couldn’t.
Lock, on his jet ski riding it like he was twenty and not the forty years he was barreling down on, changed direction at hearing his phone ring.
“Sure, hold on,” I said. “He’s riding over now.”
Josh graciously agreed to wait, and I smiled at Lock when he finally arrived.
“Lock, Josh is on the phone,” I said, holding it out to him.
“Which Josh?” he asked.
I frowned. “I don’t know. It literally says ‘Josh,’ Lock. And I don’t make it a habit to know other male’s voices by sound.”
Lock winked at me, still having the power to make me weak in the knees.
He took it, then placed it to his ear.
“Oh, that’s pretty shitty,” Lock said to whatever Josh was saying. “Sure, what time?”
I frowned.
“I can be there by six. We can hit a few balls, and then w
e can play,” Lock said. “See you then.”
Lock handed me back the phone.
“What was that about?” I asked.
Our kids squealed and complained, and Lock turned around to yell at them.
“Give her two minutes, boys!” Lock bellowed.
There was a chorus of groans.
Lock turned back to me smiling.
“It’s your fault, you know,” I teased. “Now what was that call about?”
“Josh from the gym wanting me to play golf with him Saturday,” he said. “I agreed and told him I would. I told him a couple of days ago if he had anybody drop out, I’d play.”
I felt my heart sink.
“Okay.” I smiled at him. “I better take these boys riding again before they cause anarchy.”
Lock frowned and reached for me, but I’d already put the motor back into gear and started out.
He didn’t do it on purpose.
He didn’t do it on purpose.
I kept repeating those words, over and over again.
He didn’t say yes to an all-day tournament on your anniversary, at least. He said yes for the day after. No way did he realize you had a weekend planned that included his parents watching the kids and us spending a little alone time at our house.
Yes, at least it wasn’t our actual anniversary.
I still was sad.
I’d had an entire day planned out Friday, that extended into Saturday.
Which happened to be why my parents were here, along with his.
My mom and dad, as well as Memphis and Downy, were going camping.
They would be taking our children with them, giving us a blissful two and a half days of freedom to do whatever we wanted.
But…having Saturday by myself wouldn’t be all bad.
I could get a few things done around the house, run some errands.
It would be okay.
Right?
Lock must’ve realized something was wrong by the time we put our jet skis and the boat up, because he cornered me against the truck and looked down into my eyes.
“What is it?” he asked, his hands framing my face.
I licked my lips.
Then decided that I wouldn’t be going with subtle.
I was just going to tell him.
“Tomorrow is our anniversary,” I said. “And I had plans for Friday and Saturday.”
He frowned.
Then winced.
“Shit,” he said. “I’m sorry…but you didn’t tell me that we were doing anything.”
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