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I remembered the instance perfectly.
Sometimes she just made me so fuckin’ mad, though, that it was either kiss her or strangle her.
My ten-year-old brain had decided that kissing her was the way to go, especially since her father and mine were standing right beside us at the time.
We’d been at a school awards ceremony and Jubilee and I had been chosen for awards. Though we’d both been in different grades, it’d been for the same award.
Needless to say, when we got on stage, I’d been reluctantly watching everything Jubilee did—it was a habit bred into me, to protect. Jubilee had been dancing back and forth, unable to stay still, and had almost walked her ass right off the front of the stage.
I’d caught her just as her foot had started to go over, and just like that, I’d lost my patience.
And I’d kissed her.
My dad liked to say that Annmarie hadn’t been the one for me, that Jubilee had, but I’d never agreed with him.
Annmarie was like a calm, cool wind rolling off the shore of a lake. A nice, refreshing breeze in the middle of a summer heatwave.
Jubilee, though?
She was like the riptide, ready to pull you under when you least expected it. Or the four o’clock sun of the hottest Texas day.
“I see that your ex is here,” Jubilee continued.
I didn’t bother to look over at her. I’d clocked Zuri the moment that she’d arrived with her new man.
“Noted that,” I muttered, arms crossed tightly over my chest. “Fuckin’ BJ is here, too.”
Her head whipped around to start scanning the room. “Where?”
I raised an arm and hooked my thumb over my shoulder. “That way, near the mayor.”
“Huh,” she said, sounding amused. “Can’t have that, now, can we?”
Then she was gone, heading purposefully in the direction of the three individuals.
I rolled my eyes.
Jubilee really did hate Zuri, and Zuri hated Jubilee in kind.
I really did know how to pick them, because Zuri had hated not only my MC, but my jobs. All of them.
She hated that I worked for Life Flight. She hated more that I was a deputy for the county sheriff. And don’t even get me started about my ‘stupid garage tattoo studio.’
“Since when do you have red hair?”
I turned to see Jubilee’s best friend, Turner, staring at me with curiosity.
“Since I saved Jubilee from a family of skunks today only for them to make a home underneath my truck and wait for me to come back. The moment I got to my truck, they sprayed me. That shit’s gonna smell for years.” I shook my head. “Luckily the bitch is old.”
“You or the truck?” Turner asked.
I snorted.
“Why are you here?” I asked. “I thought you were sick?”
She shrugged. “I get that way sometimes,” she admitted. “I had stomach surgery when I was a teenager, and it goes through bouts of being finicky about what goes into it.”
I nodded once in understanding.
“Not that I really needed to give you any reason as to why I was here,” she countered.
I rolled my eyes.
Turner and Jubilee were so much like each other sometimes that it hurt.
I’d unwillingly gotten another person to take care of when Turner had moved into Jubilee’s life.
She never missed a chance to give me a hard time, either.
Which I kind of liked seeing as she was protective of her friend.
I was protective of her friend, too, even though we had a much different relationship than she had with her friend.
“Solid burn branch,” Castiel muttered.
I looked over at Cass and blinked, trying not to laugh at him quoting an animated movie, or wondering why he’d even seen that particular movie. “What are you doing here?”
Castiel and the governor’s son, Rylan Newman, hadn’t gotten along in the least. Rylan was a creepy motherfucker that didn’t miss a chance to share his creepiness with the town.
Inappropriate to stand too close to someone in line at the grocery store? Rylan did it.
Odd for Rylan to offer a kid standing by himself at a park some candy? Yep, so fucking Rylan.
Inappropriate touching every time he talked to a woman? Yeah, that almost got Rylan’s hand ripped off.
Castiel’s ex-wife, Cher, also happened to be his sister.
Oh, and the governor happened to be her father.
“I’m working the case,” he muttered darkly. “I’d rather kill myself.”
I didn’t doubt that for an instant.
If there was anyone in this world that you didn’t want to be around, it was Cher. Castiel and Cher got along like oil and water, and if they were within spitting distance that was literally what happened—spit. Because Cher couldn’t stop herself from spewing venom in the form of words at her ex-husband.
Castiel, for the most part, was fairly civil when it came to Cher. But the moment that Cher started to bring out too much bullshit and fling it at him, it was like he couldn’t help himself. He had to respond.
