Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Bexley
“ E xplain it to me like I’m five,” Ava said through my car speakers, and I turned the volume down on them in case she repeated anything I told her.
We’d all been there, pulled up at the lights with someone on their in-car system next to us, every word of their conversation broadcasted to the people around them. There was no way in hell I was risking it.
“You guys were in the process of bumping uglies—”
“Bumping what?”
“Doing the nasty,” she explained, and it clicked.
“I mean, I didn’t get to see his penis during it, but I did before then, and it isn’t ugly. I guess no penis is good looking—”
“Or vagina,” she interrupted, and I had to agree with her.
“I haven’t held a mirror up to my own rose garden, but I’m gonna agree with that,” I shuddered.
“Really? I’ve looked at mine. How do you check to see if you trimmed the bushes equally?”
I blinked at the car in front of me, hoping that we pulled away soon. How many people could hear this ?
“I don’t have bushes, per se, more like shrubs—”
“Amen on the non-bush gardens. Imagine if it was super bushy putting a tampon in?”
I grimaced, just as movement to the left of me caught my attention.
The first thing I saw was Tom Townsend staring down at me from the truck beside me, his sunglasses lowered so that he was looking over the top of them. His mom was also grinning over his shoulder, her body shaking as she laughed.
Like that wasn’t bad enough, she gestured with her thumb behind her at the sidewalk, making me glad I couldn’t see who was there.
Smiling weakly, I looked to my right to break the awkward eye contact and then groaned. My freaking dad was staring at me with his mouth open and cheeks bright red, holding up the toilet plunger I’d asked him to pick up for me, like he was going to throw it at Pops’ car.
And, oh, it got so much worse the more I looked.
Standing next to him was Logan’s dad, who was staring down at his feet like he was trying to pretend he wasn’t there. It was Logan’s grandad, though, who was the reason that my foot hit the accelerator when the car behind me beeped.
Why? Because he was standing next to Hurst, his head tipped back as he laughed his ass off, waving a pair of shears in his hand, reminding me was headed over to mine after I got off to help me cut back the bushes in the front and back yards.
As soon as I heard that beep, my foot pressed down, and I shot off from my spot…
Right into the back of the car in front of me.
Which belonged to my mother.
I’d been so focused on the conversation with Ava that I hadn’t seen her. I’d later find out she’d been waving and tapping her brake to get my attention, and that pretty much everyone who shouldn’t have heard our conversation about vaginascaping had.
Fifteen minutes later…
“You know, when I asked you to come and see me, I didn’t mean for you to do it like this,” Logan said behind me, where I was standing next to Mom as Dad checked over both our vehicles.
Yes, they were still looking at the damage because that’s what a group of men with nothing else to do did, apparently. One looked and made a noise, then the next one looked, then the next. Then they discussed it and weighed up their opinions, before going back to do it all over again.
The relief at having him there was immense, but I also felt guilty that he’d had to leave whatever he’d been working on since he’d left the house. To be fair, I’d specifically said not to worry him, but I guess Naomi decided he needed to know.
So, spinning around, I face planted against his chest, squeaking when I didn’t encounter him but instead headbutted his body armor vest thingy, which was as solid as a rock.
“Yeah, that probably didn’t feel so good,” he murmured, rubbing my back soothingly.
“It feels like I headbutted a superhero,” I replied, smiling when his chest moved as he laughed. It didn’t feel so great as the vest moved up and down my face, but I had an ear-to-chest front-row seat for his laughter, and I’d had a shitty day.
“Wanna tell me what happened?”
“Not really,” I replied honestly.
Doing that would mean I had to explain how it happened, and hadn’t I suffered enough?
Instead, I changed the subject and poked the pocket on the front of the vest. “Is that a bullet?”
“Nope, it’s a device we attach to the vest with a small light that flashes in the dark. A few months ago, the mayor suggested we keep loose bullets in there instead of the pockets on our pants, but he has shit for brains and doesn’t know what he’s doing. If we got shot and it hit one, can you imagine what would happen?”
I didn’t like that reply at all. “You get shot?”
“It’s happened,” Carter interrupted behind me. “We kind of get judged on the actions of others, so not everyone wants to play with us when we stop them or go to speak to them. Their response tends to be a gun—”
“Or fucking tear gas bombs,” Logan growled, reminding me of what had happened to him not long ago.
Still, it was his job, and I knew supporting him was better for Logan than getting pissy about stuff he had no control over. He was a deputy who worked to keep the town safe from assholes.
“Did you manage to sort out whatever happened last night?”
His arms tightened as he stiffened at the question, but it was Carter who replied. “Fucking Mayor.”
I hadn’t had a lot to do with Dirk Kirkwood, the Mayor of Piersville, since he’d taken up the position, but I remembered him well from when I was a kid.
He was the guy who came out yelling if you cycled down his street laughing, called the police if you were on a skateboard, and advocated for his sons to get high profile recognition here and in the next town over.
Doesn’t sound so bad? I guess not, unless you look at the fact that he’d turned a blind eye to how much shit his sons did and then greased the palms of officials when they were caught. One of them was now a lawyer and a total asshole, and the other one was getting the biggest building contracts in the area somehow.
Let’s also add into it that he was shooting buds with the longest-serving Piersville judge, so anything he had a vested interest in here happened how he wanted it to.
In short: he was a dick when I was younger, he was a dick now, and how he’d become Mayor was highly suspicious.
Turning my head so that I was facing Carter, I saw him glaring at the ground. “Is there anything we can do to help? ”
His answer was simple. “Yeah, don’t vote the cock or his fuckhead sons in again. That whole family belongs behind bars.”
Coming up beside us, my parents, Bill, and Hurst all chimed in with their agreements. Logan didn’t say a word throughout it all, he just continued to rub up and down my back in soothing, slow movements.
Tilting my head back to watch him, I took in the dark circles under his eyes and the tension in his face. “You need some sleep, dude.”
Lowering his head, he gave me a smile that had zero power behind it, just exhaustion. “No shit. I also need assholes to stop fucking around, but so far, they seem dedicated to doing just that.”
“Is there anything I can do to help you?”
The question had been an innocent one, but the way his eyes softened and lowered to my mouth proved he hadn’t taken it that way. His answer backed it up. “Tonight. No interruptions, no phone calls, just you and me tonight.”
If I was a lady, I might have been offended by how certain he sounded that it’d happen. Thankfully I was no lady, and my coochie was a whore who would’ve screamed ‘ Yes! ’ if she could. “I like the sound of that.”
He was just opening his mouth to say something when Dad asked, “Weren’t you due back in school?”
Apparently, the news train only choo-choo’d quickly with juicy gossip here, because I’d have thought they’d all have known what’d happened as soon as it went down.
“There was a malfunction with the fire alarm system. The alarm started blaring out of nowhere, and the sprinklers in the offices and some classrooms went off. We vacated the school while it was checked to make sure there wasn’t a fire, but then they realized there was a problem anyway—not all of the sprinklers that went off were on the same circuit. We also don’t know why it was triggered, so without a functioning and reliable fire alarm system until it’s fixed, we can’t be in the building. ”
“How old is the system?” Logan asked, sounding irritated by it all. “That’s dangerous.”
“Here’s the kicker—it’s eight months old. The school was ordered to upgrade its system last year, so Kirkwood took bids for the work and awarded it to—”
“Lemme guess, a company associated with his friends or family,” Hurst drawled, sharing a look with Bill.
“You should run for mayor, Hurst,” Dad suggested, and suddenly they all started talking again about what a great idea it was even though Hurst said he’d rather pluck his nose hairs with chopsticks.
Using their distraction, Logan leaned in and whispered, “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Huffing out a breath, I looked at Pops’ car sadly. “Yeah, just embarrassed and upset that I dinged his vehicle. It wasn’t that bad an accident, but I wanted to keep it the way he’d left it. Every time I drive it, I’m scared I’m going to do something like that, so I was really hoping my car would be here by now.”
“It means that much to you?”
Biting down on my lip, I realized how dumb it sounded, given that either Mom or I could’ve been hurt, but I couldn’t help it. “I learned to drive in his old truck, so when it broke down and couldn’t be repaired, he put it in the garage and made sure rust didn’t set in. He didn’t want to ever stop driving it because of the memories we had in it, so he sort of preserved it to keep those memories.
“Two years ago, I came home one weekend, and we went to find him a new one.” I pointed at the Toyota 4Runner. “That one. We took it out for a test drive together, drove around for a while after he bought it, had a picnic in the back while we discussed my job and plans for the future…” I swallowed back the tears that wanted to come out thinking about the memories. “He didn’t have it long, but he wanted memories of us in it, so every opportunity he got, that’s what we did.”
“I get it,” he sighed, surprising me. “I absolutely get it. The truck I used to drive us around in is in the barn behind my parents’ house. I couldn’t get rid of it when it broke down, either.”
“Well, I’ve got some good news for y’all,” Jarrod Klein announced, having joined us at some point during the aftermath of the incident. “It can be fixed, no problem.”
Okay, I’m not going to lie, every time I looked at Jarrod or his brothers, I got flustered. There was something magical in the water when those men were conceived, and they had the kind of hotness that made your brain just flatline. I don’t know how Katy did anything with him around because all I’d do is stare and drool.
Like I was doing right at that moment.
With my arms around Logan.
Oops .
A glance around showed that my Klein-predicament hadn’t gone unnoticed, so I didn’t dare look up to see what Logan’s expression was. Instead, I tried to wing it.
“Oh my God,” I cried, pulling away from Logan as much as I could with his arms still around me. “That’s just amazing news. You’re a total lifesaver, Jarrod. In fact, I’m going to get you a whole box of them so that every time you eat one, you remember how awesome you are. A lifesaver.” Then, looking at my parents, I asked, “Isn’t he fabulous? He’s a—”
“Lifesaver,” Logan said dryly. “Yeah, we got that, baby.”
Rubbing my lips together, I looked at Mom for help, whose shoulders were shaking enough to move Dad. Then again, a quick look at him showed that was probably because he was laughing, too.
And out of the corner of my eye, I could see that pretty much everyone was doing the same thing.
Fuck’s sake, Bexley .
Changing my expression to plead with her to save me, I stared Mom down. Did she help me? Did she hell. The woman just mouthed, smoothly done .
So, clearing my throat, I focused back on Jarrod, managing to only have a brain fart for ten seconds this time. That didn’t mean I was home clear, though. No, my brain kicked in and told me to make arrangements for the vehicle to be fixed. It told me to ask questions about it and do adult shit like that. But then I started second-guessing all of it.
When you’re in an accident, and a hot guy says he’ll fix it, do you shake his hand as you make arrangements ?
Was it bad form to shake his hand ?
If the answer to the previous question was yes— was I supposed to hug him ?
Would I survive making contact with him ?
Did he have deliciously rough hands from his job ?
How would they compare to his brothers’ hands ?
What —
A small cough interrupted my panicked brain interrogation. “Is it safe to drive to Ren’s?” Logan asked, sounding a mixture of amused and pissed.
How could anyone be two polar opposite emotions ?
“Yeah, it’s just the bumper, grille, and light that are damaged. I can call Cole and get him to bring out the tow truck, though, if it’s easier?”
I didn’t trust myself not to say something that didn’t come from either my stupid or my hussy sides, so I stayed mute and looked up at Logan.
“I think I’d be happier with that,” he nodded.
“And Mrs. Heath, yours is the back bumper, light, and your trunk’s dented. That’ll be easy to fix, too.”
For all of the laughter and shit she’d given me only a minute ago, Mom’s cheeks turned red, and she giggled. My mom freaking giggled . Not a normal one, but with her head down and her hand over her mouth, like a teenager.
“That’s great news, Jarrod. If you could do my bumper—” her head snapped up at the same time she shut her mouth, quick enough for her teeth to make a noise when they hit each other as she realized what she’d just said. “I mean, my bumper is yours to—” she looked up at Dad, begging him to stop her from saying anything else.
Crossing his arms over his chest, he raised an eyebrow at her. “You were saying, Lorena?”
Glancing from Jarrod to Dad and back again, Mom open and closed her mouth as she thought through what she could say that didn’t sound even slightly perverse after that.
Finally, she just shook her head. “I can’t. No matter what I say, it sounds like I’m hitting on poor Jarrod.”
“Who’s hitting on Jarrod?” someone asked, and I swear my legs went a little bit weak at the realization it was one of his brothers.
Fortunately for me, I had Logan still holding me up. Unfortunately for Mom, she didn’t, so she swooned into Bill, knocking him into Hurst.
“That good, huh?” Dad asked, smirking at her.
Then she just made it all worse by reaching into her bag and pulling out an electric fan, turning it on, and aiming it at her face.
“We should get him to join us,” Carter mused to Logan. “Can you imagine getting a call out to a woman who didn’t want to comply? We’d just send him in, and it’d be done and dusted in seconds.”
I wanted to say he was joking, but his expression and tone said otherwise.
Logan agreed with him. “No shit. Maybe we should suggest it to DB and get him to talk to him?”
A Klein in a police uniform? Lord have mercy, I’d never survive it.
His brother Bond was standing close enough to hear the conversation. “If you ever need a hand, I’ve got a uniform I wore for a party once. It’s not like yours, more like it’s got Velcro down the legs and on the crotch, plus the badge is plastic and says ‘Sergeant Poon’ on it, but that might still work?”
“You’ve got a police stripper’s outfit?” I breathed .
“I guess you could call it that. I thought it was handy and easy to get out of in case I got drunk at the party.”
I couldn’t help it. I had to ask. “And was it?”
Bond flashed me a huge grin. “You bet your beautiful ass it was. One tug at the front, and off it came.”
I wasn’t going to survive this. Fortunately, I wasn’t the only woman in that predicament because Mom swayed again, and at the edge of our group, I saw Colette Townsend do the same.
“Hold the fu— funky chicken up,” a new voice snapped, and we all turned to see Tony, who I’d met recently, with one of his daughters holding his hand. “You mean to tell me that the sh— shama lama ding dong you wore at Halloween was a motherf—” he stopped and growled, frowning down at his daughter, who was one of the cutest little kids I’d ever seen in my life. She was away in her head, though, holding the bottom of her dress and swinging it around. “Freaking seriously, the one time I find out something life-changing like this, and I can’t even say a fuh-rozen cuss word like it deserves.”
When he finished, he looked at me with a what the fuck expression, and I nodded sympathetically back at him.
“It’s not that big a deal,” Bond mumbled, blushing.
“Not that big a deal?” Tony clipped back. “It’s a huge funking deal.”
“Anyway,” Dad shouted, clapping his hands together to get everyone's attention. “I’ll drive Lorena and Bexley home, while Jarrod and Cole sort out getting the vehicles to Ren’s place.”
Tony turned back to me and skimmed his eyes up and down me, stopping briefly where Logan’s arms were at my waist before smiling at me. “Heard what happened, doll. You good?”
I loved this guy. Ava had told me about him while we were in Boston, and I’d fallen in love before I’d even met him. Then, when he’d hugged me after we’d been introduced and laid out how much he loved Pops… He was all heart and soul, and the world was a better place with him in it .
“Yeah, I’m good,” I reassured him, winking down at his daughter when she waved at me.
“I see that,” he murmured, looking back down at Logan’s arms and then up at him. “You look after our girl, my guy. She deserves the best.”
“I’m thinking she’s got that,” Dad noted, getting murmurs of agreement from the peanut gallery.
Could someone die over and over again ? It felt like embarrassment had killed me more than once in the last hour, and this was the latest death.
“I’ll call you later,” Logan whispered, kissing my cheek and rubbing his stubble across it. “You go home and rest up. Make sure your neck isn’t hurting, and if it is, let me know so we can take you to get it seen.”
I sighed quietly, but Tony did it loudly. “Seriously, Bex, hunkalicious is right. And look on the bright side, you get him as your nurse if you have any pain.” He stopped and frowned for a second but then looked at me excitedly. “I’ll bet your neck and shoulders hurt, am I right? I was in an accident ten years ago, and my neck felt like I’d broken it into pieces. You should tell him that right now,” he gestured to Logan and looked at me expectantly.
I had to give him credit, having Logan as a nurse would be far from shitty.
But damn my life, he had a job to do still, so I couldn’t do that.
“It doesn’t feel too bad, plus he has to get back to work.”
“Ah, that’s right, let him clear his mind and get it all done and dusted, then he can come home and won’t be distracted.” He gave me an exaggerated wink. “Girl, you’re smart.”
“Jesus Christ,” Carter groaned. “I’ve got all of the details of what happened,” he told Logan, and I realized he’d been doing that while I’d been distracted by different conversations and situations going on. “Can we go now?”
“No need to be upset, sweet Blow Pop,” Tony gave him a one-armed hug. “You’re still the man of my dreams. ”
Carter didn’t freeze or look disgusted by any of this, he just smirked. “Blow Pop?”
Tony opened his mouth to explain it but then looked down at his daughter and sighed disappointedly. “I can’t. My babies are my world, and I want to keep them innocent to the world of hotness for as long as I can. Lars keeps telling me they’re going to repeat what I say to a boy or teacher one day, and I just can’t take the risk. None of them will ever be good enough for my girls.”
Nodding understandingly, Carter shoved his hands in his pockets. “I get it and concur. Save it for another day when you’re child-free.”
Keeping his back to his daughter, Tony blew him a kiss. “I knew you’d get me, my knight in shiny armor. Now, get these poor damsels in distress home,” he ordered Dad. “And you guys go and clean up the streets.”
I don’t know if I’d ever admitted it to myself properly before, but I was so glad I’d moved home.