Chase Hooper Likes It Hot (Goose Run #3)

Chapter 1

CHASE

Night shift at Goose Run Gas sucked. Like, not that it was a particularly exciting career or fulfilling choice during the daylight hours either, but at night it was worse, because I was expected to restock the shelves and clean.

And I didn’t mind either of those things usually, but I’d been avoiding the stockroom, which was also where the cleaning supplies were kept, ever since I’d spotted a rat in there.

Which also sucked because the stockroom was where I sneaked away to take naps.

Fucking rats, though. Just thinking about them made my skin crawl.

Danny, my coworker and housemate, breezed in at just before six to take over, shrugging his jacket off. “Hey. Chips are looking a little light.”

“Yeah,” I said, my spine cracking as I levered myself out of the seat behind the register for the first time in hours. “Got busy, sorry. I didn’t get a chance to refill them.”

Danny’s gaze slid over me in a way that said he knew I was full of shit but he didn’t call me on it. He was pretty fucking awesome like that. “No issues overnight?”

“Nah.” Not much happened at Goose Run Gas.

Ever. Hell, last night I’d only had three people come into the store at all—most drivers who stopped for gas just swiped their cards at the pumps and then kept on going, speeding off into the night without a backward glance.

I couldn’t blame them. There wasn’t much to look at around this place.

One of the people had wandered in on foot, tweaking all over the place, but he’d paid for his beer and hadn’t tried to rob the place, so that was cool.

I’d also had a trucker stop and ask for the bathroom key, and the asshole didn’t even buy anything.

The third had been a guy on an emergency run for diapers who hadn’t wanted to go all the way to Brodnax in the middle of the night.

He’d been wearing his pajamas and barely mumbled more than a few words as he’d paid.

So no, no issues overnight.

It had been boring as hell, actually, and made me wish Bobby would put me back on day shifts. Like, you call one customer a raging asshole—okay, a bunch of different customers—and punch one—yes, just one—and suddenly you’re being told you’re nocturnal now? That was fucking unfair.

I took my jacket off the back of the chair and put it on.

I zipped it up, wrenching the zipper past the section that always caught.

I needed a new one, but I was hoping this one would get me through to when the weather got warmer because working minimum wage at Goose Run Gas didn’t exactly leave me with a lot of money left over.

Not that I was complaining, since compared to a few years ago I was living the fucking high life, but it was just one of those things, you know?

It would have been nice to walk into Walmart and buy a new jacket just because the old one was wearing out and not have to worry it’d leave me short for something else.

I looked around the gas station because I had a weird feeling I’d forgotten something, but no, it looked the same as always and I was too tired to care that much anyway.

I said goodbye to Danny and stepped outside into the cold morning air.

It was still dark, though the sky was turning a little lighter at the edges.

Cash’s dirt bike was parked around the back of the gas station, and I had to rev it a couple of times to get it to catch.

One okayish thing about night work was that I got to use the dirt bike more often since Cash’s shifts over at the old people’s home in Brodnax mostly didn’t clash with mine when I was on graveyards, so I didn’t have to use the bicycle Bobby had gotten me.

I liked the bicycle fine, except on cold mornings, because the wind whipped right through me on the ride from the gas station all the way into town.

It did on the dirt bike too, but the trip home was a hell of a lot quicker.

It didn’t take long to get from the gas station to Goose Run.

It was a blur of overgrown fields and trees and then the town itself.

I turned off to cross the old bridge before I even reached the part of town that had streetlights.

The streets at this end of Goose Run were dark and wide, with cracked asphalt bleeding into dirt edges, and the dirt bike’s headlight showed me about a thousand potholes to dodge.

I pulled into the driveway behind Wilder’s truck, then walked the bike up to the side of the house so I wasn’t blocking anyone in.

Wilder was a housemate. Miller wasn’t, but his car was there too, and it stood out like a sore thumb since it was nicer than anything any of us drove.

Miller was Danny’s boyfriend. He was an attorney in Hopewell, but he spent at least half his nights here in Goose Run. He was pretty decent, for a lawyer.

The house was still quiet and dark when I let myself in, the floorboards creaking under my feet.

There was no sign of Wilder on the folded-out couch in the living room, so I cracked Gracie’s door a fraction to check she wasn’t here either.

Gracie was Wilder’s kid. Her bed was empty, the comforter pulled up neatly.

Both of them must have stayed over at Avery’s place next door again.

That was becoming about as regular as Miller staying over here.

I didn’t love it, which I knew made me the asshole. Just, first Miller was here all the time, and then Wilder and Gracie weren’t, and it made me worry that Cash and I had gotten too comfortable here. That there were even bigger changes coming, and they wouldn’t be good news for us.

Or maybe that was the night shift talking. Being awake and alone all night gave me too much time to think the worst, and being tired made everything seem shittier than it maybe was.

Slipping into the bedroom I shared with Cash at the back of the house, I unzipped my jacket.

I swore when it got caught and I scraped my knuckles against the metal track.

I pulled it off over my head instead, then undid my shoes and jeans, left my clothes in a bundle on the floor, and crawled under the covers in just my boxers.

Then I stared at the wall for a while. Dawn was here now, and I couldn’t fool myself that it was night anymore. Couldn’t flip that sleep switch in my brain, and I knew I’d lie here for hours scowling into my pillow just like every day for the last week.

And then I heard the rustle of Cash’s blankets, and that was all it took for my body to release some of its tension because a moment later he crawled into bed behind me and bumped his forehead against my shoulder. His hand settled on my hip, and his breathing evened out.

“Did you sleep last night?” I asked him in a low voice.

He made a sound that was intentionally vague.

And no, of course he hadn’t. Which was another thing I hated about night shifts. Cash didn’t sleep without me beside him. He never had. And when he did crash out through sheer fatigue, his nightmares were always worse when I wasn’t there.

I rolled over onto my back, and Cash snuggled closer, resting his head on my chest so he could fall asleep listening to my heartbeat, same as he had even before we were born. I put my arm around him and closed my eyes.

It wasn’t until I was right on the brink of sleep that I remembered what had been itching at the back of my skull since I’d finished work: Brown Jacket Guy had been a no-show.

Brown Jacket Guy was back the next night, shuffling into Goose Run Gas right around three in the morning, all hunched up in his jacket with bags under his eyes big enough to swallow him.

And he was a pretty big guy. He was about my height, but he was solid.

He had some heft to him and a bit of pudge around his gut, and he wore it well.

He was broad across the shoulders, and he looked strong.

He was tan, with dark eyes and scruffy dark hair, and he came in at three every morning and bitched about stale pastries at the kiosk and the gross taste of the coffee.

Like, fuck him, you know? The gross-tasting coffee was meant to train people not to buy it so that I didn’t have to keep making it.

And of course the pastries were stale. They weren’t super fresh when we got them and most of them had been out for nearly twenty-four hours by that point, and they were in a display case, not a stasis chamber.

I slouched against the counter of the little coffee kiosk, unwilling to commit to stepping in behind it and firing the machine up when, if all our previous interactions were any indication, he’d only end up buying a Monster at the front register instead.

If I used the machine, I’d have to clean it, and that was some bullshit I didn’t want to deal with.

At all. So I gave Brown Jacket Guy a glare as he approached to inspect the pastries.

“How old are these?” he asked.

He knew how old they were. The pastries were delivered every morning at about six, so these were yesterday’s. I told him this every fucking time, but he still asked anyway, as though he thought the place in Brodnax that delivered them should start delivering in the middle of the night just for him.

“If they were puppies, their eyes would still be closed,” I said and rolled my eyes. “Dude, they’re stale as shit by now and we both know it. Why the fuck do you ask me that every time?”

He looked genuinely perplexed. “Why are you still selling them if they’re stale?”

“Because it’s not my fucking job to take them out,” I said. “The old ones get tossed when the new ones come in. Listen, I had a guy in here last night who bought the last two chocolate muffins way after midnight. If he was too stoned to notice they were as hard as rocks, that’s not my problem.”

And besides, I avoided the trip to the dumpster as much as I could, but that was none of Brown Jacket Guy’s business.

Brown Jacket Guy gave the pastry case a dubious look. “They don’t look like they were even very good to start with.”