Keep It Classy

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  Then I counted to one hundred, hoping that would help.

  It didn’t.

  But what it did do was give my nose enough time to stop bleeding.

  I reached for my phone, thinking now would be a perfect time to call my best friend, Camryn, and tell her about my humiliation.

  But…it wasn’t there.

  I closed my eyes and realized what had happened.

  When those condoms had hit me in the face, I’d dropped my phone to immediately raise my hands to my nose. And in doing so, had left my phone wherever it happened to be when my hand had discarded it.

  Garnering the courage, I walked to the door and pushed.

  When I opened the door, bloody paper towel still in my hand in case it started to bleed again, it was to find the best backside in Gun Barrell, Texas blocking the door.

  “Uhhh,” I hesitated. “’Scuse me.”

  Ezra turned around, saw my face, and blanched.

  “Are you okay?”

  He was looking at me like he’d never seen me before.

  To be perfectly honest, he probably hadn’t.

  I wasn’t exactly in Ezra McDuff’s social circle.

  I was more like that quiet girl in the corner at a party, while Ezra was the town hero and star quarterback all rolled into one.

  The sad thing was, we worked at the same damn place. We probably passed each other in the halls half a dozen times every school day, if not more.

  He was also staring right at me, and I was finding it hard to breathe.

  I’d dreamed of this day so many times.

  So. Many. Times.

  In high school I used to sit behind him, studying his every move.

  When I’d been a junior, and he’d been a senior, we had our first class together.

  My last name started with a C, and his with an M. But, since he couldn’t sit in the back thanks to some rule that the coach of the football team at the time had made, he’d had to move to the front, and I’d been pushed back a chair.

  And, by doing so, I’d gotten to see his every single feature for an entire year.

  Which had been how my infatuation with the man had begun.

  At first, it’d only been my appreciation of his body.

  He was six-foot-four, muscled, and strapping.

  He was also funny, intelligent, and sweet.

  He was a caregiver. He was a nurturer. And he also had no clue that I was alive, even then.

  Now, he’d grown up quite a bit from that boy that I used to obsess over, but he was still no less captivating.

  Today, he was in a simple pair of jeans—covered in dirt and grime from whatever he was doing—probably working on his old truck that he got in high school, and still drove on Sundays to this day.

  His white t-shirt was stained, too.

  And he had grease on his cheekbone.

  His dirty blond hair was longer than normal, and some of it fell into his eyes. Those eyes that were a mix between a golden honey and a seafoam green.

  At times, I wasn’t able to tell which color was more prevalent, but I’d decided long ago that it was dependent on the color of shirt he was wearing at the time.

  I swallowed when I got a load of the newest tattoo that peeked out from under his shirt sleeve.

  It looked like a sugar skull, but honestly, I wasn’t really sure without actually pulling his shirt sleeve up and looking. And that was creepy. I tried not to be creepy.

  “Ma’am?”

  I gritted my teeth.

  He didn’t even know who I was, but I could tell that I was familiar to him, at least somewhat.

  He was studying me like he was trying to place how he knew me.

  How about school from kindergarten up to my junior year. He had been two years older than me, and since the town of Gun Barrell was so small, the bus route had kids that ranged from kindergarten all the way up to seniors in high school. How about college? I knew Oklahoma State is a big campus, but he never saw me there even once? How about work? He never noticed me at all?

  Dammit!

  “I’m fine,” I lied.

  In all honesty, I was thoroughly embarrassed.

  I was also sick at heart.

  I had this idea in my mind that maybe I wasn’t quite as invisible as I always felt like I was at times.

  Apparently, if the football coach, who knew everybody didn’t even know me, then I was a lost cause.

  I smiled.

  He winced.

  That’s because the movement forced the clot that had stopped the bleeding in my nose to break loose.

  Blood trickled down my face.

  And I decided now was the time to go.

  That was when I looked down.

  At my phone. In his hand.

  He was holding it out to me.

  I took it with shaking fingers as I placed the towel back to my face.

  Then, to add insult to injury, I looked down to find my phone not only open but the book I’d been immersed in reading still up.

  My cheeks flamed.

  There was no way, with him holding it like he had been, that he hadn’t scanned what it was that was on the screen.

  None.

  And what it was, was my latest book club read, a BDSM romance that had immediately grabbed my attention. Then kept it.

  Oh. Shit.

  “Thank you,” I murmured, my face likely matching the blood that was probably staining my skin.

  Then, I took my bloody towel, my phone, and hightailed it straight out of Target before I could do anything else stupid.

  I also pretended that he didn’t see me hit the door on the way out.

  Because then I might’ve just crawled into a hole and died.

  ***

  “This isn’t the first time I’ve ever heard of someone getting a black eye from something pertaining to Ezra McDuff’s dick,” Camryn supplied.

  I flipped her off.

  “Go fuck yourself,” I grumbled. “Is it really that bad?”

  She winced. “It’s not…good.”

  With my pale complexion, paired with my inky black hair…I didn’t doubt that it was more than obvious that I not only had one shiner, but two.

  From a box of condoms.

  How does that even happen?

  But I shouldn’t be surprised. Bad things happened to Raleigh Jolie Crusie. Always had. Always would.

  Snitches Get Stitches

  Book 8 of The Bear Bottom Guardians MC

  4-9-19

  Prologue I

  I don’t think the therapist is supposed to say ‘wow’ that many times during a session.

  -Coffee Cup

  Liner

  2 years ago

  I stared at my good friend with a thoughtful expression.

  “Why is Tara being all nice and shit?” I asked softly.

  Rome shrugged and looked over his shoulder at Tara, who hadn’t immediately screamed at us as she walked out the door.

  She’d smiled sadly, waved, and disappeared into her bedroom.

  “Her eyes are different.” Rome said. “I think she’s wearing contacts.”

  I’d noticed something different about her, but now that I thought back to it, I realized that it might’ve been her eyes.

  I tried not to look at or anger Tara in any way. And we all knew that I did and would if I engaged her in any way. I just couldn’t help it. Tara was such a bitch to Rome, and even to their kid, Matias.

  It was hard to see a kid treated like that, because then I’d think about my own childhood, and get all the angrier.

  Needless to say, Tara was a crazy Bitch with a capital B. Rome had really picked a winner to have a kid with, that was for sure.

  “I didn’t notice,” I said. “Other than the fact that she didn’t storm out of here and bitch about our coasters.”

  Rome grunted and pointed toward the coffee table where Matias’ drink, a glass of chocolate m
ilk, was sitting on the coffee table. Without, might I add, a coaster.

  That was so unlike Tara that it had my eyes narrowing in surprise.

  “What the fuck?” I asked.

  “No clue,” Rome murmured. “And I’m not rocking the boat. It was nice to walk in here and not be treated like I was a piece of shit or the antichrist.”

  Or yelled at. Or a punching bag.

  There was that one time that I’d walked in on Tara going to town on Rome, calling him every name in the book, all the while little Matias watched on from the couch.

  I snorted. “That’s the truth.”

  Tara hadn’t even yelled at me, which she would have under normal circumstances. She hated me. Despised. Loathed.

  There wasn’t a single piece of her that didn’t dislike everything there was about me and more.

  Hell, all I had to do was look at her as we took our trash out at the same time for her to lose it.

  As it stood, today’s Tara had only given me a wary look and walked away when she realized she wasn’t needed any longer.

  “I guess yell if you need me, then,” I murmured as I headed for the door. “Doesn’t seem like you need a buffer today.”

  Rome nodded and went to the couch where his son was lying, watching How to Train Your Dragon.

  “Thanks man,” he said. “Appreciate it.”

  I walked out of the house, but the rest of the day I kept my wary eye on the place, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  Yet it never did.

  It was about five hours later, an hour past when Tara would’ve normally kicked Rome out without thought or care, that I got curious.

  What the hell had happened to Tara, and who had replaced her?

  First, she doesn’t lose her shit when we go inside—like she normally would have.

  Then she doesn’t leave, storm out like her ass is on fire.

  Followed by her leaving him alone the entire freakin’ time, allowing Rome to spend time with Matias without worry that Tara would slam inside, losing her shit, and demanding him to get out hours before his time was up.

  And now? The icing on the ‘holy shit, she’s acting somewhat normal’ cake? She allowed him to stay past his normal four hours.

  That was a miracle in and of itself.

  Which was why I was curious.

  So fuckin’ curious.

  What the hell was going on that she was acting like a decent human being for once?

  Which was the reason I was now on my back deck, staring in Tara’s bedroom window.

  I’d learned really early on that I could do this. When I’d bought the house next door, it was because the house was too close to mine. I hated people being that close to me, but I’d wanted my house. It’d been my grandmother’s, and I’d grown up in my house. But as I’d grown older, and life had happened, I’d started to get an aversion to people—especially when it came to my domain.

  After having one too many asshole neighbors in the rental next door, I’d made the owners an offer they couldn’t refuse.

  Needless to say, I’d seen my fair share of weird shit off of my back porch—hey, it wasn’t my fault that the neighbors never put up blinds—but what I saw when I looked inside her windows wasn’t what I expected.

  She was just sitting there, on her bed, crying.

  Not loud, wracking sobs.

  Silent tears that coursed down her cheeks like tiny rivers, slow and steady.

  I felt my heart pinch, and I hated that.

  Hated that I felt sorry for the woman. Hated that I even cared.

  Usually, I didn’t.

  Tara’s attitude was bad enough that most of the time I didn’t have to work at hating her at all.

  Only, now that I was sitting there watching her cry? Yeah, that was a tough thing for me to accomplish at that moment in time.

  And when she looked up, eyes of vivid blue, unearthly blue.

  I’d never in my life seen eyes that blue.

  That brilliant.

  They almost seemed unearthly as they shimmered with tears and seemed to be locked directly on me.

  Even though it was highly doubtful that she knew that I was there. I was deep in the shadows of my porch, and there was no way in hell that she knew I was staring at her.

  Yet she got up, wiped her eyes, and walked directly toward the window as if she did know.

  She pressed her forehead against it, then closed those ghostly inhuman eyes and continued to weep.

  I’d never in my life wanted to go to someone more than I did right then.

  But I didn’t.

  I did, however, watch.

  And only when her phone beeped, and she nodded her head, looking sick to her stomach, did I stop looking.

  But that was only because she disappeared into the house and didn’t come back.

  And the next day, when I saw Tara taking out her trash, I made sure to look at her eyes.

  They weren’t blue at all.

  They were brown. And soulless.