My mother waved away the apology.
“My son’s an asshole like his father,” she said. “Sorry for that.”
“Hey!” Loki said as he arrived back into the kitchen. “I resent that!”
I took a seat on the nearest stool and smiled at my mother when she handed me the coffee.
“You’ll need to fill Royal’s about halfway up so she can drown it in milk and sugar,” I said when my mother started on Royal’s cup. “She drinks a little coffee with her milk.”
My father snorted.
“Where’s Lock?” I asked.
“Riding the bike,” he answered, his eyes shifting to Royal who took up a seat beside my dad and across from me. “Donuts?” He pushed the box in Royal’s direction.
Royal’s entire face lit up.
“Are these them?” she whispered hopefully.
So I might or might not have talked up our donut store on the way over here. To say that she was excited to try the infamous donuts would be an understatement.
“That’s them.” I plucked another glaze out of the box.
They were so good that I had to limit myself to just two.
Not that I didn’t deserve a donut every once in a while, but Donut Cave’s donuts were lethal. One second I’d be having one, and the next I’d have twelve gone.
It was just that easy.
“Oh, God,” Royal whispered as she took her first bite. A glazed donut with white icing on it. “You’re right. They’re so good.”
“Just wait until you try the cake ones.” I gestured to the brown ones in the middle.
I would’ve had one of those myself, but there were only two left, and I had a feeling Royal might’ve wanted both of them.
Before she could say a word to my statement, my phone rang, making me curse.
It was my work tone and a sudden feeling in the pit of my stomach told me that I wasn’t going to like what the call was about.
Taking it from my pocket, I headed out to the garage before I answered it.
“Hello?” I answered.
“It’s me,” Yao said into my ear. “Royal’s place was burned to the ground last night. They found a body in there. Along with one of our badges pinned to the dead man’s chest.”
I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose.
“Any idea on who the dead body was?” I asked.
“Forensics aren’t back yet,” he said. “Probably won’t hear back until Monday or Tuesday. Just wanted to let you know before you heard it another way.” He paused. “Also, The Judge said that he’s had some activity outside his house. He and his family are taking an extended vacation to their home on the Jersey Shore after hearing about what happened to Royal’s place.”
I swallowed a growl.
Him and his family my ass.
“Okay,” I said. “This was Marcus.”
I knew that without a doubt.
“We know,” Yao said. “Just got to prove it.”
When I hung up the phone, it was just in time for Lock to arrive on the Harley he was interested in buying.
He took one look at my face and went alert.
“What’s up?” he asked the moment that the bike shut off.
I heard the garage door close behind me and saw my father walking toward us, a donut in one hand and his coffee in the other.
I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose.
“Royal’s place was torched last night. A dead body was found in it, but it was too fucked up to get an ID on it. But it had one of the PD’s badges pinned to the man’s chest,” I answered.
Lock frowned. “As in the man was a cop, or that Marcus knew that you were a cop and was trying to send you a message?”
I stretched my neck. “That’s the million-dollar question. He said they’d have forensics back on Monday or Tuesday.”
“He know where you live?” Dad asked, still munching on his donut.
That was the difference between a cop and everybody else. Talking about dead people didn’t kill your appetite like it would everybody else.
“Not that I know of,” I admitted. “It’s fairly new, and as far as he knows, I still live in the apartment above my shop.”
“Well if that place isn’t torched, then maybe this is still only Royal related,” Lock suggested, leaning into the handlebars.
I shrugged. “The place could be decimated, and we wouldn’t know. Things don’t get reported on Eleventh Street like they do everywhere else.”
Lock winced. “True enough.”
I groaned. “I’ll go check tomorrow when I get home.”
Lock waved me off. “Give me the keys and I’ll check. I’m buying this and heading home soon. My dad is throwing a party for my sister’s graduation today.”
“On Father’s Day?” I asked.
Lock shrugged. “We’re celebrating both, maybe. I don’t know. All I know is that I’m responsible for picking up a cake from some chick.”
My lips twitched.
“Have fun with that,” I said.
Lock pulled out his wallet, and unfolded quite a few hundred dollar bills, then handed them to my father.
“I gotta get my shit,” Lock said as he dismounted. “Nice bike, though, Loki. I’m glad you’re selling it.”
My father looked at the bike.
“It’s time for something that doesn’t require me to wrestle it to keep it on the road,” Dad said as he looked fondly at the bike. “I’ll miss it like hell, though.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Lock said, slapping Dad on the back. “Be back.”
Lock left and Dad turned to me.
“You need help when you get home, call me,” he ordered roughly. “Don’t try to be a hero.”
My lips twitched. “I’m not going to put Royal in any danger by doing the lone wolf thing, Dad.”
He gave me a thumb up, then gestured to the bike. “You were conceived on that bike.”
I covered my ears. “Fuck off.”
Chapter 17
Coffee is the answer. But then again, so is whiskey. In fact, if you combine the two, you become immortal.
-Coffee Cup
Royal
“Have you ever been to the lake before?” Justice asked as he pulled out about fifty life vests from his father’s boat.
“Ummm,” I hesitated. “Yes.”
Once.
And I hadn’t gotten in.
Not that he needed to know that.
It wasn’t that I was scared of the lake, exactly. It was more that I was cautious of it. Aware that I may not be the biggest thing in the lake.
“Good,” he said. “Have you ever been on a tube before?”
I pulled my bag from the back of his father’s truck and placed it into the boat, reaching high over my head to accomplish the feat.
Loki, who was standing beside me going through the life vests with his son, took my bag from me and placed it on the seat next to where Justice was practically disappearing into the hull of the boat.
I smiled at him and then moved to the back of the boat where I’d been told to climb in from, and then did just that.
Though much less gracefully than Justice had done only moments before.
“No,” I said once I climbed into the back of the boat and made myself comfortable. “I’ve never been on a tube. I’ve also never done anything but gaze at the lake from afar.”
Justice’s eyes came to me when he came up with a life vest that wouldn’t even fit around my thigh.
“You have kids?” I teased, gesturing toward the vest.
He shook his head and tossed it back into the hole he was pulling his shit out of. “No. Sometimes my dad’s buddies’ grandkids come. We have all sizes in here just in case.”
I understood that.
Still, seeing him with a tiny little life vest made my heart go all kinds of crazy.
Not that I would be admitting what that did to me.
“You’ve been to the lake, but never went into the water?” he asked curiously, pushing but not.
I sighed. “I’ve been to the lake…I just didn’t like stepping on all those rocks and shit as I went out into it. And, when I finally got far enough out that my knees were covered, I felt a fish brush up against my calf, and I got out of the water.”
Honest to God, I was kind of nervous about this excursion. But Justice and his family were so excited that I couldn’t help but give in even when I really didn’t want to go do anything.
Which was also why, twenty minutes later, I was looking in trepidation at the tube that Justice wanted me to get on with him.
“Are you sure that the tube can hold both of us?” I looked at the tube worriedly.
He showed me the handholds, then told me to just jump on, so I did.
The tube swung and spun around until I ended up being fifteen feet from the boat by the time it came to a lazy stop.
I watched with my lip caught between my teeth as he tugged the white t-shirt he was wearing off over his head, then tossed it to the seats behind him.
“Don’t scare her, Pop,” Justice said as he gave his father a pointed look.
Loki made a cross motion with his finger over his heart.
“I won’t,” he lied.
I knew he was lying, too.
I could see the evil in his gaze.
“I will seriously lose my shit if you hurt her,” Justice said just before jumping into the water.
When he came back up, he flipped his head to the side, making his hair sling water with his movements.
It was the single most-sexiest thing I’d ever seen him do.
And then he got onto the tube, using his muscled arms to heft himself into position after swimming to me.
I stood corrected.
Seeing him all wet and hot and mine as he got on that tube made me feel things I wasn’t sure I should be feeling with his mother and father ten feet away.
“Ready?” he asked as he shook the tube as he got into position.
“Yes,” I replied hesitantly. “I guess.”
He grinned at me, and my heart started to speed up.
“Your grin is downright dangerous,” I informed him.
Then I let out a startled squeak when the tube jerked sharply to the left, almost upending me in the process.
“Hold on, Princess,” he teased. “You don’t want to get off the ride before it even starts.”
His hold on my ass had me wiggling all over again.
“You’re awful,” I told him, jerking my gaze forward when we started to pick up speed. “I can’t breathe.”
The life vest I had on was a size too small, and I was fairly sure that I was hyperventilating due to Justice’s smile.
“It’ll be okay, Royal,” he told me. “Ready?”
“For what?” I asked, just as a shriek followed that up.
Moments later, I was holding on for dear life as the tube slung us this direction and that. Up and down over waves, around and around we went.
At one point I started laughing so hard I was crying, and then the tube went airborne.
That was all I needed.
Seconds after that, I went flying into the air and hit the water with a solid thump.
I came back up gasping, thankful that I had my too-small life vest on now.
And not once did I think about what was swimming in the water underneath of me.
***
Justice
She was beautiful.
So beautiful, in fact, that every time I saw her smile my heart chose to thump hard in my chest.
“I like her,” my mom said as I drove the boat.
This time it was with Royal and my father riding.
I took it easy at first, knowing that my dad would help her stay on, but she was getting good, and it proved unnecessary.
“I do, too,” I admitted. “A lot.”
“She’s really easy to get along with, too,” Mom continued, her eyes pointed at the tube behind us. “I never really thought that you’d find someone that was so easy to get along with.”
My brows rose as I turned to her. “What’s that mean?”
Mom pulled up her phone and started to take a video, laughing along with me when Dad turned the tube so that Royal was splashed with a wave of water.
“I mean,” she said. “You always go for the high maintenance ones.”
I knew which high maintenance one she was talking about.
“When she came over to the house after we saw her in town,” I said. “She acted like nothing had changed. Like we could just pick up where we left off.”
“Your Royal cleared her of that notion, though,” she drawled.
I snorted. “I don’t think that she knew she was doing it at the time. She staked a claim and there was no beating around the bush.”
“I hated her,” Mom said. “But Royal? I could see her being the mom to my grandbabies.”
I took a hard turn with the boat and watched the tube hit a wave and become airborne.
Both of them managed to stay on, though water hit them both full-on in the face.
“I can see that, too,” I admitted. “I think I’m falling for her.”
My mother placed her hand over my head, then stood up while holding onto the boat and said, “My turn, Justice. Dump ‘em.”
So I did what my mother told me to do.
I dumped them.
The next wave they hit wasn’t as forgiving as the first.
One second, they were both holding on, and the next they were flung sideways.
Dad came up first, but with the way the boat was turned, I couldn’t quite see where Royal was.
In fact, it took me so long to find her that I started to freak out a slight bit.
When I found her, she was laughing.
But my heart was still just as fucked up as it’d been a minute before.
I swallowed hard when we finally made it to her, pressing my hand hard over my heart for a short second as she climbed inside.
“That, my boy, isn’t ‘almost.’ You’re full-blown gone for her,” Mom teased as she jumped into the lake, nearly on top of my dad.
“What was that about?” Royal asked as she plopped into the seat my mom had just vacated.
I swallowed hard, not telling her that the minute that I couldn’t find her had been one of the scariest experiences of my life.
For sixty entire seconds, I thought of her gone from my life.
And for sixty seconds, I’d wondered how the hell I would survive without her.
Now that was scary.
The idea of no longer having her on this Earth with me was downright terrifying.
“She wanted to ride,” I grinned, trying to play off my terror. “You hung on a lot harder than she expected.”
Royal beamed as if I’d just told her the secret to life.
“I’m glad you asked me to come with you,” she admitted. “If you hadn’t insisted, I would’ve still been at home, ignorant to what was waiting for me out there.”
I pulled her into my side and pressed a kiss to her forehead, forcing her to practically vacate her chair before I let her go.
“Ready!” my father hollered.
I put the boat in gear and started forward once again, incredibly aware that life had just changed completely for me.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she pushed.
I swallowed, then nodded. “Yeah, I had a moment with my mom. That’s all.”
She looked as if she was about to argue, but something on my face must’ve dissuaded her, because she turned around and watched as I drug my parents on the tube.
But, an hour later when we were posted up on the raft that was as big as the boat smack dab in the middle of the lake, I was still feeling that worry.
Worry that I had a feeling was now a permanent resident inside my heart.
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***
Hours later, I was on the couch in my parents’ living room, feet propped up on an ottoman, and Royal laying lengthwise along the couch, her head pillowed on my lap.
Her face was the cutest shade of pink due to us not applying enough sunscreen, and her hair was a matted mess strewn all along my lap.
“I wish I had hair like hers,” Mom said softly, bringing my attention to her.
I picked up a strand of her hair, loving the way the long locks slipped between my fingers.
“It’s beautiful,” I admitted. “That was the first thing that I noticed when I saw her across the street working. Her hair. It was piled up in a big, messy bun on top of her head. Ninety-nine percent of her body had been covered. She was wearing these big, baggy coveralls that left quite a bit to the imagination. And her hair was like a shining beacon in the middle of a dirty shop.”
My dad looked over at me and tipped his beer in my direction. “That was kind of poetic. Did you lose your balls when you moved to Kilgore?”
I would’ve tossed the pillow from behind Royal had I not worried I’d wake her up by taking it.
Dinner was in an hour—we’d ordered pizza—but for now, there was no reason she couldn’t sleep. Plus, I enjoyed having her close.
I loved the way she felt cuddled up against me.
“Yes,” I said. “As a matter of fact, that’s something you have to give up to get on the police force there in Kilgore.”
Dad grinned and tipped back the rest of his beer, draining it before standing and saying, “Anyone else want another one?”
I shook my head, then glanced down at the woman that was closely becoming a big piece of my heart.
“Not yet,” I said.
And I wasn’t sure if I was talking to my father about the beer, or myself about the fact that I wanted Royal to stay as mine. Forever.
Chapter 18
Everyone’s brave until they figure out the roach has wings.
-Fact of Life
Royal
I fell in love with his parents.
I fell in love with them almost the same instant that I fell in love with their son.
I wasn’t sure how it happened.
One second, I was loading our stuff up to leave, and the next Channing was giving me a big hug and saying that she couldn’t wait to see me again.
Make Me Page 14
