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“I don’t live off my ex…dead fiancée’s money,” I informed him. “Though you might think that I do.”
“Then whose money are you living off of? Because you only got one really big cash payout in the last ten years, and it was that,” Hoax countered. “Your parents own a cleaning business. You were a cop. You also didn’t have enough time to accrue that much fuckin’ money. Trust me when I say I know how that works. You got the money somehow.”
He was right.
But it wasn’t my dead fiancée’s money. Not really.
I’d done a job…and I’d gotten paid for it.
Two very different things. Not that I would ever tell them where or how I got the money.
For all they needed to know, that money was my fiancée’s life insurance payout.
“But you are right, at least partially.” I sat back in my chair. “I do want a job. Which is why I got one at a bakery.”
That was a total lie.
Though, not really. My Abuela had asked me to work for her part-time. Not because she needed help but because she thought I was wasting away inside of my house.
Max groaned and sat back.
“You’re going to work at a bakery?” Max asked incredulously. “I offer you a job, that’s mostly inside, fielding calls, running background checks, and doing mostly the same work that you were doing at the police department, and you want to work for a bakery? We have benefits!”
My lips twitched.
“Actually, the bakery does have benefits. In the form of cookies and bread.” My mouth twitched. “It’s only part-time,” I soothed his outburst. “I’ll give you Monday, Thursday afternoons, and Fridays. If I like it, I’ll leave the bakery. If I don’t, then I’ll still have my job there.”
Max held out his hand. “Deal.”
***
A while later, we were seated at a corner booth in a Mexican food joint that looked like it was carved out of a hole in a wall.
Hoax rolled his eyes. “If he doesn’t want the job, why force him to take it? The benefits aren’t that good.”
Max flipped him off. “They’re better than nothing. Now, let’s eat.”
Hoax looked down at the chips and hot sauce.
I reached forward and grabbed a chip, piling on the hot sauce.
I nearly groaned when I ate it.
There were a few things that I’d missed, but chips and hot sauce? That was definitely one of the biggest ones.
And still, after three months and two weeks of being on the ‘outside,’ it still wasn’t enough.
I would inhale three of these small bowls of the shit before I’d even realized that I’d done it.
My eyes caught Hoax’s pained ones, and my brows rose.
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked curiously. “Are you on a diet?”
Hoax’s eyes flashed with anger. “No.”
“He can’t eat tex-mex or it makes him shit,” Max explained as he dug into his own hot sauce. “And since we’re heading to a job after this, he can’t eat it. We don’t have the luxury of forty-five minutes for him to sit on a toilet.”
My brows rose as I shoved another chip into my mouth.
“Crawfish does that to me,” I offered. “Sucks, because I love crawfish.”
Hoax made a face, then sat back and sucked on his water.
“We’re not taking any piss breaks, either,” Max said, eyeing how fast he was drinking the water.
Hoax finished his water, then set it on the table with a sharp clack.
“Why are you giving me shit today?” he asked.
Max narrowed his eyes.
“Sam got you and your buddy to cover for him. He’s gone fishing every fuckin’ day this week. Do you want to know what I’ve done? Work. I’ve fuckin’ worked. And when I finally find someone I trust enough to do my part of this job, you try to run him away because you’re being a little bitch. If you want him to be a part of the club, why don’t you ask him to be a part of the club instead of just assuming that he’s shafting y’all? The man just got out of prison. He’s spent every single day for the last how many ever fuckin’ years shitting next to someone. Is it a surprise that he wants to be alone?”
Damn.
Max really had hit that nail right on the head.
Hoax’s eyebrows went up.
“I’m not trying to get him not to take the job,” Hoax countered. “In fact, I would like him to take the job so I could stop listening to you whine like a baby.”
My lips twitched.
“And yeah, so I’m a little salty that he won’t come to club functions. That’s my shit to deal with, not yours. But we’ll get there. If you’re wondering why I’m having a bad day, it’s because my wife decided that she wanted to kick me out of the bed last night because I ‘move my toes too much.’” He sighed and brought his hands up to lace behind his head, displaying a new tattoo on his bicep. “Do you know how fuckin’ hard it is to not laugh at her weirdness?”
