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“Thanks.”
“I guess we’re neighbors, huh?” he asked.
“That appears to be the case, yes.”
“Sorry for the shitty first impression.”
She laughed—and that was unequivocally hot. She had a good smile, the kind that lit up her face. Nice white teeth, too. “Definitely a shitty first impression. But nowhere to go but up from here, right? Unless you’re planning to burn my house down.”
Now he laughed. “That’s the only thing left worse than tonight?”
“That or bloody murder, yep.”
“Okay. Well, I will park the truck at the curb, take my bike off the trailer as quietly as possible, then tiptoe into the house and be quiet like a mouse until the sun is well up. I’ll take the truck back and be clear of your driveway before noon. And I will try to avoid either burning your house down or committing bloody murder. Deal?”
“Deal,” she said. “Good night, Cooper.”
“’Night, Siena.”
With an awkward little smirk, she left him and headed back to her house.
Cooper stood on the street and watched her go.
Hey—second time tonight he could have been shot but got away whole.
Night could have been worse.
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~oOo~
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Cooper woke stiff andsweaty. Peeling his eyelids up, the first thing he saw was ... fur?
No. Nap. Carpet nap. He’d fallen asleep face-down on the living room floor. A bright beam of sunlight cut across his head and shoulders, accounting for the sweatiness.
This was fucking hilarious. He really had stumbled in far enough to close the front door and then just dropped where he’d stood. His hand was still wrapped around the top strap of his backpack. Damn.
His back and neck ached like Dex had worked him over, and his head pounded. Chest hurt, too.
Was it possible to overdose on caffeine? Like, fatally? Fuck, that would have been embarrassing.
Groaning, he rolled to his back and fished his phone from his pocket to check the time and see if he’d been missing messages.
No messages, and it was only about seven-thirty in the morning. Okay. Agenda for the day: unload that albatross of a U-Haul, get it and the trailer over to the rental place and then—
Fuck. How was he going to get back?
Load the Softail back up, he supposed, and bring it with him. He’d really fucked up basically every decision last night.
When he sat up, a sledgehammer descended from the heavens and crashed into the top of his head. Holyfuck, a caffeine hangover was worse than cheap tequila.
Digging the bottle of aspirin out of his pack, he worked his way to his feet—ow, fuck—and shambled to the kitchen. Glassware was still in the truck, so he dumped some pills in his mouth and drank from the faucet. Then he stuck his whole head under the cold stream. That helped. He still felt like roadkill, but his painful and humiliating death from a Monster overdose seemed marginally less imminent.
What day was this? He checked his phone. The second of January. Sunday. Happy fucking New Year.
Okay. He was on his feet. He was oriented, more or less. Rested ... enough. And he had shit to do.
