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All I could do was shake my head.
“Thank you for the drink,” I said, sounding odd.
When she did finally leave, Dax was looking at me with worry.
“This is about to get bad,” he pointed out.
Yes, yes it was.Chapter 12Evidently I always manage to take the path that has the most shit to trip over.
-Dax’s secret thoughts
Dax
I watched as Rowen fairly launched herself at an older man that was just as tattooed as me.
Though, he didn’t bother to cover them up anymore.
“Uncle Michael!” Rowen cried, jumping down off the steps and running full tilt for the man.
Michael caught her and wrapped her up in his strong arms, grinning like a fucking loon.
“What the hell happened to your hair, Rowen?” Michael asked her.
Rowen pulled back with a grimace and looked worriedly at me.
I raised my brows, wondering what it was that she wanted.
“Well…” Rowen began. “It started like this.”
Michael’s face was like thunder when Rowen finally finished explaining…as was her mother’s.
“If it wasn’t illegal to kill someone, I’d be driving to San Antonio right now,” Reese muttered.
I barely contained the urge to laugh.
The only reason I didn’t was because she was being very serious. The only thing keeping her in check was her daughter’s desire for this not to go any further, and Luke’s insistence that she calm down.
Though, saying ‘calm down’ hadn’t really worked in his favor. Something in which I’d witnessed twice over the course of our meal together.
We were eating lunch at The Back Porch.
I wasn’t sure how or why it’d come to be—me getting invited to the family dinner with Rowen—but I was glad that she’d asked me to come.
I was even more glad that I’d come considering our waiter seemed to have a thing for Rowen, bald head and all.
“Do you know the waiter?” I asked curiously.
She looked at where the waiter had disappeared, then looked back at me.
“I graduated with him,” she answered. “It’s been a really long time since I saw him last. He’s put on a lot of weight. I almost didn’t recognize him at first.”
“Man doesn’t look like he used to be skinny,” I found myself saying. “He looks like he’s always been jacked.”
And by jacked, I meant on steroids. The motherfucker was huge. Even bigger than me, and I worked out a lot to get what I got.
But our waiter? He looked like he downed steroids for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
“Do you think he can even take his shirt off?” Reese wondered. “I wouldn’t think his massive arms would contort into that small of a space.”
Luke snorted then took a gulp of his beer.
“Why are we talking about our waiter, anyway?” Michael asked. “Let’s talk about what we’re going to do to this bitch that did this to our girl.”
All eyes were once again on Rowen.
“I agree,” Katy snapped. “Surely there’s something we can do.”
She looked at Luke, and Luke sighed.
“Like I’ve already told your mother and your sister, there’s nothing that can be done,” Luke explained. “There’s no evidence that she did it. She doesn’t even live there any longer. And to top it off, we’re not stooping to her level.”
“You’re being awfully level-headed about this,” Michael surmised.
Michael’s wife, Nikki, snorted.
“He’s pissed just like the rest of us are,” Nikki said. “The only difference is, he’s trying to be diplomatic and not get arrested. It would look bad if the chief of police was arrested.”
She did have a point.
It would look incredibly bad.
I curled my arm around Rowen’s chair, and the move didn’t go unnoticed by any man at the table. Not Derek, who’d been surprisingly quiet throughout the lunch. Not Michael, and for sure not Luke.
The one that surprised me the most, however, was Logan. Katy’s husband.
He looked like he wanted to rip my arm off and beat me with it.
Instead of moving my hand, I curled it around her tighter and squeezed her shoulder.
“Listen to this. Our lovely mayor just posted it on his Facebook page,” Rowen said, sounding distracted. “We encourage each and every one of you to take time out of your day to greet your new SWAT team. Each person that collects all twelve autographs will be entered into a contest to win a trip for two to Cabo as well as five grand in pocket money to spend while you’re there. Buy your calendar today!”
I felt my stomach sink.
“I just don’t understand,” I muttered, scrubbing my hand over my eyes.
“That makes two of us,” Rowen admitted. “Why bother with all that extra shit? Those calendars were going to sell anyway, regardless of if there was a prize attached to it.”
I agreed.
Not to mention I was about to be signing freakin’ calendars every time I was out in public.
There wouldn’t be a single man, woman or child in Kilgore that didn’t know who I was by the end of all of this. And they’d likely know that it was my bare ass that’d been spread like wildfire just as fast.
