It Happens

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  I’d reluctantly accepted, and Zuri had been fired.

  Yet now she went out of her way to make my life a living hell…such as coming into my bar, on my day, and making me see her and BJ.

  Consequently, I ignored them, and I ignored Jubilee who was now watching on with amusement. I continued to get hammered.

  Or tried to, anyway.

  The bartender, a young woman all of twenty-five at most, kept handing me waters with a smile, and I kept drinking them.

  The water came courtesy of the woman I was trying to ignore.

  Regardless of our mutual dislike for each other, we still went out of our way to make sure that we took care of each other.

  I mean, sure, we couldn’t stand to be in each other’s presence for longer than just a few minutes before we started fighting. But no matter what, I’d look after her just as she’d do the same for me. There was an obligation there that’d been set in place since she was six years old and I was nine years old and met for the first time.

  Even though, at first, we hadn’t been as civil.

  It was only after I’d followed the job to Bear Bottom, Texas from Arkansas that I realized that I hadn’t been the only one Silas and my father had sent packing. Jubilee had gotten the same invitation, and she’d accepted.

  Though, luckily, we didn’t accept the same job.

  Which was funny if you thought about it.

  Where I was a protector of life, Jubilee was the preserver of death.

  I was a sheriff’s deputy and also worked as a pilot of Life Flight, Jubilee was an undertaker. A mortician in layman’s terms.

  I could see her out of the corner of my eye, and what I saw still made me roll my eyes.

  Jubilee, despite her jovial name, was as goth as one could get without having the white facial makeup. Though, there were days that she didn’t need it since she was so fucking pale—which was why I assumed that she didn’t bother with wearing it. Why bother applying the pale base when your skin was the exact shade of ghostly white that you’d set out to attain with makeup?

  She and Annmarie couldn’t have been more different.

  Annmarie, my high school sweetheart, had been all brightness and sunshine. She’d had blonde hair that she styled in the cutest pixie haircut, blue eyes, and a precious smile that could knock you off your feet. She was sweet, caring, and welcoming to everyone.

  Jubilee was…not.

  Jubilee had black hair so black that it sometimes shined blue in the right light. It was curly as fuck and hung down to her ass when she wore it down. She wore black clothes, black nail polish, and black jewelry if she wore any at all.

  Hell, the only spot of color on her at all was the necklace that Annmarie used to wear—an oval opal on a delicate silver chain. Something that I had actually given to Jubilee for Christmas, but Annmarie had stolen and had never given back.

  At the time I’d given it to Jubilee, it’d been my first Christmas with Annmarie, and Jubilee’s first Christmas with Eitan. We’d all exchanged gifts, and Jubilee and Annmarie had laughed as they’d gotten their gifts that I’d bought the two of them with my hard-earned part-time paycheck at the auto body shop that I did paint for.

  I’d gotten Annmarie a deep purple oval stone necklace because purple had been her favorite color. I’d gotten Jubilee the white opal because I had no idea what she liked and felt bad for not getting her anything.

  I thumbed the silver belt buckle Jubilee had gotten me and took another sip of my beer.

  An obnoxious laugh had me stiffening.

  Sometimes I wondered if Zuri laughed like that just because she knew that it grated on my nerves. It was a high-pitched, ear-piercing laugh that never failed to hit an octave that sounded like nails on a chalkboard.

  And just when she stopped, I let out a relieved breath only to see BJ come up to the bar four stools down from me and order his ‘girl’ a margarita despite having a waitress that was running back and forth to them all night.

  I knew why he’d showed up near the bar. He wanted me to see him.

  Well, goddammit, I had.

  And now I was pissed.

  Would it be so fucking hard for him to stay across the goddamn bar and give me goddamn room on one single day of the year?

  Why yes, yes it would kill him.

  The motherfucker.

  I downed my beer and was just about to turn on my barstool, giving him the attention that he so obviously wanted, with my fist, when a feminine sigh sounded from my other side.

  “Listen,” Jubilee said as she sidled up to the bar. “Getting drunk and then starting a fight with those two isn’t going to do you any good. The town is on your side because you’re the one wronged. You start stooping down to their level and you’re going to regret it. You’re a sheriff’s deputy, act like it.”

  Jubilee sat down on the barstool next to me and continued drinking her beer, and I reluctantly started to cool down because goddammit, she was right. I needed to cool my jets. I needed to get a handle on this anger that I felt toward them, yet it was hard seeing as every goddamn time that I did try to let it go they brought it back up again.

  With a vengeance.

  But I didn’t stop drinking.

  There was no way that was happening today.

  “Why are you talking to me?” I grumbled, gesturing to the bartender for another round with a raise of my glass.

  She nodded her head but didn’t fill me up a glass of beer, but a glass of water.

  I glared at the woman at my side.

  “Why must you always make deals with the bartender before I get here?” I asked with annoyance.

  “Because if I don’t, nobody else will. And your dad and I have an understanding,” she muttered darkly.

  I didn’t bother to say anything to that. Jubilee’s dad, Pete, and I had an understanding, too.

  No matter what happened, or how much we disliked each other, I would always have Jubilee’s back. I was sure the same went for her and the ‘understanding’ she had with my father.

  Whatever the reason, we’d never let anything happen to the other. Despite both of us hating the other.

  Jubilee’s and my dislike for each other went way back. It didn’t start the day that we both were struck by lightning and Eitan and Annmarie died. No, it started back when her father and my father first brought us around each other at the age of six and nine and she stole my favorite hat and threw it into the fire.

  It only got worse from there, and eventually our aversion had turned into a strong dislike, closer to hate.

  Not that I would say I hated Jubilee now, but I definitely didn’t like her.

  I took another swig of beer instead of saying anything to her idiotic statement.

  “Thirty-four years old,” she murmured. “How do you feel? Old?”

  I looked over at her and glared. “You’re only three years younger than me, and I’m sure I’m in way better shape than you. Why don’t you tell me how you feel?”

  She made a disgusted face. “I was just trying to make conversation.”

  “Well make it with someone else. You annoy me,” I muttered darkly.

  Jubilee rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

  Another dark laugh had us both looking in the direction of Zuri, who’d come up to get the drinks this time.

  “Still can’t get along, I see?” Zuri sneered.

  Jubilee blinked. “Actually, we’re fucking and having a grand ol’ time. But we still like to talk cruelly to each other. It makes us hot.”

  Zuri’s face went slack. “You’re what?”

  Jubilee grinned and leaned forward, her mouth perilously close to mine.

  And, blaming it on the beer, I turned my face so that our mouths connected. Then I kissed the shit out of my enemy.

  Chapter 2

  No, I asked for a beer. This is a Bud Light.

  -The only thing Jubilee can remember from the night before.

 
Jubilee

  I groaned, opened one eye and rolled over, my body hitting something so solid that it had to be the wall.

  It wasn’t the wall.

  In fact, the solidness at my side groaned, too, and sat up, his face a mask of pain as he rubbed his head.

  “Son of a bitch,” the most annoying voice in the world said.

  I froze at hearing that voice, so close to me.

  I blinked open my eyes and immediately regretted it, but the brief glance around told me what I already knew. I wasn’t at home, and I had no idea how I got there.

  “Goddamn, this hurts,” the naked man beside me muttered under his breath.

  I wasn’t sure if I agreed with him. He didn’t look hurt.

  In fact, he looked so goddamn appetizing that I wasn’t sure he didn’t walk around looking perfect all day long.

  You know how on the fast food commercials that the burgers always look way better than when you get them in real life? That’s what I always thought would happen when it came to seeing Ezekiel McGrew without his clothes on. I thought for sure he couldn’t look as good out of them as he did in them.

  I was wrong.

  He looked better.

  So, so much better.

  The man was ripped. And when I say ripped, I mean he’s got every possible indention and divot that denotes perfect health. He even has abs when he’s bending over the bed, holding his head like he’d just taken a two-by-four to the temple.

  Who the hell had abs when they were bending over? Who the hell didn’t have rolls?

  Ezekiel McGrew had abs when he was bending over.

  He was also covered in tattoos. Tattoos that you couldn’t see unless he was completely, deliciously naked.

  His hair, the beautiful strawberry-blond hair was a freakin’ mess around his sleepy face, and his beard seemed like it grew overnight with how bushy and messy it was looking.

  Then understanding of what exactly was going on dawned, and I froze.

  Ezekiel McGrew.

  Naked.

  In the same bed that I was naked in.

  I opened the other eye and stared in horror at the man, gasping.

  He looked over his shoulder at me, starting at the tips of my black-painted toenails, pausing at the space between my thighs that was hairless but for a thin landing strip that I’d dyed purple, and ending on my face.

  Oh, he’d paused at my tits, but they were nothing to write home about, which likely explained why he didn’t stop and stare for longer than a glance.

  When they landed on my face, he froze just as solid as I did, and stared with just as much horror.

  “What. The. Fuck?”

  I stood up, trying not to be embarrassed by my nudity, and walked to where I could see my clothes tossed carelessly on the floor.

  My jeans went on first because I couldn’t immediately find my panties. My shirt was a lost cause, so I stole the t-shirt that Ezekiel had on last night and slipped it over my head, trying not to moan at the scent of him filling my nostrils.

  Finally, I searched for my shoes and slipped my feet into my combat boots.

  All the while, Zee sat on the bed, looking just as naked and hot as he had been when I’d first woken up. Only now he was watching me like a hawk. Or a wolf looking to kick another wolf out of his territory.

  I stopped at his bedroom door and turned, giving him my eyes. “Don’t think this means I like you.”

  His eyes narrowed. “I never said it would.”

  “Good,” I muttered, turning away. “This doesn’t change a thing.”

  He laughed bitterly.

  “If anything changed, it would be your luck.”

  I laughed then, and it sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard.

  “Lucky?” I threw my hands up in the air. “You think I’m lucky that I just slept with a man that used to date my sister? A man that is the brother to my dead boyfriend? No, I think not.”

  He bowed up then.

  “You think I like this any better than you do?!” he bellowed. “Because let me tell you something. I. Fucking. Don’t!”

  With that, he opened the door for me to leave. And me, not one to not take the hint, took off before he could say another word.

  All the while I kept turning around to glare at him over my shoulder.

  And, for good measure, I flipped him off before I turned the corner.

  Chapter 3

  I never craved attention until I felt yours.

  -Jubilee to her dog

  Jubilee

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” my best friend Turner asked. “You’re acting like you’ve been dropped on your ass. You’re walking around like you’ve broken your tailbone.”

  I shook my head.

  I couldn’t tell her that I’d had sex with the one man I’d never thought I’d have sex with the night before that had a dick like a donkey.

  Okay, maybe he didn’t have a dick like a donkey, but it was big. Really big. Way bigger than any woman needed. Just sayin’. I also couldn’t tell her why I was sore. Nope, couldn’t mention that at all.

  Because then she’d be all excited that I’d lost my virginity and tell me that now I was an adult, and it wasn’t something that I was proud of.

  She liked to tease me relentlessly about it.

  Then I’d have to tell her who I’d had sex with…and it was all just a downward spiral.

  Better not to say a word.

  “I slipped on the top steps of my house today and hit my butt,” I lied.

  “That sucks,” Turner murmured, grunting slightly with the added weight of the dead body we were transferring from the cooler to the table. “Did anyone see you?”

  Anyone meaning my eighteen million neighbors that liked nothing more than to watch me day in and day out.

  Literally, I lived in a retirement neighborhood—at least it felt like it. Sometimes I wondered why I stayed when I got so much attention, but other times I enjoyed having a quiet, safe neighborhood to stay in. Out of the entire block there were maybe three people under the age of thirty.

  “No,” I lied. “It was early. They weren’t out speed-walking yet.”

  Lies, lies, lies.

  I was such a liar.

  “I still don’t understand your reluctance to leave there,” she muttered. “You’re in a rental. It’s not like you would have to spruce up the landscaping, find a realtor, then a buyer. No, you just pack up and move. Not to mention then you’d get away from them calling out to you every time you got in or out of your car, asking if you’d come help them with a ‘simple project’ that ends up taking thirty minutes.”

  That was true.

  And unfortunately, it happened quite a bit.

  Just this morning on my way to my car as I was leaving for work, Mrs. Newton had asked if I’d be willing to help her roll her trash cans out to the curb for pickup. I had, and then she’d asked me if I could help her bring her groceries inside. Twenty minutes later, I was twenty minutes late arriving at work.

  But, it also didn’t really bother me if I got to thinking about it. They were just lonely. It was hard for me to tell them no when all they wanted was just a friendly face to talk to them.

  That was what was so heartbreaking about it all.

  The majority of the neighborhood was older. They had grown kids and grandkids that came out to visit them at times, but they no longer had the hustle and bustle available to them that they once did.

  “Turner,” I sighed. “What is your aversion to my place?”

  She shook. “It’s haunted.”

  I looked at her and laughed. “I thought it was just me!”

  “No.” She shook her head and sighed as we straightened the body bag on the table. “I swear to God, every time I go in there, I feel like I need a sweatshirt and a cross.”

  I unzipped the body bag as I thought about what she said.

  She was right. There were times, when
I was home alone, that I felt like someone was watching my every move.

  Then again, that was something that I experienced quite a bit over my thirty plus years of life, so this really was nothing new. There wasn’t a single day that went by that I didn’t feel like someone was watching me. When I was at the grocery store. When I graduated from college and hadn’t told anybody that I was graduating. When I was running.

  “Last week I got home and the drawers in my kitchen were all open. Even the cabinets,” I said. “And sometimes I feel gusts of wind as I’m sitting in my reading nook.”

  “Let’s not even get into the fact that you can’t get into your attic,” she said.

  That was true.

  “I thought I heard a voice in there the other day. I even went as far as to get a crowbar and a sledgehammer, but whoever built that attic door put some muscle behind it. I couldn’t even dent the wood of the door!”

  She shivered. “See? Creepy. That’s why we do Chinese fat nights at my house.”

  ‘Chinese fat nights’ were really just us ordering Chinese food, buying bakery items from the supermarket, and binge-watching the newest show on Netflix for six hours straight.

  I pushed the edges of the bag away from the body and took my first look at my newest client.

  His name was Rylan and he used to be my neighbor.

  Unfortunately, he was axed to death.

  “Since when did he start looking all attractive and shit?” she asked, looking at the dead man on the table. “Didn’t he used to look like that creepy guy next door that you didn’t ever want your children talking to?”

  “Beards make everything better,” I told her. “Do you remember that guy from church camp in the tenth grade that was always weirding all the girls out that I told you about? And then when I went back the next year, he had a beard and all of a sudden he was attractive?”

  “Yes,” she admitted. “I also don’t think that’s fair. You should be able to know what you’re getting. I mean, if he ever married, and then shaved his face, his wife would go from having a ten to having a four.”

  “The same can be said for women that put makeup on, color their hair, and wear push up bras,” I pointed out.

  She sighed. “That’s true. But I can’t help the way I am.”