Say It Ain't So (SWAT Generation 2.0 Book 9)

by Lani Lynn Vale

  With that, he walked slowly to the bike I’d seen him get off of earlier when we’d pulled in almost at the same time, and he put on his helmet.

  That was when I realized who, exactly, he was.

  Son of a bitch.

  Chapter 3

  I ride a moped. Not a Harley. Mopeds whisper vagina. Harleys scream big dick.

  -Hastings to Suzanne

  Hastings

  “I fucked up,” I moaned into the phone.

  “You fucked up how?” my best friend, Suzanne, asked.

  I pressed my hands to my still hot cheeks.

  “Well…” I said. “I might or might not have just been in a robbery attempt at Walgreens.”

  There was a moment of silence, and then my best friend started up cussing a blue streak.

  And this time, I knew that her ‘fucks’ and ‘assholes’ and ‘dickbags’ were not the Tourette’s speaking.

  They were the over-protectiveness speaking.

  “Well…” I began recounting the entire process.

  “Oh, Hastings,” Suzanne said. “You do realize none of that was within your control, right? Tacos are lock!”

  “Yes,” I said, ignoring her random comment as I always did. “But I almost got about eight people killed!”

  There was a long pause and then, “You remember last year when that reader of yours killed herself, and you were all banged up about it because she’d messaged you the night before to tell you how much your books changed her life, and you decided to wait until the next morning to answer her?”

  I did.

  That still haunted me.

  A year ago I’d woken up in the middle of the night to a message on Facebook. I vaguely recounted reading the message, but had ultimately gone back to sleep because I’d been too tired to answer.

  The next morning when I’d gone back to message her, I’d accidentally clicked on her profile. From there, I’d seen a ton of condolences and tags that had included her in them.

  And when I’d read them, I’d realized that sometime after she’d messaged me, she’d killed herself.

  And, like that time, Suzanne had helped assure me that it wasn’t my fault. That there was nothing I could do.

  Only, I’d always felt like I could have stopped it somehow.

  Which was why, on the anniversary of her death, I’d released a book. And all first-week proceeds had been donated to suicide prevention.

  “I know.” I pinched the bridge of my nose.

  “Well, you need to realize that you can’t control the world. You didn’t make that guy come in there and shoot the place up,” she soothed.

  I hadn’t.

  “Now, let it the fuck go. Fuck them, fuck those shooters. Fuck that cop—which reminds me, was the cop hot?”

  And, though my parents had said the same thing about an hour before I’d called Suzanne, I hadn’t been able to really take myself off the hook until Suzanne had so succulently reminded me of my favorite word.

  “He was,” I wailed. “And he was sick as a dog. He said something about thinking he had the flu. Which also made me feel really bad. I gave him some ibuprofen out of my purse.”

  She chuckled, “Did you get a number?”

  “Even better,” I said. “I got where he lived.”

  Her gasp was one of excitement. “Really? Are you going on a date with him?”

  I laughed then, unable to help myself.

  “No,” I said. I didn’t realize that he lived in my duplex until we walked out to the parking lot.

  I did notice his big black motorcycle then. And his flashy as fuck helmet.

  “What’s so flashy about it?” she asked.

  “It’s the helmet, Suzanne,” I said.

  She moaned.

  “Oh my god.” Her Jersey accent came in thick over the line. “You… it’s him?”

  I laughed then.

  The helmet under discussion had a pair of overflowing C-cups airbrushed onto it.

  That was it.

  Just a pair of tits.

  But I’d know those tits anywhere.

  And when I followed him home over the next five minutes, I knew he’d be all weirded out as I pulled past him once he’d pulled into his driveway.

  But instead of waiting for him to confront me, I’d hurried inside and closed the door.

  Now he knew where I lived, too.

  The thunder that I’d barely beaten home rumbled overhead, and Suzanne changed the subject.

  “It’s supposed to storm there, isn’t it?” Suzanne asked.

  I scrunched up my nose four times, then answered with, “Yeah. It’s supposed to get really bad around midnight or so. The weatherman thinks that it’s supposed to be worse than we thought.”

  “How worse?” she asked.

  “Well.” I paused. “We went from ‘moderate’ to ‘enhanced,’” I answered, using air quotes even though I knew she couldn’t see me.

  But she knew me well enough to know that I’d use them, so there was that.

  See, Suzanne and I met five years ago online. When I’d first started writing, I hadn’t done the best thing that I should have—i.e., hiring an editor that was going to make my words shine. Instead, I’d taken the cheap way out and read it for errors myself.

  Big no-no, apparently.

  And I found out very quickly after publishing that it wasn’t the best idea in the world.

  How did I find out?

  Well, when I’d published, I’d done it in a quickly growing genre that all the ladies were falling into in droves thanks to a popular motorcycle series. Motorcycle clubs, MC books for short, had an ever-growing popularity that I’d thought was super intriguing.

  So I’d written a book about a motorcycle riding hot guy, published it, and then waited on pins and needles for the first person to buy it.

  And they did.

  And the next.

  And the next.

  And the next.

  Except, as people bought the book, people also reviewed the book.

  And it got roasted.

  Roasted so badly, in fact, that I barely could read the reviews and not cry.

  From then on, I’d made sure to find an editor before I published another book.

  I also learned to stay off of a popular review site that did nothing but tear me a new asshole with each review I read.

  Only, not all was bad coming from my first book publishing.

  The one person that I met that was nice to me when she didn’t have to be was Suzanne.

  She was my light in the dark.

  She was a book blogger that guided me through the book world.

  Then, at my first ever book signing a year later, I got to meet her for the first time.

  And there she offered to help me in any way she could.

  When people saw us together, they might think we were weird.

  We talked to each other every single day. Texted like best friends. Knew everything about each other as best friends would. And though we only saw each other twice a year at book signings, when we got together it was like we were never apart.

  And though she was old enough to be my mother, and had a kid that wasn’t far from my age, and spoke like she was straight off the set of The Sopranos, she was my best friend. And I told her everything.

  I told her more stuff than I even told my own mother.

  Not that I didn’t love my mother to death, but there were just some things you couldn’t discuss with your mother—like sex and our Tourette’s. There were just things that Suzanne understood that my mother didn’t.

  That was what brought Suzanne and me together. We both have no control over the word ‘fuck.’

  “Did you talk to him?” she asked. “Because, holy hotness. That photo you sent me last summer through the blinds? I bet that man is sex on wheels. And I’ll bet he has a bedroom voice that’ll send orgasms screaming through you one after the other. He’
ll say, ‘good morning,’ and boom! Orgasm.”

  The ‘picture’ in question was actually a photo of the man on the back of his bike. He’d had on a pair of sweatpants, was barefoot, and was wearing a white undershirt. But I could see the shape of his body underneath the tight undershirt. I could also see the colorful tattoos.

  Oh, and did I mention that it was raining, too? The white shirt was plastered to him like a second skin, and I could see his fucking nipples through the fabric as well.

  And the only reason I’d seen him as well as I had was because there’d been a party or something at the place next door to his, and when he’d arrived, he’d had to park at the end of the cul-de-sac. And when it’d started raining later in the day, he’d run out in his sweatpants and undershirt to move the bike. Unfortunately for him, fortunately for me, he’d been parked right in front of my place. When he’d started it up, I’d come running to look, and my God.

  The funny thing was, he’d put that helmet on before I’d gotten a good look at his face. Which meant that the photos that I’d gotten, I hadn’t been able to pin the body with the face. Until today.

  And since I’d been so busy with nursing school at the time—a career I had no intention of pursuing any longer—I’d never been able to figure out who the hot motorcycle boob helmet guy was.

  I snorted. “Today, actually, he was sick. He kind of sounded sexy, but he also had a nasal sound to him, as if he was really stopped up.”

  She sighed. “Well that just fucks everything up, doesn’t it?”

  Not really.

  Even nasally sounding, it was still orgasm-inducing.

  Which I told her in the next moment, causing her to laugh.

  “That’s true. When my man has a cold, other than the fuck my life feeling I have when he whines about how sick he’s feeling, he’s got this sexy, vibrant voice that makes my knees weak,” she purred.

  “Your knees are weak because you need surgery but you’re refusing to do it because you’re scared,” I countered.

  “That, too,” she agreed. “I gotta work up the nerve. Maybe next summer.”

  I rolled my eyes. That’d been what she said last summer.

  Thunder rumbled overhead again, and a shiver trickled down my spine.

  “Son of a bitch,” I said as I stared at the windows. “This storm is supposed to be bad.”

  “How bad?” she asked. “Like worse than last time, bad?”

  What she was referring to as last time had actually been about three or four months ago during hurricane season. The storm had spawned three tornados, one of which had ripped right through the middle of Longview, the largest neighboring city to Kilgore.

  “Yeah.” I sighed. “Way worse, supposedly.”

  Something that sounded like a buzzer went off in the background on Suzanne’s end, and I sighed. “Did they win?”

  “Intermission after the second period. He hasn’t even played yet. Fuckin’ coach is such a donkey,” she muttered.

  She said ‘donkey’ instead of ass because it was very likely that someone was sitting next to her now listening to everything she said. Suzanne was at her son’s hockey game where he played on both junior varsity and varsity. Obviously at this moment in time, he’d been relegated to the bench where he sat most of the time while he was waiting for the coach’s kid to get tired. The coach’s kid that sucked compared to him, but whatever.

  “I’ll let you go,” I said. “I need to get some words written tonight anyway.”

  “Okay.” She paused. “But before you get done for the night, save your work, upload it to Dropbox, email it to yourself, and then turn off your computer and unplug it.”

  I winced.

  Though, she was right.

  The being overly cautious thing was for my benefit. Last time it’d stormed big, the tornado might not have hit us, but it’d done some irreparable damage to my computer. My computer that had three new manuscripts on it without them being backed up anywhere.

  It’d taken me weeks of fingernail biting as I waited for the computer guy I hired to recover the documents before I’d gotten them back safely. And ever since, I’d made sure to save all of my works in progress on multiple platforms.

  “Yes, Mom.” I rolled my eyes. “Tell your son good luck during the game.”

  “Will do. Call me tomorrow morning to let me know that you’re alive,” she ordered.

  After promising to do so, I took a shower and got ready for bed. Then went to my computer to write.

  What was surprising was how fast the words flowed today. And how my new hero for my next book totally resembled the sexy police officer that’d saved me today.

  And when we got to the sex scene? Well, let’s just say I might or might not have been squirming in my chair by the time I was finished.

  Chapter 4

  I apologized to the man in my head. If he didn’t hear it, that’s on him.

  -Text from Sierra to Sammy

  Sammy

  I shuffled to the kitchen, my goal a glass of water.

  I’d just made it to the back of the couch when the loudest bang I’d ever heard sounded, followed shortly by what sounded like a deafening roar.

  The next thing I knew, I was on the ground, and there were leaves falling in front of my face.

  “Holy shit,” I breathed, looking at the tree limb that’d fallen straight through my back roof. Luckily, it was all on my side, and not remotely touching the second half of the duplex that Saint lived in.

  The trunk had split the wall like it was a piece of paper.

  I felt around for my phone that was on the ground next to me and still tried to figure out how to move.

  I was on my back, staring at the swaying leaves still on the tree limb above me.

  “That’s…” I said to nobody. “Holy crap.”

  That’s when the tornado sirens started going off.

  My phone beeped, and I reached for it, glancing at the readout.

  “National Weather Service has issued a tornado warning for Gregg, Rusk, Panola, and Camp counties,” it read.

  From the chief of police.

  It was a mass text message that was sent to every single person in the department.

  I stared at the tree limb and wondered if the tree limb above me was from a tornado, or just the high winds that we’d been told we were getting ahead of the storm.

  My guess was the high winds.

  But what did I know?

  I exited out of the text, then went to the phone app, wondering who the hell I could call.

  Hell, everyone that would normally be here right now had gone out at the Back Porch in town for a tornado party, as everyone had called it.

  I hadn’t because I’d been too goddamn sick and couldn’t hold my eyes open long enough to direct a water bottle to my mouth, let alone be functional enough to be standing.

  I dialed my dad and waited for it to ring, but it never did.

  So I tried my mom with much the same results.

  Over and over again I called out, only for it to bounce back with a busy signal or for the call to not go through at all.

  I finally peeled myself up off the floor and thought about what I needed to do next.

  There was one thing for sure, I couldn’t get this tree out of my fucking house without help. And even with help, I would be really fuckin’ useless right now.

  And the phones weren’t working.

  Son of a bitch.

  The only fuckin’ person that I knew with a landline was the duplex manager.

  The one that had nearly caused me to die today.

  But there was no other option for it.

  The tree was through the roof.

  They needed to know about it.

  And I was too much of a little bitch to handle it on my own right now.

  I could barely lift my feet to walk out the door.

  Which is what I did in the next second.

 
; Carefully making my way down the sidewalk, I cringed at the freezing rain as it pelted my back and neck.

  I cursed myself for not grabbing a jacket and hurried as fast as my poor, pitiful legs would carry me down the path that would lead to the duplex manager’s place.

  I got to it, barely, and was just knocking on the door when the hail started.

  I could feel the hail pelting me in the back, and I cringed when a golf ball-sized one rapped me in the head.

  “Fuck!” I cried out, wincing when the pounding in my head doubled.

  The door fell open, and I had no clue that I was leaning on it for support until it was gone.

  I would’ve fallen straight on my face, but luckily my reflexes didn’t prove dead.

  I caught myself on the doorjamb just before I would’ve died.

  “Oh, shit.” Arms came around me and supported me as I was forced inside. Seconds later, I shuffled my way to the couch and practically fell into it with the girl in my arms.

  “Umm,” the girl that was half-pinned underneath me said. “Officer Spurlock? Are you okay?”

  Officer Spurlock.

  “Sammy. Well, Samuel Adams, but everyone calls me Sammy,” I muttered into her neck. “And there’s a tree in my kitchen.”

  There was a long moment of silence as that registered.

  “There’s a tree in your kitchen?” she asked, sounding confused.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “A real one?” she confirmed.

  “I assume it’s real,” I admitted. “But I didn’t actually touch it to find out. I tried to call someone, but my phone isn’t working. Can I use yours?”

  She maneuvered her body until she was out from under me, and then she pushed me to the side so that I was mostly on the couch.

  “I can call my parents,” she said. “But they’ve already reported several trees down in the area. And I’m not sure how much help they’d be right now.”

  I agreed.

  Several trees down meant they were likely over roadways.

  But goddamn, I was so tired right then that I decided that maybe this could wait until the morning.

  ***

  “Come on,” I heard said.

  I opened my eyes to see that I was sitting up.

  “Where?” I wondered.