Young Buck: A Slow Burn Small Town Romance (Green Valley Heroes Book 5)

Chapter 16

“How the fuck does he do that?”

Huey threw his cards on the table in frustration. Grizz used both hands to pull another pile of winnings to his spot. It was a lazy Wednesday morning at the station. A slow day for calls and prep work done were perfect conditions for Grizz to cheat at cards.

“I lie better than you,” Grizz informed a sour-looking Dewey, who’d lost all his chips five minutes before Huey had.

“You cheat better than him,” Dewey grumbled.

“Hey—bluffing ain’t cheating,” Grizz seemed intent on pointing out.

I could hold my own at poker, but today I was off my game. My mind had been jumbled with thoughts of Hinckley and the tall man. I was down two hundred, twice as much as I’d ever been down in a firehouse game. Grizz wasn’t usually so good at taking my money.

Whenever I told myself to quit fixating on the stranger, my thoughts wandered to Loretta. I could still feel the weight of her in my arms. She’d tasted like sugar, and spice, and everything nice, and watching her work had been a turn-on. Ingenious women were my kink.

I thought of my middle school bedroom—of my poster of Hedy Lamarr. Intellect had always been the key to my heart. I’d already been taken by Loretta’s beauty and turned on by her moxie. But the stakeout had activated something else. Falling for Loretta was the only way to explain me kissing her, no matter what excuses I’d made.

“We in for another round, boys?” Grizz asked with more mischief. He began to stack and pile his chips.

“Let’s switch to blackjack,” I complained. “I wanna play a game I can win.”

Chuckles came from all around, except from Louie. He only ever smiled in my direction to make jokes at my expense.

“Blackjack it is,” Grizz replied.

“He cheats at that game too,” Dan pointed out sagely. Still, he threw in his ante.

“You think you can beat Grizz with that lightning-fast intellect of yours?”

Louie’s comment was directed toward me. He’d done the math on the advanced pace of my schooling and couldn’t let go of me being so young. He was an overgrown version of the kind of kid I’d hated growing up—the kind who treated smart like a four-letter word. And he was still going on with the electricity jokes.

“I like my chances,” I came back.

“Let’s hope so. Poker sure ain’t your game.”

“Winning poker has nothing to do with intellect.” I watched Grizz shuffle the cards. “You just need to know who’s full of shit.”

The game got going, and I started to count cards. Single-deck was easy. Keeping track of the high-low felt comforting in my heightened state of agitation. When I got all spun up like this, it helped to have something to occupy my mind.

“I ran into an old buddy of yours,” Louie went on.

I flipped my gaze upward. Old buddies were something I’d never had—a natural consequence of starting high school before I started puberty and graduating college in two-and-a-half years. A stunted social life was part of what made me want to be a firefighter in a house rather than an administrator like Forrest Winters. The brotherhood meant something to me.

“Who’s that?” I pretended to look again at my card that was turned over.

“Jason Schneider.”

I kept my expression blank. Jason Schneider had never been my friend.

“Yeah, I knew him back at the academy.” My voice was impassive.

“I guess that was before your tasing days. Sounds like they had a different nickname for you back then.” Louie’s smirk tightened into a sneer. “Mr. Freeze.”

“Like the superhero.” I tapped the table for a hit. “Genius level intellect; resilience to extreme temperatures; the ability to freeze out assholes...”

“That’s an interesting interpretation,” Louie said too casually, building up to what I knew to expect. “Jason said they called you that ’cause you freeze up on the job. As in, stop short in the middle of a call.”

It was a reputation that, thankfully, hadn’t followed me to Crosby—one it seemed I hadn’t quite outrun. I had a way of visualizing the inner workings of entire scenes. To some people, it looked like fear, but to me, I was just figuring—an insurance policy that I was taking the right approach.

“If, by freezing, you mean thinking all the way through an entry, then I guess I live up to my name.”

Louie went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “He said you had the longest reaction time of anyone in your class.”

“Did he also mention I had the shortest cycle time to resolution?”

“No, but he did say one of your stunts nearly got you kicked out.”

I wanted to point out that I wouldn’t have been promoted to lieutenant, let alone at such a young age, if there were doubts about my abilities—that I’d had twice as much to prove. But I couldn’t say anything like that, just in case Louie knew the other dirt on me. The one thing that got to me even more than questions about my age were claims that I’d gotten a pass because of who my father was.

“Sounds like you and my old buddy had a real good conversation.” I kept my voice even. The other guys had gotten quiet, watching the exchange. Grizz frowned openly at Louie. The others looked curiously between us.

“It was shocking, really.” Louie took another bold dig.

I didn’t clap back even though turning the other cheek was getting me nowhere with him. While the other guys were warming to me, Louie was doubling down. Six weeks of Louie’s alpha-male bullshit was about five weeks more than I had the patience to deal with. And I was just about ready to take him down a notch.

Twenty minutes later,everyone’s money was saved by the bell when a call came in and half of us had to jump—a fire alarm pull at Green Valley Elementary. More often than not, calls into schools were the handiwork of kids trying to get out of a test. Grizz had assigned Louie to go with him while Dan and I stayed behind, for my benefit, I suspected.

Sirens that grew fainter confirmed the others’ retreat. I was grateful for the respite and considered a nap. The bunk room had blackout curtains and comfortable beds. I could get forty-five minutes if I went in now.

“You gonna keep letting him do you like that?” Dan asked the question as I rose from the table. “I was waiting for you to hand Louie his ass.”

“Can’t say I’m feeling too sharp this morning,” I replied.

After failing for three hours to read myself to sleep, I’d gone for a two a.m. run, then spent another hour and a half staring at my ceiling. I’d finally nodded off at six-thirty only to be woken up by the alarm at seven-fifteen.

“I’m guessing you being up all night had something to do with a woman,” Dan said cheekily. “And not the kind of little lady I have at home.”

Dan had an adorable little girl at home, a toddler with her father’s dark hair and her mother’s curls.

“Not one woman. Two.”

Dan’s eyebrows shot up. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for the type.”

I threw him a look. “One of the women in question happens to be my mother.”

Dan let out a low whistle. “That’s no good, brother—your momma and your woman. Tell me they’re not ganging up on you.”

“They don’t even know each other. And, technically she’s not my woman.”

“But you want her to be . . . ,” he prodded.

“I don’t know if she thinks about me that way.”

I made no mention of how she’d melted into my embrace and how her lips had welcomed mine and how, after I pulled back, she’d looked dizzy, not mad.

“Well, don’t take too long to figure it out,” Dan advised. “A lot of suffering in this world comes from people who keep secrets that ought to have been told.”

My thoughts bounced back to my momma and the tall stranger from Hinckley.

“You can say that again.”