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“Uhhh,” I said. “Who is your dad?”
“Baker Hughes,” she answered. “Do you know him?”
I shook my head.
“I might know his face,” I admitted, staring as she moved around the edge of the desk.
Just as she was about to make it there, she stopped, backed up, then deliberately knocked a cup of pencils off the edge of the desk.
She stared at them, then dropped down to her haunches and began picking them up.
I stared, wide-eyed.
Once she had them all up and in the perfect order, and I say perfect because she separated the greens from the yellows. The yellows from the blues. The blues from the reds—she set the cup gently back on the corner of the desk and stood up, smiling weakly at me.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m a bit of a mess.”
I waved her concern away.
“I think everyone is in some way, shape or form,” I told her.
She snorted.
“I have Tourette’s,” she admitted. “I just… I can’t help myself.” She paused. “But I guess knocking a cup of pencils off a desk is better than shouting out curse words.”
My eyes widened. “Do you do that? Shout out curse words?”
She looked miserable as she nodded. “I do.”
I stayed silent, hoping that she would say more.
“The Tourette’s was worse when I was a child,” she said as she gestured for me to follow her. “As I’ve grown into an adult, my tics have gotten a lot better. I experience vocal tics and fine motor tics. The vocal tics only come about when I’m under extreme stress. The fine motor ones are usually just me clenching my jaw, or blinking rapidly. Sometimes I have these urges to knock shit off things I walk past. Most of the time I can handle it, and ignore it, but there are times when I don’t bother to control the impulse. It’s not going to harm me in any way to knock a cup of pencils off. You know?”
I blinked in surprise.
“That’s true,” I said. “I’ve never known anyone with Tourette’s before. You definitely don’t fit the bill of what I had pictured in my mind.”
She grinned at me and I grinned back.
“I have a slight case of OCD—obsessive-compulsive disorder—but again, that’s gotten a lot better with age, too,” she continued as she led the way down a narrow walkway to what I assumed was the vacant duplex. “And normally a stranger wouldn’t even see my tics at all, but when I get stressed—such as my dad getting electrocuted and being hospitalized—my symptoms seem to get worse. And I can’t control or hide them as well.”
I felt for her.
I really did.
The next few minutes she went over the rules and regulations of the duplex. How if you had a complaint to please submit it to the office. Don’t confront my neighbors, etc.
“We don’t mow your yards,” she said. “We do have a lawn service that mows the one in front of the office, so we can add you to the rotation but that’s gonna be like fifteen bucks a week.” She paused in front of a duplex.
One side of the duplex was bare bones. Nothing out front to distinguish it as lived in.
But the one next door had a grill underneath the carport. A toolbox with an even smaller toolbox sitting on top of it. A jet ski and a paddleboat.
Oh, and a shiny black motorcycle that looked awfully familiar.
“Mostly everyone that lives here is a police officer of some kind,” Hastings said. “This guy is also an officer.” She gestured to my would-be duplex mate. “There are really only two that aren’t. Me, I live on the very end.” She pointed in the direction of her place. “And another woman that lives across the street and two down from me. I think she’s a nurse anesthetist.”
Wow.
That was surprising as hell.
“This is gonna be the safest place in the entire world,” I joked.
She grinned. “You have no idea, Rowen! Nothing happens here that we don’t want to happen here.” She gestured to the toolbox under the carport. “I wouldn’t think that’d be able to be left anywhere else. But at any given time, there are at least one or two officers home. They monitor the place. Keep a watch on everything. Nothing happens here without their knowledge.”
I had a feeling she was right.
And I thought living at my parents’ house was safe.
She finally walked into the open duplex and waved me in.
“I came earlier and turned on the air so we wouldn’t die while you were looking,” she explained. “I just left it open since we were about to head down here.”
I watched as she started to blink rapidly.
Having a feeling that she didn’t want me to stare, I turned and surveyed the room around me.
“Wow,” I breathed. “This is beautiful.”
Prettier than anything else I’d ever been in that was a rental.
