Chapter Eleven Julian #2
I cross my arms, smug. We’ll see about that.
The cop car opens, and Lil Dom swaggers out, hands already tucked into his belt. Oh Jesus, this guy? I haven’t seen him since graduation, where he spent the whole after-party drinking Schlitz beer and retching in the bushes.
“Hey, you!” Nomi dons a big, flirtatious smile like a freaky Halloween mask and waves, coy as hell.
“Ms. Wyeth.” Lil Dom smiles and tips his hat like he’s the fucking sheriff, and now I want to retch in the bushes. “You’re not causing any trouble out here, are you?”
“Oh, only the fun kind.”
I groan, loud and disgusted.
“Officer, I’m the one who texted in the emergency,” I step forward, inserting myself between this blatant display of hypermasculine posturing and Nomi’s fawning little ol’ me? bullshit. “She’s selling drugs out here without a—without a permit!”
I don’t know that she doesn’t have a permit, but seriously, what kind of permit exists for selling weed on the side of the road?
“Oh, you mean this permit?” Nomi waves a copy of her new license to operate granted at the last city council meeting.
“While I don’t have permission to operate my dispensary in my building yet, I do have permission from Sparrow Nook to operate a dispensary within township lines.
She holds out her hands, gesturing to her tiny hut.
“Voila. Bake sale. What can be more wholesome and law abiding than that?”
Lil Dom makes a show of inspecting her license, then gazing up Nomi’s tank top to her glossy lips and the swinging swish of her high ponytail. “Everything looks in order to me.” His lips quirk into a suggestive smile beneath his Top Gun aviators. “Looks fantastic, in fact.”
“Are you kidding me?! She’s selling weed on the side of the road!”
Lil Dom ducks his chin and gives me a long, probing look over the rim of his sunglasses.
He slowly straightens up to his full height, which is still a good five inches shorter than me, not that it’s affecting his self-esteem at all, and saunters over.
“Ms. Wyeth,” he drawls, “is this guy bothering you?”
“Yes,” Nomi nods emphatically. “So much. But I can take care of it, Officer.”
“You sure?” Lil Dom cocks his head back, giving me a full view of his stubbled chin. “I can bring ’im in for you.”
My eyes nearly bulge out of my skull. “On what grounds?!”
Just then, Lil Dom’s radio buzzes from his car. He eyes it regretfully, sad he can’t cop it up there and in my face simultaneously.
“Go, Dom. I’ve got it under control here.” Nomi winks again. “Thanks for stopping by.”
Lil Dom tips his hat to her once more, gives me a meaningful spit that lands by my foot, and disappears into his cruiser, cutting out as fast as he came in. Wut wuuuuut, his siren blips in parting.
“What an incredible douche.” I fold my arms as he tears down the road. “You like that guy?” The thought sets the contents of my stomach to boil.
Nomi shrugs. “We made out a few times. Comes in handy.”
I gawp at her. “You kissed him!” Then, because my brain can’t stop screaming it, I blurt again, “You kissed him?!”
She smiles at me wickedly. “He’s got a big—”
“Ughhhh!” I slam my hands over my ears, furious that I called the cops at all. Is this what passes for justice in this small shit-town?!
“—hat,” she finishes, then bites her bottom lip, she’s grinning so hard.
God, she loves torturing me.
She eyes my mucked-up clothes, brown socks, and green-tinged skin and snorts. “What happened to you, anyway?”
“You happened to me, Nomi Wyeth! You!” I grab my still-dripping T-shirt and wring it out in front of my body, sluicing off more of the disgusting water.
I don’t miss the way her eyes track across my abs, though, and it makes me draw my shirt up higher, just to prove my point.
I don’t know what point that is, exactly, but I’m gonna prove the fuck out of it.
“You sent your hench-twins after me, and they threw me in the river!”
That’s not exactly what happened, but it was clearly the intended outcome. So.
Nomi’s eyes widen, as though she didn’t plan the whole thing herself. “Ridge and Thorn threw you in the river?” She busts out an oversized laugh. “No, they did not.”
“The monozygotic weirdos have hippie names? Ironic since they came upon me with violence.”
“Their mom loves soap operas, and Ridge and Thorn would never.”
“Sure, says the woman responsible!” I rake my hair out of my eyes and pull away gunk wrapped around my fingers. “Ugh! And the flyers? You’re trying to ruin my life!”
“Wow. In case you forgot, my dispensary is under a zoning investigation, and I’m out here in a farm stand trying to make enough money to survive. Because you’re trying to ruin my life.”
“Just call off your hench-people, Wyeth!”
“Listen, Julian, you’re clearly in over your head, so I’m going to let you in on a secret.” Nomi leans over the counter toward me, the space between her delicate collarbones and her round, shapely breasts incredibly lick-able.
I cannot help but move closer, too, as though this secret she’s about to share holds the meaning of life.
Her skin looks so soft, and without my consent, my own body relives the feel of that soft skin pressed against my chest, the tight buds of her nipples bearing into me through two layers of clothing.
Her voice drops to a low, husky whisper.
“I don’t have to call off a thing because I didn’t ask for any of this.
These are my people. And my people hate your guts.
” Her whispered voice grates over each syllable, raising the hairs on my arms. “Withdraw. The. Complaint.” She pauses to wrinkle her nose, then backs away.
“And take a shower, my God, you smell like moldy bread.”