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I just knew it.
Walking up to his side without making a sound, I stopped, cleared my throat, and then said, “Can I help you?”
He screeched.
Like a girl.
I hadn’t even touched him. But the way he whirled around and clutched at his arm, as if I’d physically punched him in it, then fell over and started to roll around on the ground, one would’ve thought I actually had.
That was when Crockett’s face popped up from behind the massive dumpster she had behind her place.
Her eyes were wide, and her gaze was bouncing between me standing there and the man on the ground.
She tossed her trash into the bin and then started my way, her eyes staying more on me than on the man on the ground.
And I had a feeling that it was due to my state of dress.
I was never this informal when I left the house. And if there was anything that the last six months had taught me when it came to being a part of the Souls Chapel Revenants MC, it was the need to be prepared. The need to fight was always there waiting in the background, and you couldn’t fuckin’ do that in flip-flops.
That I knew for certain from when I was sixteen and learning that I was a testosterone-driven punk kid who liked fighting a whole hell of a lot more than he should.
“Umm.” She looked at me, then back down at the man who was now… crying.
Yep, he was motherfuckin’ crying.
What the absolute hell?
“I didn’t touch him,” I felt it prudent to point out.
She blinked. “No?”
I shook my head. “I came up behind him and asked what he was doing poking his head around the corner. He was the one that did whatever he did, then fell onto the ground. You know him?”
She pursed her lips, her face contorting into one of disgust.
“Neighbor,” she admitted. “He lives two houses down from me. Really quiet.”
“Really soft.” I nodded.
That’s when I took in her attire.
“Everything okay?”
She was dressed… cutely.
But not in her normal attire of jeans and a t-shirt.
Today she was in much the same that I was in, only she was looking a whole lot more haggard.
“It’s been a… day,” she admitted.
I frowned, not liking that look in her eyes.
“What kind of day are we talking?” I found myself asking.
“The kind of day where I shut the shop down because my little sister came in and threw a wall-eyed fit, trashed my store, and then left.” She shook her head.
I frowned. “You have a little sister?”
She gestured for me to follow her.
“Come on,” she said. “The front door is closed because I locked everything up. Are you here to eat? I can make you lunch, but not a burger. I was having grilled cheese.”
Grilled cheese sounded fantastic.
Honestly, there wasn’t much that I wasn’t willing to eat.
“I’m down,” I said as I stepped over the still crying man.
CHAPTER 3
I don’t really have any talents. But I can tell which of my neighbor’s dogs are barking based solely on the pitch of their bark. So I have that going for me.
-Crockett to Zach
CROCKETT
“You’ve found a stray,” Murphy said, glancing up as Zach and I came back into the utterly destroyed room.
Zach came to a stop behind me and took in the destruction.
“Umm,” he said, hesitating in the doorway of the break room and the main room. “You said ‘threw a fit.’ You didn’t say ‘deconstructed your store.’”
I looked around at what whirlwind Rocky had done to my store and winced.
“Rockett is an asshole.”
Zach’s eyes pinched together. “What?”
“Rockett is an asshole,” Murphy repeated.
“Rockett?” He paused. “Do you mean Crockett?”
That’s when Murphy’s eyes started sparkling. “Nope, definitely meant Rockett.”
“What?” Zach looked so cute confused.
As well as hot.
Did I mention how hot the man was?
Because holy fucking shit, was he hot.
I’d never, not ever, seen him in this particular state.
I’d seen him in jeans, t-shirts, and cuts for the last six months.
But I’d never seen him so… unkempt. Comfortable.
Even when he’d first come into our store in his prison uniform, and changed into sweatpants and a sweatshirt, he’d never looked so… loose.
Today, he was in gray sweatpants, a black wife-beater tank top that left very little to the imagination, and flip-flops.
He also had gotten a haircut recently.
Something he did religiously every three weeks.
Short dark black hair covered the top of his head and the sides were shaved up to about midway up his skull.
His beard was thick, dark, and perfectly-trimmed.
But then you got to his clavicle, where the chest hair that I rarely got to see peeked out from underneath the thin fabric of his tank top.
I was absolutely dying to see what it looked like on his bare chest.
I bet it was to die for.
I bet his boobs were bigger than mine, based on appearance alone.
Sadly, I had what my little sister called ‘mosquito bites.’
