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“Lynn!” she hissed. “Close the damn door! I’m half naked here.”
I was blocking the entire doorway with my body.
“No one can see you, Six,” I told her. “My body is blocking the door. Hurry up.”
She dove for her underwear and shorts that were on the floor, and once again I was struck by just how indecent they were.
“If you wear that underneath my suit jacket, it’s going to look like you’re not wearing any pants,” I told her.
She shrugged and pulled her tank top down over the top of the shorts.
“I’m wearing clothes.” She paused. “I don’t have any shoes.”
Her face all but fell. “You’re going to have to go in there and get me some shoes.”
I grinned at her swiftly. “This place will have shoes?”
Her eyes lit up. “This place will have everything you could only ever dream of it having.”
Five minutes later, I found out that she was right.
They did, indeed, have shoes.
They also had sweatpants that said ‘Buc-ee Me’ on the ass.
I got those for her, too.
When she was dressed in the sweats and slippers I’d found, we walked in together.
She reached for my hand when she caught her toe on the curb and never dropped it again.
Together—reluctantly on my end—we perused the shelves of Buc-ees.
“What do you think of this?” she asked as she showed me a Velcro patch that said, ‘Buck this.’
“Do you have anything that you could put that on?” I asked. “Because if you don’t, it’d be a useless buy.”
She squinted her eyes. “Haven’t you ever bought anything that you didn’t need?”
“Sure,” I said. “But not at a gas station.”
“You’ve never bought road trip snacks?” she asked.
As I looked at her, she was currently adding roasted pecans to her cart.
Yes, you heard that correctly. Cart. In a gas station.
“Yes,” I said. “But I’ve also only ever bought what I needed. Like a bottle of water. Something to eat. Never junk.”
I looked at the cart with a raised brow so she would get my meaning.
She flipped me off, then paused next to a rack of spices.
Spices.
At a fuckin’ gas station.
“What do you think the ‘everything’ tastes like?” she wondered.
I waited for her to add it to the cart. She did moments later.
“It probably tastes like salt and pepper combined that you could buy for about ten dollars cheaper at a grocery store,” I told her. “Are you going to get anything else?”
She looked to the other half of the store that we hadn’t even gotten to yet.
“Probably,” she admitted.
She was right.
Not only did she get more junk, but she also loaded up on food that she probably didn’t need this late at night.
“So why are you going to a prison tomorrow?” she asked, likely thinking I wouldn’t answer her.
So she’d overheard my conversation earlier. Interesting.
In that moment, though, I knew that I had a choice. I could either continue to keep her out of my life, and keep her safe but on the outside looking in. Or, I could let her in, show her my world, and hope that she stayed.
I wasn’t sure that the first option would ever work with her, to be honest.
Firstly, she wasn’t the type to ever allow me to just go to a prison and not ask questions. She would want to know why I was there, and what I was doing while I was. Not many people went to prisons just for the hell of it.
Secondly, I wanted her to know what I was doing. I wanted her to know who I was.
“Can I tell you when we’re in the SUV?” I asked.
She looked at me skeptically. “You’re one of those people, aren’t you?” she asked as she blindly reached for a package of chocolate chip cookies.
She missed and hit a second into her cart.
I watched her eyes. “One of what people?”
“Those people that call a car a car. And a truck a truck. An SUV an SUV.” She shuddered.
My lips twitched hard.
“Ummm,” I hesitated. “Yeah.”
That was what they were…
“Gross,” she mumbled as she pushed the cart forward. “I was actually in here before I drove all the way to Dallas. I don’t need to go on the other side of the store. I’m more looking forward to what you have to say about this prison scheme.”
She said that so loud that the woman that was putting her stuff on the counter in front of us turned to look.
I looked at her blankly, and she shivered, turning away just as quickly.
When Six suddenly stopped talking, I looked down at her.
“What?” I rumbled quietly.
“You just stared that woman down,” she whispered, again so loud that the woman heard.
“She needed to mind her own damn business,” I grumbled darkly.
Six widened her eyes at me, gesturing with her head toward the woman that was now standing so far away that the cashier had to reach over everything to get her card and put it into the credit card machine for her.
