Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
DEAN
Isettle back in the front seat of my truck, a Dodge D series that came off the production line in nineteen-sixty-nine.
The year our vehicles were manufactured is as far as the similarities go, though.
Because while Anna’s Road Runner is a beloved classic, hand-restored by her and her father and, ironically, easily able to fetch two or three hundred thousand dollars at auction—the man who scraped every penny together to keep his daughter fed, was sitting on an automotive goldmine—my truck would struggle to sell for around nine grand.
Anna’s Road Runner boasts a flawless paint job, while mine comes with its original rusty red, cracked headlights, an engine that putts more than it purrs, and a bench seat covered in cracked leather, so a man climbing in wearing a pair of shorts can expect to lose a bit of his skin in the process.
Baby, It’s Cold Outside plays through my crappy, tinny speakers, while my wipers wage war against softly falling snow and the glare of the sun flirting on the horizon.
For today, at least, I drive away from Anna. Away from the horror I saw in her eyes when she read the things about Dean Warner. The Dean who came before me, that self-serving, wife-beating, narcissistic shit stain on society.
Not once in all my time inside her home did she ask where I lived.
She had no clue my Dodge sat waiting for me just three streets over, parked outside my house.
It’s as though she never even considered I had to have come from somewhere, and I didn’t want to tell her, because I was scared it would prompt her to tap me on the rump and send me away.
Why’d she look into my dad’s past? Why ask Detective DumbFuck, when I was right there, willing to tell her anything she wanted to know?
Because she didn’t trust me.
Doesn’t trust me.
Will never truly trust anyone.
Scrubbing my hand over my face, rubbing my tired eyes, I blink through the exhaustion and stick to my lane—the slow lane—because my poor old truck isn’t up for a drag race so early in the morning.
It takes only an hour to get from her place to the town I travel to every single December, to wind through forest-lined roads and cross over a set of train tracks.
My truck rumbles along Main Street, past a diner already lit up despite the early hour, past an ice cream parlor—not yet open for the day—and eventually, around a corner or two until I pull up a half a block away from the gym already bursting at the seams.
The scent of bacon and eggs penetrates my closed windows, and the laughter of fighters makes my lips twitch.
Fuck me. I’ve never even met ninety percent of these people, but I’ll be damned if being with my kind isn’t like being with family.
When you’re me, a man whose momma died way too young, and whose father spends his time rotting behind prison iron, you need to find a family for the holidays, or risk going insane.
It’s too bad Anna’s not ready to open her heart just yet, because the Rollin On family is the best kind to have when you’ve got no others.
Cutting the engine and collecting my keys, I pull my beanie down to keep my ears warm, then I settle my wrecked arm in a sling, something I should’ve been wearing from the moment Anna peeled my sorry ass off a frozen road.
Sliding out of my truck and onto the ground, I slam the door and slip my keys into my pocket, trading them for a peek at my phone—no calls, no texts.
I drop my head and start across the street, nodding to fighters as they pass, even fighters I don’t know.
Who won this year? Who lost?
I wonder how I would’ve fared, had I not been outside that night Anna and I met.
“You’re such a fake!” Evie Kincaid, the Kincaid who created this tournament, holds a little boy on her hip and shakes her head when our eyes meet.
Wild blonde ringlets halo her face, while bright blue eyes look me up and down.
“You don’t look wounded to me, Warner. You just didn’t wanna face my sasquatch in the finals. ”
I step off the road and onto the curb, crossing the parking lot where dozens of folks stare back at me.
Because Evelyn Kincaid is always making a scene.
She shifts her kid from her left hip to her right, bouncing the giant toddler and extending her arm, fist ready, so as soon as I’m close enough and tap her offering with my own, she drops her hand and laughs.
“I mean…” She studies me with fresh eyes.
“I suppose maybe you got hit by a car.” She gestures toward my face.
“Scraped. Bruised.” Then to my arm. “I guess you appear to be in genuine pain.”
“So glad to have your seal of approval.” I settle onto my heels and look to the champ manning the barbecue.
Evie’s husband.
Her baby daddy.
Her leash, sometimes, when he needs to quiet her down.
He’s not wearing his shiny new championship belt, but the black eye he boasts proves he competed, and the smug grin tweaking just the corner of his lips tells me all I need to know.
“Benny Conner.”
He knows what it’s like to have a father intent on hurting women, too.
“Sorry I missed our fight.”
He bumps my fist and transfers bacon to a silver tray for warming. “Don’t sweat it. I would’ve beat you anyway.”
“He’s been working extra hard this year,” Evie teases, leaning my way and mock whispering, “He thought he was gonna have to fight Tommy Watkins a few months back.”
“Tommy?” Surprised, I look between the two. “He’s Stacked Deck now?”
“No!” Evie laughs. “But he got hitched, and there were rumors someone might throw hands at the reception, so Sasquatch wanted to be ready, just in case.”
Amused and exasperated, Ben wraps his arm around her head, lays his palm over her mouth, and drags her back until she’s pinned to his side.
He manhandles her the way I’m too afraid to emulate, because it feels just a little too like the shit my prick father pulls, and I’m not ready to find out how far this apple fell from its tree.
Ben, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have that issue. “You okay, Warner?” He studies my left side, even the parts covered in jeans and a jacket. “You look like you’re in pain.”
“I am,” I chuckle. “A bit.”
“You seriously got hit by a car?” Evie mumbles from behind Ben’s hand. “You weren’t lying?”
“Seriously got hit. Wasn’t a tap and bump, either. She flipped over her hood and got me good.”
“Cops have taken a report?” Ben questions seriously. “Driver was charged?”
“Nah.” I dig my hand into my pocket and grin, shaking my head. “I said no to the cops. Then I crashed on her couch and fell in love.”
Evie’s eyes pop wide. “I’m sorry, you… what?”
“You love me?”
Stunned, my shoulder aches as I spin on the gravel and lock eyes with Anna fucking Maxwell.
Hers are swollen and pink, her cheeks red from the cold, and her entire sinful body is wrapped in a jacket two sizes too large.
She stands just ten feet away, her feet on the curb, and our dry erase board gripped in her shaking hands.
Stacked on top of that, a small gift box sits, the bow already torn off.
“Anna?” I swing my gaze back to Evie and Ben, then around to Anna once more. My heart pounds, aching and bleeding right there in my chest, and yet, my feet carry me forward. Three steps. Four. Five. “What are you doing here?”
“I heard on the radio just now that they caught the jewelry heist trio.” She peeks up at the beanie covering my dark hair. The mask I sometimes wear to keep the icy wind off my face when I run. “You weren’t one of them.”
“I told you I had nothing to do what that.”
She coughs out a soft laugh, dropping her gaze and snickering. “I totally thought I was harboring a criminal inside my home.” Shyly, she peeks up from beneath long lashes. “It was so naughty, but kinda thrilling, too. It was silly and a hell of a distraction during a month I absolutely despise.”
I take another step closer and bend my neck. To be nearer. To breathe her in. To study every speckled color hidden within deep brown eyes. “I let you believe it.”
“Why?”
“Why not? It made you smile sometimes, and it gave you something to focus on when you could barely keep yourself together.”
“I didn’t ask for those files from Carter.” She blinks fresh tears into her eyes, her breath catching in her throat. “I never asked, and when he showed them to me, when he forced me to see them, he misrepresented them. Made out they were your charges, not your dad’s.”
“Mine?” My heart skitters and thuds, bouncing against my diaphragm. “You thought I—”
“No. That’s just it. I didn’t think you did any of those things.
I told Carter he was wrong, and then I told you to tell me it was a load of shit.
I had a moment on the dance floor last night where everything was too heavy, Carter’s words were banging at the back of my head, and you were saying goodbye.
You didn’t even give me a second to straighten my thoughts, because then you were gone, which felt like an admission of guilt.
” She releases her breath, the hitching exhale warming my chin. “None of it felt right to me.”
“I thought you were asking about my father.” I clear the rasping crackle from my throat.
“You think you’ve got daddy issues?” I chuckle, but fuck, the sound is weak.
Pathetic. “I have daddy issues, Anna. This whole time, I’ve been nagging about how you need to see Christmas through a new lens and stop letting your father’s death affect you.
Meanwhile, I was deflecting so fucking hard, I basically pushed Earth off its regular axis. ”
“I want you to go back to the stuff you told her.” She tips her chin, gesturing past me to a wildly wide-eyed, overly invested Evelyn Kincaid. “About how you love me.”
“Why?”