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A car door slammed to my left, and I looked to find a little shit of a guy—you know the small ones that have a chip on their shoulder with an attitude a mile wide—getting out of his truck and marching toward the foray.
Tide had himself between the older woman and the kid that was trying to hit her. Tide had his hand out, forcibly keeping distance between him and the kid.
All the while, the mother argued with the man that’d given me the ticket, telling him she refused to leave.
Meanwhile, Mr. Shorty Pants was marching up and poking Tide in the shoulder now, practically standing on tiptoes to get into Tide’s face.
“Oh, shit,” I heard Bram echo Haggard’s earlier statement. “That’s not good.”
A man behind the elderly people, whom I hadn’t seen before because he’d been lazing on the bottom seat of the picnic table, finally stood up and made his presence known.
“Keep your hands off my kid, trash!”
It all degraded from there.
Pushing and shoving between the two men when it came to Tide, and the poor elderly lady stuck between them because there was nowhere for her to go.
Tide obviously tried his best to keep her unharmed, but he was quickly losing, because he wasn’t willing to leave her there unprotected.
The old man fell, and that’s when the man behind him stepped on his shoulder, using him as a stepping-stone to get closer to Tide.
“Oh, fuck,” Cannel whispered.
I pulled the cigarette out of my mouth, placed it on the back tire of my sister’s Escalade, and started forward.
I heard someone say, “Hot damn. He just took that out of his mouth and set it on the tire of his car. He doesn’t plan on that burning out before he kicks his ass.”
No, no I did not.
CHAPTER 8
SABRINA
I saw him remove the cigarette from his mouth and gently place it on the back tire of the Escalade.
Then he was walking swiftly toward the two men, oh great and now the woman, who was hassling Tide.
Haggard, Will, and Bram followed in his wake, while Shine stayed where he was, obviously volunteering himself to protect the women in his family.
However, before the three other men could get there, Price took matters into his own hands and caught both men by the scruffs of their necks and all but hauled them away from the old man and the lady.
I followed the direction he carried them, my mouth dropping open in surprise when Price all but knocked them both out with one solid punch to the jaw.
One. Two.
That fast, they lay on the ground.
Both very unconscious.
“Holy shit,” I breathed.
The teens beside me who’d been sitting on the hood of their vehicle agreed.
When Price got back, he picked up his cigarette and finished it.
I looked at him with a bit of envy rolling through me as I said, “I want to be strong like you when I grow up.”
Price shot me a look that I couldn’t quite read and then said, “Takes daily workouts in space suits, lifting big shit.”
My brows rose and confusion started to swirl around me at his answer.
Cannel, who was beside me, said, “Price owns a disaster-ish company. Pretty much, shit happens that’s bad, like a fire or a hurricane or something, Price comes in, cleans it up—sometimes being forced to wear a full-body suit to protect himself—fixes it, then moves onto the next job. He’s a very busy man.”
I didn’t miss the way she hinted at him being busy.
As in, don’t get your hopes up for this between you two to continue later on.
If I were in a different frame of mind, one that included me dating again after the hell I’d been through in the last month, I would’ve taken offense at what she’d said.
But I wasn’t in the best frame of mind.
I’d just come off a years-long relationship that had ended in disaster.
My best friend had just died.
I was literally all alone in this world, and there wasn’t a single person besides my father and grandfather—and granted, they were great men, but you couldn’t talk about sex with your father and grandfather—I could talk to.
Meaning, I just said nothing because there was nothing to say.
At least, I tried to say nothing. Really, I did.
But the longer I sat there, and the thoughts brewed, the more I realized that maybe I’m just tired of hiding the way I feel sometimes. Being the nice person hasn’t gotten me anywhere.
There I was, my best friend dead, my ex-fiancé asking the impossible of me… and I was tired of just holding my tongue.
“I just came out of a relationship,” I said a few minutes later. “My ex-fiancé, Cole, and I were set to be married a few days ago.”
I got the attention of not just Cannel, but the men around me, too.
