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Ten minutes later, I was halfway through my sandwich when Ashe walked into the shop looking hot and annoyed.
She came right up to me and poked me in the chest.
“What was that?”
My brows lifted. “What was what?”
“Telling Samuel not to let me walk.” She wrinkled her nose. “I can take care of myself, you know.”
That was what sucked so bad.
She could take care of herself.
She didn’t need me.
And she didn’t need us watching over her.
Yet I couldn’t seem to stop myself from trying.
“Y’all aren’t going to make me separate you, are y’all?” Luke asked, pinching the bridge of his nose.
I narrowed my eyes at Ashe, and she flipped me off surreptitiously.
“I saw that, Ashe,” Luke said.
“You did not,” she countered, looking at her uncle like he’d just lied right through his teeth. “Your eyes were closed.”
He opened them and pinned her with a glare.
“I’ve been dealing with your antics since you were a babe,” he said. “I know you better than you know yourself.” He paused. “Now don’t y’all have some work to do?”
“No.” Ashe crossed her arms over her chest, making my gaze go there even though I couldn’t see any cleavage due to the Kevlar vest she was wearing. “I’m off as of twenty minutes ago. Now I’m just keeping you company. Like a good niece would.”
Luke shook his head and continued to eat his food.
Ashe sat down at the end of the table, two chairs down from each of us, and stared while we ate.
“What?” I finally asked.
“I don’t have my wallet. So I figure I’ll just sit here and watch y’all eat until one of you is ready to take me home.”
After the shooting and the kid hitting her cruiser, it’d been taken by a wrecker to the repair shop.
Meaning that Ashe was stuck with one of us until we were ready to go.
“Where’s your wallet?” Luke asked curiously.
“In the cruiser,” she answered. “Somebody should’ve probably checked with me before they took it. I don’t even have my keys.”
“That would be my fault,” Luke said, opening his eyes and pinning his gaze onto Ashe. “I told them to take it. I’ll run by on my way home, bring it by tonight after the town hall meeting.”
She nodded once as if she wasn’t really worried about it after all.
“Sounds good.” She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the two of us as we ate.
If I hadn’t been so hungry, I might’ve been uneasy by how hard she was staring.
But, as it was, I just couldn’t find it in me to be bothered by her unusually discomforting stare.
“How are the babies?”
I looked over to Luke at Ashe’s question to see him grin.
“They’re doing good,” he answered. “The twins aren’t quite sure what to do with the new baby now that she’s home. They’re jealous and curious all at once. And they’re fairly sure that they don’t like her.”
“Dad says I was the same way when Coal came along,” Ashe said, speaking of her brother.
Coal idolized the ground that Ashe walked on.
“How’s Coal doing in school?” Luke asked. “Last I heard he was having trouble with a teacher.”
My brows rose, and I looked to Ashe to get the inside scoop.
“That was just a misunderstanding, from the way Coal tells it.” Ashe laughed. “What I think it was, and I could be totally wrong, but Coal didn’t like the teacher because the teacher always called him out in the middle of class on his bullshit. He didn’t like that, and he complained to Mom about hating school. And you know how my mom gets when it comes to her baby.”
I snorted.
Coal was treated like a prince by both their mother and father. The only person to treat him like the asshole he was, was his sister.
Torren and Tru would’ve likely had that kid pulled from the school because they thought he walked on water.
I had a feeling Ashe likely had a talk with Coal about it.
“I told him in no uncertain terms that he needed to figure out why he didn’t like the teacher and quick, because if Mom went up there and called him out on it, she would be going to jail,” Ashe snickered. “Y’all know how she is when it comes to her kids.”
Tru wasn’t much different with her kids than my mom was with hers.
She loved them with her whole heart and soul.
“My brother is having problems at school, too.” I grimaced. “Ever since that shooting.”
The ‘shooting’ that I was talking about was actually a shooting that happened with my brother’s best friend’s father, Trager McInroy. Trager had a mental breakdown or something, and when my father had come on scene, Trager had his wife at gunpoint.
Things escalated quickly, and in the end, my father had ended up shooting my brother’s best friend’s father, killing him.
