Eat Crow (Cheap Thrills Series Book 6)

by Mary B. Moore

  Then again, I kind of felt the same about losing Pops. I might not have been at home, but it felt like I had a spine of steel with him behind me. When he died, I lost that, and it’d felt like every step I took was off balance.

  I still felt like that, but I was doing everything I could to build my own spine of steel now, using what he’d taught me to do it.

  Shit, I missed him so much.

  “So,” Will continued, and I was grateful to have the distraction from the dark path my thoughts had taken me down. “Then he suggests that Cole should run for the position instead.”

  Mom and Charmaine had been about to take a sip out of their wine glasses when he announced this, and the glasses remained suspended in front of them, no sips taken. Heck, Logan had his bottle of beer pressed against his lips, but even he froze in place.

  With no one saying it, I put us all out of our misery. “And? Is he going to do it?”

  “Jesus, Bexley,” Dad clipped, slapping his hand on the table. “Aren’t you even slightly superstitious? Now that you’ve put that possibility out into the universe, the likelihood of it coming true is higher.”

  “If that was the case, I’m fairly certain me saying I was going to win the lottery tonight would happen,” I snickered. “Plus, it was Hurst who put it out there first.”

  Looking at Will, Dad pleaded, “Please tell me he said no, too.”

  “Nope,” he shook his head, bringing his chair back down to all four legs. “He suggested his dad do it—”

  “Oh, yes, Jack would be great at it,” Mom said loudly as she nudged Charmaine. “Wouldn’t he? And he’s much better looking than Kirkwood.”

  “—but Jack said hell fucking no,” Will finished, shrugging his shoulders. “Hurst was going home to have a family discussion about Mayoral proceedings in the family that didn’t include his ass in the hot seat.” He stopped and then added, “Apparently.”

  “I don’t think the town would survive a Mayor Townsend, regardless which one of them did it.”

  “What about George Montgomery?” Charmaine asked. “I think he’d do good things for us.”

  “Suggested that, and he told me to shut my dirty mouth.”

  Dad swallowed loudly but then looked at Logan and changed the subject. “What’s happening in Palmerstown?”

  “Nothing good,” he muttered. “Just like nothing good’s happening here. Same shit each day in each town.”

  “And same generals of the shit,” Dad mumbled, his tone suggesting he knew a lot more than we did.

  Logan shrugged a shoulder without giving anything away as he lifted his bottle back up to his lips.

  I was trying to piece together what wasn’t being said—and, yes, I was aware how dumb that was. How can you piece together what wasn’t being said?

  Okay, the comments about the same shit and generals in each town could mean the two mayors. We knew there were issues with them, it was one of those secrets that everyone knew. I didn’t know how Kirkwood and the mayor in Palmerstown, Mick Johansen, got away with whatever they were each doing, or even if they were just bad at their jobs.

  There was a long-running feud between them both, so it was really bad luck to have two inept and incompetent mayors next door to each other.

  If people were talking about who was going to run against Kirkwood, that had to mean they were fed up and ready for a change in Piersville, right?

  And given how quiet Logan got when Dad asked his last question, did that mean that it was something he was working on and couldn’t discuss?

  “Bexley,” Dad called impatiently, just as both moms pushed their chairs back and picked up the dessert plates. “Your mom asked you if you wanted coffee?”

  “Oh,” I looked at Mom apologetically. “Let me help y’all out.”

  Holding her hand up, she waved me off. “Don’t you dare. You’ve had a stressful day, what with fire alarms, car accidents, and painting. I already put the coffee on last time I was in, so I’ll just put these in the dishwasher.”

  Smiling gratefully at her, I listened in as the men continued discussing mayoral candidates and how the town would burn to the ground if a Townsend was elected. Logan nodded and gave one-word answers, but he seemed distracted, so I nudged him with my knee, getting a wink and half smile from him.

  Weird.

  Before I could ask him if he was okay, the moms came back out carrying the coffee, cups, milk, and sugar and placed them down on the table.

  “Jesus, Lorena, what’s wrong? You look like you stuck your head in the oven.”

  Glancing up at her, I noticed how flushed her face was. Hell, it’d spread down her chest, which only happened when she was stressed, really angry, or embarrassed.

  “Nothing,” she answered quickly, pouring coffee into the cups. “Have you chosen a kitchen yet, Bex?”

  Confused but also happy to talk about what I’d found, I started showing her the photos of what I’d chosen on my phone.

  Charmaine got up with Will and disappeared during it, both of them coming back five minutes later, looking embarrassed and amused.

  “Okay, will someone tell me what the hell is going on?” Dad snapped, throwing his arms up in the air. “First Lorena comes back looking like a porn star just flashed her, then you guys come back looking—” he stopped suddenly and scowled at them. “Y’all better not have been doing things in my baby’s house.”

  Will threw his head back and burst out laughing hard enough to rock his chair while Charmaine fanned her face with her hand.

  “I’ll have you know, Kenton Heath, that none of that went on. We were just looking at what our kids have been doing to the house, and then Will helped me with some dishes in the kitchen.”

  Logan made a choking noise, and I caught on to what’d happened.

  They’d seen the titty paint. Oh, sweet baby in a star spangled manger, they’d seen the boobies on the wall.

  I was going to die.

  To hell with a piece of literature talking satirically about a lock of hair getting cut off and society being scandalized by it. In years to come, there’d be a piece about a girl whose ta-ta’s left boobie prints on her wall while she was having sex and her parents were knocking on the door, that the parents then found, and she’d turned to stone in front of them.

  It might sound dramatic, but there was no coming back from this. I should know because I was going to live out the rest of my life praying for someone to cast a spell and turn me into a statue.

  Actually, let me be specific on that in case what Dad had said earlier about putting things out into the universe was true. I wanted to be a statue with no brain function whatsoever. I didn’t want to be stuck in place, being tormented by my mind for centuries.

  “I—” I started, then stopped because I didn’t know what to say.

  “Great shade of blue, isn’t it?” Logan asked, sounding like he was choking back laughter now.

  How could he find this funny?

  “Oh, yes. It’s unusual, like a light gray-blue,” Charmaine nodded, looking at Mom for confirmation.

  “You should get some art for the walls,” Will suggested, crossing his arms over his chest as he looked between Logan and me. “Birds, maybe? There’s so much out there that’d brighten a room up, you know.”

  He paused and then clicked his fingers together, making me jump. “I’ve got it. I follow this British artist on Facebook, and just last week he posted a photo of a detailed ceramic figurine he’d come across of a bird called a blue tit. I don’t know if we get those here…”

  I was wrong before—now I wanted to die. I’d never been this embarrassed in my life. In fact, I was fairly certain now that nothing could make me feel worse than I did.

  Then Dad got up from his chair, saying he was going to check out the rooms we’d worked on, and that’s when I realized that even if you didn’t need to say something out loud for it to be put out into the universe. All I had to do was think it.

  If I survived this, I was definitely p
laying the lottery. Then I was buying an island in the middle of nowhere and leaving in the middle of the night to go and live on it. No one would know my name, I’d get a boat into shore to get food whenever I needed it, and I’d be a hermit forever.

  Mom got up to follow him, hopefully to steer him clear of the front room, and I covered my face.

  “Your mom won’t let him see it, honey,” Charmaine whispered in my ear. “You could always just say you were testing out paint effects if he does.”

  Fudging hell.

  “Bexley!” Dad roared, making me jump. I was done for. “There’s a mutant coming out of your cat’s ass.”

  The moment the words hit me, I was up and running to where they were standing in front of Prince, who was walking around on his bed in circles, his stomach straining every couple of seconds. Doyle was whining next to him, looking like he wanted to run away.

  And yes, there was definitely a mutant coming out of its ass.

  “Oh my God,” I cried, sinking down onto my knees beside him. “Call the vet.”

  Beside me, Logan muttered, “Told you you’d find the soul of Satan and devil horns inside him.”

  The alien coming out of him dropped down onto the soft cushion of the bed with blood and gunk smeared all over it now.

  “What the hell is that?” Will asked, looking over our shoulders at the wriggling ball wrapped in a weird bag.

  “Beelzebub?” Logan suggested sounding disgusted, but then he ran the tip of his finger down Prince’s back and moved his hand up to scratch behind his ear. “You’re okay, little guy. We’ll get this fixed for you.”

  His hand quickly pulled back, though, when Prince leaned down and started to lick the alien.

  “I think—” Charmaine said, laughter clouding what she was trying to say. “I think your Prince is a Princess, guys, and that’s a baby.”

  Sure enough, when I squinted, I could make out a kitten inside the bag.

  Logan jumped up and ran out of the room.

  “Is he gonna puke?” Dad asked Will, both of them staring as another mutant started to emerge from poor Prince.

  Before Will could answer, Logan was back with the large black bag he kept in the back of his truck. Opening it up quickly, he pulled out a pair of gloves from a package, put them on, and tore open another one that had a pair of wicked looking scissors in it.

  “What’s that for?”

  Looking from me down to the scissors, he explained, “I need to open the sac. She’s distracted by the next baby, and I don’t know enough about what’s meant to happen when cats give birth to sit back and wait for her to help this one out.”

  Then, leaning in, he pulled a small section back and cut into it. Carefully, he managed to open it enough for the tiny kitten to come into the world fully.

  The next one came out, but this one wasn’t in a sac, so I got up and ran to get a towel to wipe them down with. That’s what you were meant to do, right?

  By the time I got back, Prince was lying down, still looking agitated but purring into Logan’s hand as he scratched the side of his—no, her—face.

  Gently, I brushed the towels down the kittens' backs and watched as they made jerky little movements.

  “I’ve got the vet’s office on the phone, Bexley,” Mom called behind me. “He’s in surgery just now, but the nurse says to let Prince keep going and call them if there’s a problem. If you’re really worried, you can take her in, though.”

  Still rubbing her head, Logan murmured, “She’s doing fine. I don’t think we should stress her out by moving her if we don’t need to.”

  So, that’s what we did. We became feline midwives and surrogate parents, anxiously waiting as each baby dropped out of her until we had three little babies. The problem was, Prince was still straining her stomach like she had more to go.

  “Okay, hold her head. I’m going to take a look down the other end and see if I can find out what’s wrong,” Logan sighed, looking sadly down at the cat that had, up until two hours ago, been a pain in his ass. “You’re doing good, little girl. Just keep pushing, and we’ll get there.”

  Swapping places with him, I gently swept my thumb up and down between her eyes and watched as Logan put his head down to get a look at what was going on. On the next tense, his expression changed from worry to determination.

  “There’s something there when she pushes, so I think a baby’s stuck. Call the nurse and ask her what I need to do.”

  Nodding quickly, Mom placed the call and put it on speakerphone.

  “Well, Mr. Richards, you can bring her right down to us—”

  “We don’t have time. She’s panting rapidly and looks fucking exhausted. Just tell me how to get it out,” he snapped.

  So, step by step, she took him through the process. It wasn’t over immediately, but finally, he had it in his hand.

  A kitten that wasn’t showing any signs of life.

  Cupping it gently in his large hand, he rubbed the baby’s chest with the towel he’d wrapped around it.

  “Come on, kid. If you’re anything like your momma, you’re going to attack me and make me bleed every day. You don’t want to miss out on that, do you?”

  Still nothing.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Richards,” the nurse said softly. “Sometimes they make it, and sometimes they don’t.”

  The muscle in his jaw was twitching as he focused on the kitten, not saying anything. Then, he reared up onto his knees and cradled the baby in one hand with his other one over its front. That wasn’t what made me go flying backward, though. No, that was when he jerked it downward quickly, repeating the motion five times.

  “Holy shit, I felt it move,” he gasped, pulling the towel away from its face.

  Sure enough, a tiny little paw twitched, followed by another, but its chest wasn’t moving.

  Placing his mouth over the baby’s, he gave it a small breath and then another one.

  “Oh, I’m gonna be sick,” his dad moaned, wiping his hand across his mouth. “Son, I respect you trying to save that baby’s life, but what you’ve just done goes against all that’s holy. You just got cat amniotic fluid on your—”

  A tiny, pitiful little mewl stopped Will mid-sentence.

  Somehow, through shaking it and giving it mouth-to-mouth, Logan had saved the kitten’s life.

  “It’s alive!” Mom cried into the phone. “He saved that baby. Oh my God, it’s a miracle.”

  Cradling it closer to his chest, Logan smiled down at the now very vocal kitten, who was getting responding howls from Doyle. “That’s your new name—Miracle.”

  I couldn’t help it, I burst into tears. Not nice little quiet ones, loud sobbing ones.

  “Okay, thank you, ma’am, we’ll bring them all down to get checked out in a minute,” Mom thanked the nurse before hanging up. “Well, look at y’all go. Bet you didn’t wake up this morning thinking you were going to be parents by dinner.”

  Dad, who was frowning down at the babies, looked over at me. “I don’t get it. How does a boy cat have babies?”

  Mom leaned into him and whispered into his ear. “Oh, yeah, that makes more sense than what I had going on up here.” He tapped the side of his head.

  “Hold Miracle for me, will you? I need to get a crate to put them in with the bed, and then we’ll take them down to the vet,” Luke said as he handed the baby to me. “She should be with her mother, but I just want to get them into a box, so the babies don’t walk off and lose her first.”

  “Uh, sweetheart,” Charmaine called, tapping him on the shoulder. “Those babies can’t walk and won’t for a while. Let Miracle see his or her momma and get some milk while you get them ready to see the vet.”

  Looking torn, Logan finally took Miracle from me and placed her next to her siblings, who were already feeding.

  “How did you not see its nipples?” Dad huffed. “All this time y’all were calling it Prince and fat, and in reality, it had baby bottles on its stomach, a vagina, and little critters in its b
elly.”

  Glaring at him over my shoulder, I snapped, “I don’t go around lifting animals to check their wieners and tits, Dad. That’s just perverted.”

  Looking at me like I was the weird one, he shook his head and motioned at me to Mom, like she needed to deal with me.

  “Funny thing about tits,” Will mused, shoving his hands in his pockets and looking like he was going to say more until Charmaine elbowed him in the gut.

  What a day!

  Chapter Fifteen

  Logan

  Walking into work the next day, I felt different. I’d turned a corner in my life, and even though we hadn’t discussed where our relationship was going, I knew Bexley well enough to say that she wouldn’t have had sex with me—three times in total—yesterday if she wasn’t on the same page as me.

  What was that page? There were so many it could be. Well, I was brave enough to say that I wanted it with her. I wanted everything with her.

  At our ages, did we actually need to sit down and say, “Will you be my girlfriend?” Did people still do that when they were twenty-five and twenty-six?

  Shaking myself out of it, I went to my desk, only picking up on the atmosphere once I’d put my coffee down. I’d come in wearing my uniform, so I didn’t have to lose time with Bexley coming in ten minutes early to get changed, so maybe they were wondering about that?

  “Richards,” DB barked from the door to his office. “In, now.”

  Racking my brains while moved, I tried to remember if I’d done anything to get in shit for recently. Honestly, I don’t think I had?

  Fuck, was it Grandpa?

  Closing the door behind me, I sat in the seat he was staring at. When he didn’t immediately start talking and just tensed the muscle in his jaw, I shifted awkwardly.

  Finally, unable to take it much longer, I threw my hands up in the air and slapped them on my thighs. “What did he do this time?”