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And we didn’t want him to get bored in prison. Getting bored led to him doing stuff like getting into fights—like he did when he was in high school and decided that going to illegal fights and kicking people’s asses was the best way to make him no longer bored.
Needless to say, Tray had an extensive rap sheet, and nobody had really batted an eye at Tray ‘shooting’ Craig.
Nobody but Dre, who knew his baby brother like nobody else ever would.
“We’ll find something, baby. It may take a while, but we’ll find something,” promised my dad.Chapter 1Just tell me where and when, and I’ll be there thirteen minutes late.
-T-shirt
Slate
I slowly packed a bag, knowing in my heart that I was making the right decision.
“Are you sure?” Izzy begged. “I mean, I swear that we don’t mind you being here.”
I looked down at my baby sister and grinned. “I know you don’t, honey. But I’m ready to be on my own again. Need to be on my own. And since they gave me a little more leeway in my new ankle bracelet, I feel like it’s time that I do that.”
We both looked down at said ‘ankle bracelet.’ Her grinning and me grimacing.
I’d been out of prison for three months yesterday, and today at my scheduled meeting with my parole officer, he’d told me that I officially had free range once again—of the town that I lived in, anyway.
I could go anywhere within fifty square miles of my home. That meant that I could go to the grocery store. I could go to the library and the bank. I could also go to the neighboring city, Kilgore, Texas.
What I could not do, however, was live another night under my sister’s roof and live with myself afterward.
There was only so much I could take, after all.
“This sucks,” she muttered. “I was really loving having you here.”
“You mean you were loving having a live-in babysitter that could watch your kids any time you and your husband wanted to go do a round of ‘I’m not having sex. We’re folding laundry?’” I asked.
Izzy’s face flamed. Rome, who was leaning in the doorway, started to laugh.
“It would’ve happened whether you were watching them or not,” Rome said, sounding amused as hell. “The youngest is tiny. She’s more than capable of sitting in her bouncer for a few minutes.”
I gagged. “But y’all are loud, and this house really doesn’t hide all those sounds like you think they do.”
Izzy opened her mouth and closed it like a fish, then her face flamed some more.
“Then why didn’t you say something?” she managed to choke out.
I looked at her. “And be pushed into having this awkward conversation while I was still being forced to live here?”
Izzy’s mouth snapped shut.
“You need help moving anything to the new place?” Rome asked, done with the conversation.
I turned to face my brother-in-law.
It was weird being able to almost look someone in the eye.
Rome was a massive man. One that was almost my size. He was an inch shorter than me, but he could easily hold his own in the bulk department.
I walked to him and offered him my hand. “I’m good.”
He shook my hand and then dropped it, lifting his arm so that he could tug Izzy to him and wrap his arm around her shoulder.
“I’ll see you at the club meeting tonight?” he asked.
I looked down at my sister, then at my friend, and nodded.
“Yeah. I’ll be there,” I muttered.
With that, I walked out and didn’t look back.
***
It was as I was parking the bike in my driveway, staring up at the house that I’d once shared with my fiancée, that I finally realized that maybe this wasn’t the best idea as of yet.
Not because the house brought back bad memories, but because it brought back good memories.
Times when Vanessa and I were planning out our lives.
We’d bought this house about three months before her death. It’d been a big deal seeing as we were both living on cops’ salaries. Neither one of us had ever lived in our own places before, making it an even bigger deal.
Hell, Vanessa hadn’t lived in the house at all.
After buying it, we’d had it renovated. New flooring put in throughout the whole house. Hardwood floors in the living room and kitchen, tile in the bathrooms, and carpet in the bedrooms.
The bathrooms had also gotten complete overhauls, as well as the kitchen.
Though Vanessa hadn’t had much desire to be involved in the renovations—I had. I’d chosen the paint colors and the tile. The carpet color and the pull knobs on all the cabinetry. Hell, I’d even chosen the color of our front door.
A front door that was painted a bright red and looked just as fresh now as it had all those years ago when I’d first done it.
