Chapter 10
Ten
If your girl can change a tire and you can’t, it’s your job to make coffee and scream during sex.
—Text from Jasper to Cutter
JASPER
I pulled back into the lot and jerked my chin at Webber. “Can you get one of the prospects to give her a ride home since she’s not willing to cooperate?”
Webber’s smirk said it all. “And you expected her to?”
No, I guess I hadn’t.
“Plus, Harlow is here. Where exactly did you want her to sit?” Webber pointed out.
I jerked my finger at the jump seat in the back.
“And you fully expected her to go along with that?”
“I expected her to be grateful that I’m taking care of her truck, again, when I don’t have to,” I grumbled.
“And that, my friend, is your problem right there,” Doc said, startling me.
“Where’d you come from?”
“Just got done with my training and thought I’d come here to see if I could help with Calli’s truck.” He looked around. “Guess she took off?”
“You are correct,” I confirmed.
Harlow shifted in the seat beside me and said, “Maybe I should take your truck back home?”
“No,” I immediately answered. “If she’s too childish to ride with me to get it, then she doesn’t need a ride.”
Doc made a sound in his throat that sounded surprisingly close to a growl.
“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t call her childish,” Doc said quietly. “You don’t know her story. Not all of it. And she deserves to be treated like she’s an adult, because she is. Has been for a very long time.”
I didn’t argue with him, but I hadn’t seen the adult that he’d seemed to have been introduced to.
Every time I dealt with Calli, she acted like a child.
“What was the reasoning for her needing to go to the school?”
I scrubbed at my face and explained what happened.
Harlow made a soft sound in her throat, but it was Doc’s blazing eyes that had me blinking in surprise.
“What?”
“That fuckin’ teacher.” Doc shook his head.
“We’ve had nothing but trouble out of her.
She’s also Anders’s coach for swim. She hates Anders, and you can tell.
There’s no way you can convince me that she didn’t know that Anders still believed in Santa.
She wrote a poem about the fucker last year around this time. ”
“What makes you think she hates Anders?”
“Other than when she doesn’t cheer loudly enough, she says in front of the whole team ‘you don’t deserve to be here. If I was your head coach, you’d be riding the bench’?”
I blinked. “She’s twelve! And what’s she have to cheer about in swimming? They can’t hear her anyway.”
“Anders is super introverted and has quite a bit of social anxiety. We’re just happy that she’s out there swimming and doing something.
Yet this teacher treats her like trash, and now Anders wants to quit.
Though she’s hella good, so it’s hard for Searcy and me to tell her to quit when we know if she can just get past middle school she’ll be fine.
” He sighed. “And she purposefully misgrades Anders’s stuff.
Gives her lower scores for bad handwriting.
Like any twelve-year-old has good handwriting.
So we have her taking occupational therapy to help improve it.
But honestly, she writes better than me. And I get along just fine.”
“That’s probably why Calli reacted like she did.” I explained exactly what had happened, and how Calli had reacted.
“Luckily, she didn’t know all that other stuff, or she might’ve punched the bitch. And, just sayin’, but the thought has definitely crossed my mind.” Doc crossed his arms over his chest. “Did she take Anders home?”
“Anders wanted to stay,” I explained. “She went back to class, and we left.”
“Good,” Doc said. “Searcy was out buying Anders her big gift. She might’ve seen it if she came home early.” He paused. “Though I don’t think we need to hide it as well as we used to now that she knows.”
Webber smacked Doc on the shoulder. “Why don’t you go pick her up and take her home then?”
Doc grimaced. “I think I’ll let her walk.”
My brows rose. “She’s five miles from home. And most of that is highway miles.”
“Then you should’ve taken her straight home and not here,” Doc pointed out. “I’m fairly sure she’d rather walk down the interstate than get a ride right now. She’s stubborn and convinced that she doesn’t need anyone’s help.”
“But she does, because she needed a ride today.”
“She wouldn’t have called at all if it wasn’t for Anders,” Doc pointed out, his eyes sharpening. “I’ll be surprised if that truck is still there for you to get when you get there. She’s probably already called another tow truck.”
“She wouldn’t.”
Fifteen minutes later, I pulled up to find her truck nowhere in sight. “Looks like your friend Doc was right.”
I looked over at Harlow and grumbled darkly. “That girl is so fucking stubborn.”
“What’s her deal?” Harlow asked.
I thought about not telling her anything, but decided that there was no harm in Harlow knowing about Calli.
So I told her what little I knew.
Harlow shook her head. “She kind of sounds awful.”
That ruffled my fur. “She’s not awful.”
The insistent way that I said it had her glancing over at me. “You like her?”
I shrugged. “I liked her enough.”
She studied me. “You have feelings for her.”
I shrugged. “Feelings that I’ll never act on.”
“Because you’re way too old for her, friend,” Harlow pointed out something I already knew.
I didn’t comment, and instead drove back to the shop with my mind going all kinds of ways.
When I pulled up, I parked the tow truck back where I found it and glanced up to see Webber laughing.
“Not there?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Not there.”
It took me fifteen minutes to find my fucking keys, and by the time I was heading home, I just wanted some time to myself.
I’d spent the day shopping for gifts—Harlow was taking my presents for my sister and family home with her to wrap and hand off for Christmas next week—and I was exhausted.
The last thing I wanted to do was deal with the shit that I found in the driveway of my neighbor’s house when I got home.
After I parked and got out, Harlow stopped me from walking over to Calli.
“Leave her be,” she suggested. “If she wanted you to interfere, she would’ve let you get the truck in the first place.”
She had a point.
So instead of heading to Calli’s, I headed inside and helped write down who was getting what Christmas present-wise.
After everything was sorted, I carried everything out to Harlow’s car and said, “Thanks for taking everything.”
“Thanks for manning the insane Dallas streets,” she teased. “I’ll call you when I get home.”
I cleared my throat. “If you don’t mind, just text. I have a headache, and I think I’m going to go lie down.”
She looked at me curiously, then nodded. “I think I can do that.”
“Be careful,” I ordered.
She gave me a mock salute and headed to her car.
I sat down on my couch and leaned my head back against the cushion.
I closed my eyes and let my mind wander to my day, thinking that it didn’t really get any good until I saw Calli.
Even her anger and distrust of nearly everyone she ever encountered didn’t put a damper on my joy at seeing her.
What the fuck was wrong with me?
Harlow was right, though.
She was way too young.
I was too jaded. Too broken.
I should stay far, far away.
The knowledge that I was no good for her didn’t stop me from heading outside a few moments later and checking her truck out.
Lucky for me, she felt that it was okay to leave her keys in it because it was broken down.
I got a look at everything and decided that she needed to get a new battery, spark plugs, and oil put in her truck.
I did make sure that Apollo double-checked me on what was stolen by the woman before I made my final parts order.
I also placed an order for food, then went back home to wait for everything.
The parts arrived, and I set them aside to wait for my food.
When it took longer to arrive than I expected, I pulled up my app to see that my food had been delivered.
Frowning, I opened the door and didn’t see anything.
I contacted the driver via the app to find out that he’d delivered it at my door.
When I asked for my photo of the door, he sent it over.
What I saw had me growling.
I marched over to the woman next door to me and pounded on her door.
She opened it looking not the least bit guilty.
“Did you eat my food?”
She blinked innocently at me. “Why would you think that?”
I poked her in the chest where there was a very obvious cheese stain.
“That’s my fuckin’ cheese sauce,” I grumbled. “And I’m starving.”
She blinked innocently at me. “That’s unfortunate.”
Then she slammed the door in my face.
I didn’t know why I fucking smiled as I pulled my app out and ordered my food a second time.
This time I was working on her truck when the food got here, and stopped the next delivery driver from making the same damn mistake.
“Sorry, man,” the driver apologized. “But your addresses are switched.”
I frowned and looked at the sign in the grass between our two yards to see that our addresses had indeed been switched.
But the thing was, the damn sign was iron and hanging between our two yards on a double hook that went out both directions.
The sign was hanging from a chain that you could take off and reposition if you so choose.
And I hadn’t fucking chosen.
This bitch…
I apologized and took the food with a smile, then ate my food leaning up against the front of her truck.
I’d just gotten the last spark plug in and took my last bite of enchiladas when Calli’s door opened.
I didn’t bother looking up, just gathered up my food trash and tools.
Only when I was done did she come up to my side and begrudgingly say, “Thank you.”
I handed her my trash. “You’re welcome.”
Then I went inside and tried not to look back.