“That still doesn’t explain why you were coming outside.”
My hand moved across his shoulder, settling under his chin. “I was going to the tree stump.”
“Why?”
I looked up at him. “Because it holds them for me.” I looked back at his beard. Oh, fuck it. I was going to touch the damn thing. I combed my fingers through it and sighed. “How is it so soft?”
“What are you doing?”
I shifted my fingers through it and sighed. “Petting you.”
“Why?” he demanded.
“Because I can.”
He grabbed my hand and pulled it from his beard. “That’s it, babe. I’m getting you back into the house and in bed.”
“I’m not ready to sleep. I want to smoke, refill my glass, and then watch more cold cases. I think I’m getting really good at solving them even before the police.” I looked over my shoulder to the backyard. “As soon as I figure out if I put my cigarettes in that stump, I think I’m going to sign up to be a cold case.”
“What in the fuck are you talking about?”
I shook my head. “I meant be the guy who signs cold cases.” I patted his shoulder. “You really need to learn how to read between the forgotten words of the drunk.” I shakily stood on my tip toes. “I’m the drunk, by the way,” I whispered in his ear.
“No shit, babe,” he laughed. “If we get these cigarettes then you’ll go inside to sleep?”
I nodded. “If by bed you mean drink some more, then yeah, totally. That’s what I’m going to do.”
“Pipe and Nickel owe me big for this.” He swept me up into his arms and clumped down the steps and around the house to the backyard.
“I totally could have walked, you know.”
Wrecker turned sideways and ducked under a low-hanging branch. “You don’t even have shoes, Alice. How the hell were you going to walk back here?”
I lifted a foot and gasped. Sure as shit, I didn’t have shoes on. I wiggled my toes and tapped him on the shoulder.
“I’m holding you, babe. You don’t have to tap my shoulder to get my attention.”
“What do you think of my nail polish? It’s sparkly.” I was all over the place. I was worse than a squirrel trying to cross the road.
“Where’s the stump?” he demanded.
“It’s dark.”
“Alice, I’m really trying with you here because you’re drunk and going through some shit, but I’m about five minutes away from losing my shit. It’s dark because it’s two o’clock in the fucking morning and we’re trying to find cigarettes you decided to hide in a tree stump.”
“When you put it that way, I sound fucking crazy.”
He looked down at me.
I squirmed to get out of his arms, and he set me on my feet but held onto my arm. “You could have at least said I’m not crazy,” I mumbled. “They’re in the little bucket thingy behind the stump.”
Wrecker stalked over to the stump, leaned over it, and stood up with the purple bucket in his hand. “This?”
“That’s it, unless there happens to be another purple bucket back there.”
He pried off the lid, pulled out the baggie that held the last of my cigarettes, and tossed the bucket on the ground. He stalked back to me, bent over, planted his shoulder into my stomach, and lifted me off the ground.
“Hey,” I protested. “You need to put the bucket back.” I slapped his back and kicked my feet for him to let me down.
He grunted but didn’t turn around to fix the bucket. “I’m tired, woman. You’re gonna smoke your cigarette, crawl into bed, and then I’m going to pass out on your couch.”
“I was with you ‘til the couch passing.” Couch passing? I was about to start rolling my eyes at myself.
“It’s your own damn fault I’m sleeping on the couch. If you hadn’t stumbled out of your house, we wouldn’t be doing this shit right now.”
“I can stumble wherever the hell I want. You are not the boss of me, Beardilocks.” I nailed him on the back again. “None of this is my fault. I didn’t ask you to come to my bucket, let me pet your beard, and then help me find my cigarette house.” I clamped my eyes shut and prayed he wouldn’t hear what I had said.
“There is so much wrong in that sentence, I don’t even know where to start, woman.”
“I much prefer you calling me darlin’.”
He climbed the three steps to the porch and charged into the house.
“What about my cigarette?” I yelled. He set me on my feet, and I swayed back and forth.
He dangled the bag in front of my face and rested a hand on my shoulder to steady me. “Smoke, bed.”
I snatched the bag from him and took a step back. “I have to go back outside, Beardilocks. I can’t smoke in here.”
“The fact you can say Beardilocks but can’t get a complete sentence out is baffling.”
I bowed my head. “You. Are. Welcome.”
He grabbed my hand and tugged me back out the front door. “You’re a trip, darlin’.”
I ignored him and ripped open the baggie. “You wouldn’t, by chance, have any fire on you?” He threw his head back and laughed. “I’m not sure on what is so funny.”
He patted his pocket, then pulled out my fire I needed. “You mean a lighter?” He flicked the little flicky thing and held it in front of my face.
I stuck the cigarette in my mouth and leaned into the flame. “Lifr eh men.” I inhaled deep when the spark caught and leaned back to enjoy the nicotine coursing through me.
“Try that one more time, darlin’.”
I exhaled and smiled. “Lighter, I mean.”
He nodded but didn’t say anything.
We stood there, neither one of us talking, while I smoked my cigarette. I didn’t understand how I had gotten there—standing on my front porch with Wrecker after trekking through my backyard to get a damn cigarette.
I tossed the exhausted butt onto the ground, and Wrecker moved to grind it out with his heel. “I didn’t know if you were going to remember that you didn’t have shoes on.”
I glanced down at my feet. “I hadn’t.” Though it hadn’t even registered in my brain to snuff it out. “You can go home now.”
He shook his head and grabbed my hand. “No.” He tugged me back into the house, past the living room, and down the hallway. “Which one is your bedroom?”
“I’ll never tell.” There were only two doors so he would shortly figure it out, but I wasn’t going to help him.
He opened the one on the left and saw it was the bathroom, then stalked toward the one farther down the hallway. The door was open, and he walked right into my room as if I had invited him.
“Get in bed. I’ll be right back.” He left as fast as he had walked into my room.
“Do what he says, and then he’ll leave,” I mumbled. I dropped my shorts, yanked my shirt over my head, and grabbed my pajamas I had left at the foot of my bed. I managed to get them on with only tipping over two times. Go me.
“Take these, drink this, and pass out.” Wrecker walked into the room with a huge glass of water and four white pills in his hand. He skidded to a stop in front of me, and some of the water in the glass sloshed onto the floor. “What in the hell are you wearing?”
“Cow print.”
He looked me up and down. “Why?”
“Because it’s the latest fashion in cow couture, duh.”
He looked around the room. “Is this a damn joke?”
“Why would this be a joke? You told me to get ready for bed, and I did.” I snatched the pills and water from him.
He motioned to me. “I heard a story about this, but I always thought it was Nickel and Karmen being funny.”
I motioned up and down my body. “Does this look like a joke to you?”
“Well, yeah.”
I tossed the pills into my mouth, downed half of the water, and thrust the glass into his hand. “You can go.”
“Get into bed, and then I’ll think
about it.”
I stomped over to my pillow, yanked back the covers, and bounced into the bed. “You know, you telling me to get into bed should be sexy, but all I want to do right now is punch you in the nuts.”
He walked over to the door and flipped off the lights. “Night, babe.” He pulled the door halfway shut, and I listened to his footfalls down the hallway.
“What in the blooming hell just happened?” I whispered.
This had to be a dream. Or I was so wasted that I was hallucinating the big, burly, hunk of man in my house. That had to be what was happening.
I laid back and pulled the covers up to my chin. Too bad I hadn’t hallucinated the man falling into bed with me. That would have been awesome. There had been more than a handful of times I had imagined what it would feel like to have his beard against my skin.
If what I felt tonight when I ran my fingers through it was any indication, I knew if I ever managed to get his beard to touch other parts of me, it would be better than pigs rolling in mud. I closed my eyes and tried to squelch a wave of nausea.
Jesus. I hadn’t planned on drinking that much but the more I drank, the less I thought about my mom. My brain had become foggy, and I didn’t remember I was basically all alone in the world now. Except now that I was lying in the dark, nauseous, with the feeling of floating, the tears soaked my cheeks again.
Drunk or not, I was alone.
*
Chapter 2
Wrecker
I had slept on some shitty couches in my day, but Alice’s piece of shit took the cake. Springs digging into my back and the huge gap between two of the cushions made for a shit night of sleep. It was only six thirty, and I was already up because my body decided if it couldn’t get comfortable then we might as well be awake.
“Fuck.” I tossed the tiny as fuck blanket to the side and jack-knifed off the couch. It had only been three hours since I put Alice to bed, and thankfully, I hadn’t heard a sound from her room since.
I crept down the hallway, pushed open the door, and couldn’t help but laugh. When I left, she had been sitting on the bed, but now, she was hanging half off with her feet touching the floor and her head in middle. Her mouth was hanging wide open, and her hair was fanned out in a wild and snarly mess. Even in her sleep, she was crazy.
She was totally going to wake up with a wicked headache and a sore back. I moved into the room. I couldn’t do anything about the headache, but I could try to help her back. I slid my arm under her legs to swing them up onto the bed, but as soon as I moved her, she bent her knees, trapping my arm and twisted up onto the bed. She yanked me up and onto the bed with my arm trapped as she continued to snore lightly.
“Son of a bitch,” I whispered to the dark room. What the fuck am I supposed to do now? I tried to wiggle my way out from under her, but she clamped her legs even harder to her ass. Now I was the one who was half lying on the bed with my feet on the floor. I was twisted into a pretzel with Alice, and I had no fucking clue how to get out of it without waking her up.
She muttered in her sleep, something along the lines of butterflies and peanut butter then settled back into snoring with a death clamp on my arm.
Her sweet scent clung to the sheets, and I buried my face in them for a brief second. Her bed was soft as fuck compared to the shitass couch I had tried sleeping on. My fatigue from riding hard yesterday to get back to the club and then making a stop at her house which kept me up ‘til almost three in the morning, hit me hard.
I wrapped my other arm around her waist, moved her further to the side of the bed, and managed to get my whole body onto the mattress. Through all of this, she didn’t wake up or release her damn legs from my arm. I twisted to grab a pillow and shoved it under my head.
Not how I had expected this to go, but at least I had a better place to sleep now. She must have found the couch in a dumpster and spent a pretty penny on her bed. It was like I was lying on a fucking cloud.
She was going to freak the fuck out when she woke up and saw me sleeping here, but it was her own damn fault.
*
Alice
Oh fuck. What have you done, Alice? I looked over at the pillow by my ass and saw Wrecker’s bearded face and felt his body wrapped around me. “Holy shit.” It hadn’t been a hallucination last night. Although, when I fell asleep, Wrecker had been in the living room, or at least, that was where he was headed.
How in the facking hell did he end up in my bed? I needed to get out of there fast. The clock on my nightstand glowed that it was half-past nine, and a fire lit under my ass when I realized I had to be to work in half an hour.
Double oh fuck.
I slid out from his hold and scrambled off the bed without waking him up. It was amazing the ninja skills I had when trying not to wake a sleeping giant on my bed. I sprinted to the bathroom and quietly clicked the door shut behind me.
I looked in the mirror and clamped my hand over my mouth to muffle my scream. “You’re hideous, Alice,” I whispered. The mascara and eyeliner I had swiped on yesterday was now smeared down my face; the eyeshadow had somehow blended to cover all the way up to my eyebrows; and it looked like I was a raccoon with a rat’s nest of burgundy hair.
“Sweet creamy peanut butter.” I patted my hair, hoping to somehow tap it into submission. It was going to take a whole hell of a lot more than a brush to look presentable in twenty minutes.
After I reached into the shower to twist the faucet to scalding hot, I unzipped my onesie, dropped it to the floor, and stepped out of it. Thank God, I had bought the industrial size of conditioner because that shit was about to become my detangler.
It took five minutes of standing under the steamy water massaging gobs of conditioner in my hair to finally be able to run my hands through it without thinking I was going to lose a finger.
I peeked my head out of the shower curtain after rinsing off to listen for Wrecker moving around. I heard nothing and said a silent prayer thanking God for the small miracle of keeping that man asleep.
My daily routine of hanging my work uniform on the back of the bathroom door saved me from having to go back into the bedroom. I was dressed and out of the bathroom with one minute to spare before I needed to be in the car.
I popped a pod into the coffee machine, stuck a travel cup under it, and gave it the stink eye when it made a hissing noise that was loud enough to wake up the neighbors. I snapped on the lid, grabbed my purse, and hightailed it out the front door.
Dealing with Wrecker was a little foggy in my mind, but I knew I had made a fool of myself. Normally, I was fine with making a fool of myself because that was who I was, but when it came to Wrecker, I couldn’t handle the man’s judgy eyes. Reliving that humiliation was not something I wanted to do.
“Mother flappers!” He had parked behind my car. “Argh!”
How the hell was I going to get out of here without waking him up now? It was like he had purposely parked there.
“I hate him. It’s official.” I walked to the front of the car and saw I had about five feet from the bumper to the garage. If I managed to back up a bit and then crank my wheel, I should be able to get out. I would have to drive on the lawn, but at that point, I would have driven through two feet of water if it meant I didn’t have to wake up Wrecker.
After I managed to eke out of my driveway with only tipping over a flower pot and thankfully, not Wrecker’s bike, I motored down the road while glancing in my rearview mirror the whole time to make sure Wrecker somehow didn’t appear behind me.
“Just in time,” Bos shouted from the kitchen.
I rolled my eyes and stowed my purse under the counter. “You got three people in here, Bos. Not like you were swamped.”
He leaned on the window that separated the kitchen and the front of the diner. “You know I’m going to have to hire another waitress to replace Nikki.”
I waved my hand. “Go ahead. I don’t know what’s stopping you.”
“It’ll give you more time to spend w
ith your mom.”
I crouched down and grabbed a stack of paper placemats. “Yeah, that would be good.” Tears stung my eyes, but I fought them off. Bos didn’t know Mom had died. No one knew besides the pastor and the nursing home she lived in two towns over. News would eventually spread that she had died, but I didn’t know how to say she was gone without making people feel sorry for me.
“Alice, can I get a refill?”
Saved by asshole Phil needing a refill every two minutes. “I’ll get that,” I mumbled. I grabbed the coffee pot but not without noticing Bos assessing me.
He was another one who I knew was always watching me. He wasn’t really judging, but he seemed to know what was going on without asking any questions. Not like he could know my mom had died, but I could tell he knew something was up. Time to lay on the normal crazy Alice to throw him off whatever scent he was on.
“You think you can toast me up three pieces of toast, smear ‘em with peanut butter, and toss two fried eggs on top?”
He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Don’t know how the hell you manage to eat shit like that.”
I shrugged and made my way over to Phil. “It tastes good, Bos. You should try it sometime.” I filled Phil’s coffee and listened to him ramble on about the prices of wheat then wandered back over to the front counter where I mindlessly started slapping a Diner sticker on all the paper placemats. This was how cheap Bos was. Instead of just getting the damn mats with the Diner logo on them, he ordered them separate because it was cheaper and then made me slap them together. “Cheap ass,” I mumbled.
“What was that?” He smacked the bell in the window and clattered down the plate with my breakfast.
I finished the mats and set two at the places at the counter. “Oh nothing, Bos. I was just thinking about how much I love all of these tasks that you give me. Keeps me busy.” I grabbed my plate from the window and a set of silverware wrapped in a napkin from the bin under the counter.
“You better refill Phil before you sit down,” Bos warned.
“Can I get a refill?”
I rolled my eyes and set my plate down. “Coming, Phil.” I could already tell it was going to be a day of endless refills for Phil and Bos being his annoying self.
Wrecker Page 2