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“So you’ve heard.”
“Heard what?”
“About my role in this town’s fucked-up story,” he grumbled. “I’m the town asshole. Just living up to the part.”
“I can see you take it seriously.”
“I’m a professional.”
“Hopefully, you’re just a small part in this town’s story.”
“No small parts in a small town, just cliché small minds. I’m sure you’ll fit right in. Now, if you could do me the pleasure of getting the hell off my property, that would be grand.”
Wow.
Okay, Mr. Personality.
He took his role to heart, a total method actor—cool. I could get behind someone who took their acting career seriously, no big deal. And boy, was he good. He deserved an award for his performance. I believed every arrogant comment he dished out.
If Louise, Kate, and Mr. Personality were the highlights of this town, I was in for a treat.
He didn’t look back up at me. Those dark, mysterious eyes didn’t lock with mine again. He kept his stare on the daisies with such a scowl on his face one would have thought I’d stepped on his loved one and crushed them to death.
I muttered another apology with no response then began my trek back to the house—well, I tried to find my way back. When I ended up making a circle in the woods, I found myself back at the field of daisies. Mr. Personality was sitting in the middle of the field on the white painted bench, and he released a weighted sigh when he saw me.
“Go straight this way to my house. It will take you to Merry Road. Hopefully, you can figure out where you live when you get to a main road.”
“Right. Of course. Thank you.”
He didn’t say another word.
As I walked around the block to find my way back to my property, I couldn’t help but laugh at the fact that Mr. Personality lived on a street called Merry. He was far from merry. Scrooge Avenue seemed much more fitting.
5
Jax
People were the worst.
Unfortunately, my day job required me to be in close contact with humans on a regular basis. I was the town’s one and only plumber, so needless to say, I spent a lot of time dealing with Havenbarrow’s shit. There were so many days I wished I would’ve become a writer, or a sculptor—or literally anything that involved as little human contact as possible.Oh, you need someone to sit on Mars for fifty years? No fucking problem, boss. Sign me up.
Hell, being a vet would’ve been better than this. At least then I would’ve been able to interact with cute pets while dealing with their dumbass owners who thought it was okay to feed their dogs wine because LOL YOLO.
Needless to say, I wasn’t a people person. I found them too people-y for my liking. I’d crossed paths with a lot of different types of individuals in my life and I had learned quickly that most of them weren’t for me. Therefore, finding a woman trespassing in my woods wasn’t the most exciting thing for me to experience yesterday afternoon. Even if she was beautiful, she was still, after all, human. Her beauty wasn’t enough to make me not care that she was on my property. I wanted from her the same thing I wanted from pretty much everyone else in town—to be left alone.
“What in the hell is stuck in there?” I grumbled as I glanced down the clogged-up sink of the Jeffersons’ master bathroom.
Marie Jefferson was an older lady with kind eyes. She was in her early sixties and always wore her pearls around her neck, along with the most expensive, vibrant clothing known to mankind. She was always wearing designer clothes, and if it wasn’t designer, it was still expensive as hell. Most people in Havenbarrow received hefty paychecks or came from a family with hefty paychecks, and Marie was no different. She simply didn’t have the same snotty attitude as a lot of the town did.
On the scale of people I hated, she was one of the few and far between who I could tolerate, which was good considering her husband, Eddie, was my therapist and had been since I was thirteen years old.
“Oh, well, you know…” Marie shrugged her shoulders and twirled her finger in her dyed rose-gold hair. “Last night, Eddie and I got a little wild, and well…” She cleared her throat, and her cheeks turned a bright shade of red. “Jax, it’s a little embarrassing. Eddie told me not to tell you the truth, but I’m a terrible liar.”
Her stare moved past me and landed on Connor, my assistant, who’d recently finished his junior year of high school. He was my one and only employee for one simple reason—no one else in town had enough nerve to work with me. Connor was different, though. He was the town’s hustler through and through. If there was a way to make a profit, Connor was all over it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a millionaire before he turned twenty-one. The wheels in his head were always turning with ideas on how to make more money for himself.
I’d been working with him for almost a year now, which was a lot longer than any of my other employees had lasted. Everyone before him either left crying or calling me an asshole. Some cried and called me an asshole at the same time.
Connor was different. He didn’t take any of my aggressive, short comments personally. He was determined to show up for his paycheck and have a good time doing it, too. Even when I was in a shitty mood, Connor acted as if we were the best of friends.
