“Yeah. Still not peeing in the woods,” she told him sternly.
Ranger shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He walked back over to where they’d been standing minutes ago. “I come out here all the time just to piss on their graves. It’s rather cathartic.”
Toni stared, mouth gaping open, as Ranger pulled down his fly in front of her and started peeing. She was very certain no man had ever peed in front of her before, and yet Ranger did it so casually that it was over before she got past her shock of the moment. He gave himself a little shake, and then tucked himself away.
Walking back over to her, he offered her the leaf again.
Grumbling, because she really did have to go, Toni swiped the fucking leaf from his hand. “Just… Go stand over there,” she waved at the trees. “And keep your back to me. I can’t go if you’re watching.”
“Didn’t peg you as the shy type, Antonia.” He bent and kissed her nose. “And after this, we are going to have to get back. It’s past your bedtime, and I’m currently breaking curfew.”
“Curfew?” Toni asked, but then regretted doing so. Now that she’d committed to peeing in the woods, she really had to go.
Ranger nodded, scrunching his nose like a petulant child. “Part of the rules Becks and Ghost set up when they allowed me to move back into their house. Now, go piss on some unmarked graves and we’ll discuss this more on our walk back.”
CHAPTER 10
Becks was standing so close to the door when Ranger entered that the lock stile almost clipped her nose. Ranger jumped back, his hand going to his chest.
“Jesus, Becks! What the hell!”
She remained exactly where she was, hands on her hips, glower on her face. “You broke curfew, Liam. Where have you been?”
Ranger slowly entered the house, carefully sidestepping his little sister. She didn’t even budge as the front door once again passed right by her face as he closed it. Glancing around, he noticed Ghost leaning casually against the kitchen doorframe with a mug up to his mouth.
“Don’t look at me,” Ghost said dryly. “She’s so pissed that she practiced where to stand so the door didn’t hit her when you finally came in. Even put spike tape on the floor,” he added with amusement.
Both siblings narrowed their eyes on the ginger.
“You knew where I was. Why didn’t you tell her to keep her from worrying?” Ranger demanded.
“I did,” Ghost informed him, straightening off the doorframe. “This is the result you get for not telling her yourselfwhere you were.” Approaching his still pissed off wife, Ghost bent and kissed Becks’ lips. “Come upstairs when you’re done tearing him a new asshole,” he told her sweetly. To Ranger, he warned in an unyielding voice, “If she sheds a single tear, I will pluck every eyebrow hair from your head and listen with glee to her laughter as she looks at her eyebrow-less brother.”
“She’s pregnant!” Ranger reminded the man as he started up the stairs. “She literally cried for thirty minutes the other day because we ran out of orange juice!”
“Yup,” Ghost said without pausing his hike up the stairs.
“Asshole!” Ranger shouted. Thankfully, his mom slept like the dead and their noises wouldn’t disturb her. Andrew, the man Ranger and Becks both thought of as their father, used to say that she’d survive the zombie apocalypse because she’d sleep right through it.
Ghost reached the landing, continuing nonchalantly to his and Becks’ bedroom. “Yup.”
Ranger stared up the stairs for several minutes before he worked up the courage to turn and face his sister. She still stood exactly how she’d been, but now she was facing him instead of the door.
“I’m fine, little sis.” He opened his arms as if to show her, but it wasn’t like there was a universally obvious display to show whether he was high or not. His skin didn’t turn blue or his hair orange. Glassy or bloodshot eyes was a good way, but it wasn’t foolproof.
“You weren’t on a tow,” she snapped, sounding far too much like their mother. “The rule is you are back here by nine if you’re not on a tow.”
The other exception was if he was with Cross, the assumption being that their meeting ran over and they would still be traveling back to Mount Grove. But Ranger wasn’t going to nitpick her argument.
“I know,” he acknowledged. “I was with a friend.”
‘Friend’ seemed too casual a term for Toni, but ‘girlfriend’ also seemed premature. There was still a lot that they had to discuss, and as right as it felt being with her, Toni was correct that his sobriety had to take precedence over a relationship. It was why they’d left their long conversation with the promise that they would both think about what they wanted and what they felt was right for them to move forward. If Toni still wanted to be with him in the morning, he would come get her before she went to work to meet Becks and his mom so they would feel more comfortable about Ranger spending time with her.
Becks was going to need to come to terms with the fact that there was going to need to be some changes to the rules set in place for Ranger.
“Oh, Ghost told me all about your ‘friend’.” If it was anyone other than his sister, he would have called her tone of voice a sneer. “Liam, you just got out of rehab. What are you thinking getting involved with someone right now? You need to be concentrating on your sobriety.”
“Iamconcentrating on my sobriety! It’sallI am concentrating on, B! Every hour of every day, it’s there.” Ranger tried to keep the frustration out of his voice. “But I also have to live my life. I’m an addict. I willalways bean addict. I have to learn how to be an addict and still beme, and Toni makes me feel like me again.”
