No Saint (Dayton #4)

Chapter 1

One

Jade

Men are dicks. Untrustworthy assholes. Plain and simple. And what do untrustworthy assholes deserve? Retribution…

I stewed as the shitty town of Pikestown, Alabama, whizzed past the lowered window.

Cassie and Monroe, my best friends, were in the front of Cassie’s clapped-out old Honda.

They sang along to the terrible pop song rattling through the speakers.

On any other day, I might have tried to share in their carefree joy, but all I had was anger.

And I clung to it. Breathed life into that fucker until it was an inferno of wrath.

The exhaust rattled when Cassie swerved into the run-down Kanga Mart gas station on University Street.

“Of course there’s a line,” she grumbled, pulling in behind a pickup.

One of the two pumps had been out of service since I’d started college at State over two years ago, but Kango Mart’s gas was four cents cheaper than the rest of the stations, and four cents per gallon was worth waiting for…well, maybe in a car that had air conditioning.

I fanned myself as a drop of sweat rolled down my back. So much for fall. Right then, it felt like Satan’s asshole.

A group of college guys in their stupid frat shirts came out of the mini-mart, carting a case of beer.

They were chatting and fooling around, in no rush as they approached their truck.

Given, it was Labor Day weekend, but who the hell was out of bed at nine on a Sunday morning, much less buying beer?

Not that I partied anyway, but we had a reason for being here at this time—the fact that everyone else shouldn’t have been.

Cassie pulled her blond waves off her neck, holding a messy bun on top of her head as she leaned out the window. “Could you hurry the fuck up? Some of us are melting here.”

The group of guys looked over. One locked eyes with me through my open window. Cackling, he made a stabbing motion in the air. “What’s up, Jason Voorhees?”

His friends broke out in laughter at the same time Monroe gave them a middle finger. That had them shutting up and getting into their truck. I was sure it was the psycho-ginger vibe she gave off.

Monroe turned to me in the back seat. “I should have let you stab him.” She held her pointer finger and thumb centimeters apart. “Just a little.”

Him being Brent. Now known as Bare-minimum Brent, because he couldn’t do the bare-fucking-minimum and keep his dick in his pants. Well, really, his tongue in his mouth…

I’d thought he loved, or, at the very least, respected me. Until the previous night, when I’d found him in the bedroom of a frat house, face-down in a cheerleader’s pussy. Always the cheerleaders—peppy and bright and shiny. The polar opposite of me, and the antithesis of everything I hated.

“Well, I’m glad you didn’t.”

Apparently BMB hadn’t heard the saying, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned because after being caught, he’d had the audacity to follow me downstairs, with her pussy still on his breath.

Telling me it was a mistake, and he loved me.

I’d seen red and pulled a kitchen knife on him in the middle of the party.

Luckily for him—and me—Monroe had made sure I woke up in my shitty apartment this morning, rather than a prison cell.

Now, all I had to do was search “Pikestown crazy girlfriend” on ViewTube, and I could relive the entire humiliating scenario in startling clarity, as could the rest of the student body—and the world.

I was officially the poster child for insane bunny boilers. Brilliant. What a time to be alive.

“I would have stabbed him. Then those assholes—” Cassie nodded toward the truck pulling away from the pump—“wouldn’t be laughing.”

“No shit,” Monroe mumbled. “Cass, you would be in jail for murder.”

If ever anyone was going to physically maim a boyfriend, it was Cassie.

A few months ago, she’d all but run over a girl her on-again-off-again boyfriend, Rogue Van de Kut, had allegedly kissed.

Literally, drove her Honda onto the dorm lawn and “nudged” the girl with her bumper.

She told the dean it was an accident. How the hell she’d gotten away with that lie, I’d never know.

I stared at the pump as Cassie pulled up beside it and clicked the handbrake. This was much more my style of retribution. Calculated, rational, painful…

“This will hurt Brent more than a stab wound,” I said. “Trust me.” With a lot less risk of hard time.

“I’m an instant gratification kind of girl.” Cassie shrugged, popped the trunk, then threw open her door. “I’m going to buy gum and pay for the gas.” Of course, she wasn’t going to pump gas. She might chip a candy-floss-pink nail.

Monroe got out of the car, and I followed, giving her a once-over as I opened the trunk. She looked ridiculous in the long-sleeved black shirt and black jeans she’d insisted on wearing.

“You look like a cat burglar off Wish.” I took the empty gas tanks and dropped them onto the oil-stained concrete.

She unhooked the pump and shoved the nozzle into one of the cans. “I look hot.”

“As in sweaty? Yes. Very.” She must have been dying in that heat.

She flipped me off as gas glugged into the empty metal. “It’s my work attire.” In high school, Monroe had survived, like many in our hometown of Dayton, by stealing. Cars specifically.

“We’re not boosting his car…” Not like I hadn’t already considered it. I definitely could have done with the money, but we’d need someone shady to sell it to. With the new, crime-free leaf she’d turned over, Monroe didn’t know anyone here in Pikestown.

Besides, if I ever got desperate enough to steal a car, there were far less conspicuous ones, whose owner I hadn’t threatened with bodily harm, on video, less than twelve hours before.

So, no, I wouldn’t be profiting off Brent’s beloved car, but I was going to torch it the same way he’d torched whatever sliver of trust I’d still had in men.

Just as I flipped the lid off the other canister, a shadow fell over me.

“What are you setting fire to now, pyro?”

My stomach bottomed out at the sound of that deep, achingly familiar voice. A voice I hadn’t heard for a year and a half.

By design, I hadn’t spoken to, or come face-to-face with, Wolf Brookes since we’d broken up—a miracle considering we came from the same hometown, went to the same college, and that he was best friends with Monroe’s fiancé.

My heart clenched in my chest, reminding me of its old wounds. Compared to those scars, Brent’s betrayal was nothing more than a scratch. A scratch Wolf was apparently there to rub salt into.

“Nothing,” Monroe said, her gaze briefly darting to me before it went back to Wolf.

I hated that she still worried about me being around him after all this time. That she knew I was so weak. Bracing my fragile heart, I turned toward the tall, dark, tattooed apparition of past regrets.

I took in his messy, dark hair, those deep-blue eyes that always seemed to see too much, and the dimple that sank into his cheek—when he smiled, another one mirrored it on the other side.

I hadn’t seen him up close since the day I’d asked him for a break.

Was it too much to hope that he’d magically become ugly?

Or lost the ridiculous amount of muscle that had somehow, against the laws of physics, grown bigger?

The material of the faded band T-shirt he’d had since high school was stretched so tight across his chest, it looked like it would rip open at any second.

Wolf Brookes was still the most gorgeous guy I’d ever seen, and I despised myself for thinking it.

I’d always thought that my attraction to him had been more than skin deep, that we’d had this connection…

But there I was, hating him while wanting him.

I was no better than the airheaded girls who’d always fawned over him.

“Come on.” He nodded toward the tanks at our feet. “What are you torching, Monroe?” Talking to her like I wasn’t even there. As though I were as inconsequential as I wished he could be to me.

“Nothing. Jade’s Jeep ran out of gas.”

My spine tensed when she mentioned my name. I didn’t want him to look at me.

His massive arms crossed his even more massive chest, and he flashed her a disbelieving smile. “Bullshit.”

“Fine.” The pump in Monroe’s hand clicked, and she put it back. “We’re torching a car. Happy?”

Glaring at her, I capped the canisters. The last thing I wanted was Wolf knowing my business.

When I went to lift the heavy tank, I swear my back popped right before it dropped to the ground with a clang.

“Women…” Wolf reached for the tank at my feet, his rough fingers brushing mine when he picked it up. I hated that he acted like I didn’t exist, even though I’d spent over a year doing the exact same thing to him.

When he turned away from me without a backward glance, that sense of worthlessness I’d been feeling since Brent’s actions last night grew, breaking through the bedrock I’d laid on top of my buried emotions. Fuck Brent. And fuck Wolf.

I glared after him as he bicep curled both tanks into Cassie’s open trunk. His sleeves strained beneath his stupid, muscular arms, and I wanted to shout at him, “Just buy a bigger shirt!”

Instead, I went to the rear door of Cassie’s car and got in. I’d rather sit in a sweatbox than give Wolf any more space in my mind.

“It was good to see you, Wolf,” Monroe called, before ducking into the passenger seat.

I clicked my seatbelt into place, then crossed my arms over my chest. “It was good to see you, Wolf,” I said in a high-pitched voice that sounded nothing like Monroe.

I was one hundred percent being petty. Monroe and Wolf had been neighbors their whole lives, but surely she was violating some kind of girl code.

Monroe turned in the seat. One red brow lifted. “Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“Mature.” She faced the front again just as Cassie opened the door and slid behind the wheel.