First things first, though.
I did my own research on the man.
Seeing nothing of importance to indicate that he was a piece of shit or anything, satisfied that I wasn’t working with a murderer or immoral killer, I went back to work on the list of names.
There were eight of them, and I narrowed his list down to four solid, trustable candidates and sent the information to his email.
Then, because I could, I went ahead and checked up on Wyett to make sure that everything was okay on her end.
Her bank accounts looked healthy, there didn’t look to be anything wrong with her, and she was up for peer review soon at work. A hospital that was only an hour away from Souls Chapel, and thirty minutes away from my warehouse loft.
I then entered into my security system to make sure that everything was okay on the home front.
I found not only her, but my dogs, all lounging on the couch watching a movie.
She was currently balancing a glass of wine on her leg and staring at a book while she listened to the television in the background.
On the couch cushion beside her, she had a textbook opened up in front of her.
She was studying something but had taken a break.
My eyes roamed over her face, over her braless state, and then down to the panties she was wearing under one of my t-shirts.
God, she was beautiful.
And soon I could finally have what was mine.
Or, at least, I could pursue it.
We’d never discussed what would happen when I got out of prison, but over the last few years, I’d realized a few things rather quick.
One, I didn’t want to let her go.
Two, I didn’t think she would let go, either.
I just had to convince her to give us a chance before she let her logical brain get in the way.
Backing out of the feed the same way I got in, I covered all of my tracks on the computer, feeling happy as hell that I could let my brain do the things it most wanted to do again. At least, one of the things.
The other thing, my wife, would have to be done later.
If she would give me the chance.
Closing the final window and turning the computer back into ‘lock’ mode like it’d been when I arrived, I stood up.
Lynn glanced up at me, bored.
I looked down at his phone to see him already reading some of the information that I’d sent to his email.
“I narrowed your list of eight down to four,” I told him. “The other four, although basically good, have the potential for more complications than I think you’d want right now. I sent you everything I could find on all of them. Patrick Wheat, however, doesn’t really have a cyber footprint, so he’s hard to look into. You’ll want to follow up what I gave you with an in-person observation.”
Lynn stood up. “And did I check out?”
He knew that I’d look him up.
“As long as ‘Lynnwood Thatcher’ is your real name,” I said. “It was in the email that you gave me. Then again, based on the aliases that I was able to dig up using Lynnwood, chances are good that I only know half of the big picture.”
Lynn’s face flashed with a grin.
“I’m a man of many faces,” he admitted. “I’ve done a bit that I’m not proud of in my life, but ultimately, it’s all been for the greater good. I never do anything without a good reason. My moral compass is fine and working. Nothing that I do will ever blow back on y’all. I guarantee it.”
I knew that. That was why I’d done the research for him in the first place.
“Okay,” I said finally. “I’m trusting you.”
He nodded once. “After I have a chance to look through the information that you sent me, I’ll be back in touch.”
With that, he opened the door to the warden’s office and gestured toward the guard that was waiting outside, I assumed, for me.
“Thank you kindly, sir,” Lynn said to the guard. “We are through.”
The man nodded.
He was a big motherfucker and looked slightly familiar.
“You look familiar,” I admitted. “But I can’t remember why.”
“I was a professional football player,” he said. “Name’s Rome.”
He didn’t give me his last name, but he didn’t need to.
I knew as soon as he said the name ‘Rome’ who he was.
He’d played on my team, and I’d used him in a fantasy football league more times than I could count.
I grinned at him. “You won me a lot of money in my fantasy football league.”
Rome flashed a quick smile that was there and gone so fast that I had to wonder if I’d imagined it.
“Good to know,” he said as he jerked his chin at Lynn. “Have a good one.”
Lynn nodded at the two of us and disappeared down the hall out of sight, leaving me with the guard.
“You don’t happen to know anything about that guy, do you?” I asked.
I mean, I knew the man’s information online. Knew that he was an extremely wealthy guy, not married but dating a YouTube star/wildlife documentary enthusiast and had no record.
But I wasn’t one to blindly jump into situations with both feet. It’d saved my ass quite a few times over the years.
The one time that I had gone off the deep end and went out of character, I’d wound up in prison.
One that’d changed me and made me an even more cautious man.
So it wasn’t out of character that I’d ask around about him.
“I’ve met him a few times,” Rome replied. “I’m taking you to the infirmary, by the way. I was informed that you were sick.” I was beginning to argue when he continued talking. “The warden’s wife is in there today. She’s good people. You hurt her, and you die. And that’s not a threat, it’s a promise. Don’t make Lynn out to be a dumbass.”
I nodded once.
“Will do.”
CHAPTER 6
You want to know what Texas Roadhouse and I have in common? Great rolls.
-Text from Wyett to Hunt
HUNT
Two weeks later
I was standing outside the gates of the prison, staring at the long road that was spread out in front of me.
I was in the middle of Bear Bottom, Texas and looking at it with all new eyes.
When I’d first arrived in this place, I’d wondered if it was as sucky as it’d appeared through the barred, indestructible glass that I’d peered through.
It wasn’t as bad as I’d pictured, though.
It didn’t look like the kind of town that would have a prison right smack dab in the middle of it.
I pulled out my phone and sent a text.
Meet me at these coordinates. -Hunt
That’d been sent over an hour ago, and she still wasn’t there.
I’d just about decided to call her when a familiar car wound its way down the long road that led up to the prison. My wife at the wheel of it.
When she came to a stop beside the tree that I was resting under, she stared at me warily.
I was still wearing the prison clothes that I’d been issued.
Why?
Because my other shit wouldn’t fit.
I’d tried to squeeze my thighs into the pants, but they wouldn’t even come up past my hips.
I’d, apparently, gained weight since I’d entered.
Which wasn’t very surprising.
It wasn’t like I had a lot to do while I was there.
So it was either work out and train, or sit there and be bored.
I’d chosen to work out and train.
Anything was better than allowing my brain to go completely idle.
“Am I now going to be an accomplice in a prison break?” she asked as she put the car into park and got out.
I looked over the top of her car at her.
“No,” I said simply. “As of an hour ago, I am now a free man.”
Her mouth fell open. “How?”
I
gestured for the car and said, “Get in. I’ll tell you.”
After I told her everything, she stared at me thoughtfully.
“I’ve met Six’s man before,” she said. “I think he’s a pretty decent guy, but he’s kind of scary.”
I nodded once. “He is.”
In the confined space of the car, her sweet smell was driving me insane.
“Where do you want to go first?” she asked, her fingers drumming on the door handle where she was holding on so tight that her fingers were white. “Home? Food? Clothing store?”
I grinned. “Clothing store. If you don’t mind, I’d like for you to go inside and grab me something that might fit. Sweats if you have to until I can go in and get my real size. Then I want the biggest Whataburger that’s ever been made.”
She turned her head and smiled at me, her fingers loosening their hold on the door. “I think we can accomplish that.”
I felt my heart drum in my chest at that smile.
The smile that I’d masturbated to for way too many years.
The smile that I would finally have a chance to see on a regular basis. To make this entire thing more than one-sided.
I put the car into gear and wished that she’d brought my car and not hers.
She hadn’t even asked if I wanted to drive, she just got in on the passenger side. And I was glad.
I really, really needed to feel the wind in my hair.
I needed to feel free.
Rolling down the windows to stave off the anxiety attack that I could feel coming, I blasted the air and then looked over at Wyett.
She was busy putting her hair that was down around her shoulders into a messy bun on the top of her head.
A messy bun that was perfect and didn’t have one single hair out of place.
“How do women do that?” I asked as I pulled off the side of the road and flipped a bitch.
Cars honked, and I cursed.
She looked at me dryly. “Did you forget how to drive while you were on the inside?”
Her sarcasm was adorable, but the way she was fiddling with the hem of her shorts told me that she was really nervous.
“I might’ve,” I admitted. “It’s not like I had any reason to drive while I was locked up. Hell, the only time I was in a vehicle in the last year was when they transferred me to a new prison.”
She closed the retort that was about to leave her lips.
“Where’s the nearest clothing store to here?” I asked curiously.
She pulled up her phone and gestured toward the highway in front of us.
“I don’t know this area,” she confessed. “But I’ll Google it. Just stay on this road. If anything, this’ll lead us to home. In a roundabout way.”
I did as she suggested, loving the feel of the wind in my hair.
Speaking of hair…
“One other stop I’d like to make,” I said. “If that’s okay with you.”
She looked over at me curiously. “I’m yours for the day. I have nothing else going on. It’s my day off. And I don’t have anything tomorrow, either.”
I nodded once.
“I’d like to go to a barber shop.” I told her. “My hair is driving me fucking insane.”
I liked it longer, of course. But being forced to wear it longer because I didn’t trust the barbers in prison not to slit my throat instead of cutting my hair, it made a man want to be able to make his own choices.
“I think I can handle that, too.” She smiled. “It shows that the nearest shopping mall is literally right around this… ahh, there it is.”
She pointed to a shopping mall that had a bright red Target sign in the middle of it.
I gritted my teeth at the thought of her going into a place without me.
“You think they’ll notice what I’m wearing?” I asked curiously.
She looked at my ugly orange jumpsuit.
“They’ll notice,” she said. “And since this town is built around a prison, I highly doubt that they won’t give you a wide berth. Probably expect you to kill their kids. This is Target and not Walmart, after all. Now, if you wanted to drive another twenty minutes, we could go to a Walmart and you could go in with me. Nobody would notice because half the people don’t wear any type of clothes there at all.”
I rolled my eyes and pulled up to the front of the building.
“Go.”
She giggled and went, bailing out of the car and snatching her purse up in the process.
But she did leave her phone, which was sitting on the passenger side seat. Taunting me.
I picked up her phone and swept my thumb over the screen.
A photo of my dogs was the first thing to pop up.
Wyett was in the middle of Bones and Silo, with Silo dragging her tongue along the side of Wyett’s cheek.
Wyett was laughing, and I realized that I wanted this photo for myself.
But, I’d told myself when I’d first researched her in the very beginning that I wouldn’t invade her privacy again. Which meant, as much as I wanted this photo, I’d have to get it the old-fashioned way.
And, even though my fingers were itching to hack into the phone and use it, because God did I want to stretch my hacking muscles that had grown rusty with disuse, I wouldn’t.
Not to her, anyway.
The door opened beside me, and I realized that I’d never moved from in front of the building.
And I’d been staring at her phone long enough for her to not only find clothes, but to checkout and then come back to me.
“Here,” she said as she dropped down into the seat. “Move to the back of the lot and you can change.”
I did as suggested, pulling into the back of the lot and parking next to some massive van.
I got out and shucked the clothes off my body and reached back into the car for the bag.
She was already handing the shirt to me but had stalled out as she stared at me in shock.
I wasn’t sure if it was because of all the scars, or because of my near naked state.
Whatever the reason, I had to take the clothes from her hand and pull them to me.
“You get any shoes?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she answered. “Flip-flops because that was the only thing that I could guess your size at that wouldn’t look absolutely ridiculous on you.”
I kicked the clothes off completely and started stepping into the sweatpants.
That’s when the van behind me started to go off.
Or, more importantly, the people inside the van started to knock and holler.
“Do you think that they’re someone that’s important?” I asked curiously.
“I think that it’s a church van,” Wyett said. “And you should probably hurry because they’ll likely be the ones to call the cops and tell you that an indecent man exposed themselves to them. Then you’d wind up in prison.”
I looked at the van with the severely tinted black windows, and then at the trashy rest of it.
“There’s no way in hell that this is a church van,” I said as I finished getting dressed in the clothes she’d gotten me. “I hate flip-flops.”
CHAPTER 7
My ability to remember song lyrics from the 90s far exceeds my ability to remember why I came into the kitchen.
-Wyett’s secret thoughts
WYETT
“I hate flip-flops,” Hunt muttered darkly on the other side of the car.
From where I was sitting, I could only see him from the nipples down and shins up.
But all the rest… Jesus Christ, Lord have mercy.
He’d covered his lower half—thank God for small mercies—and now all I could see was his well-defined chest, his abs, and that part of him that made women go stupid.
I’d heard Six refer to it as an ‘Adonis Belt’ and in this instance, she couldn’t have put a better descriptive word on it if she tried.
Because holy, holy hell.
The man had that deep V that made my mouth go dry.
A loud screeching from the other side of the van had me turning—reluctantly, might I add—away from Hunt and toward the man that was rounding the front of the van to come to the side.
“What the fuck, man?” the man asked of Hunt. “My wife’s in the car.”
He pointed at the van.
Hunt shrugged. “Had to change, man. And she didn’t see anything that wouldn’t have been seen had I been going to the pool.”
He had a very good point.
“Whatever.” The man took an aggressive step toward Hunt. Hunt who, might I add, didn’t look the least bit intimidated by the man’s aggressive posture. “Get the fuck out of here.”
Hunt, who’d been in the process of pulling his shirt on over his chest—the shame—came to a frozen halt when the man’s words met him.
“I’m sorry,” Hunt hesitated. “Excuse me if I’m wrong but you move the fuck on. I’m changing. You’re not doing anything.”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “I was here first.”
Hunt shrugged. “I don’t give a flying fuck.”
I groaned. “Hunt.”
He didn’t even turn to look at me.
“You want some of this, bro?” The man slapped his chest.
That was when I got out of the car, my nerves starting to shoot sparks.
I didn’t know Hunt all that well.
What I did know was that his dogs loved him. He was rich beyond belief. He took care of everything so that I didn’t have to worry a single bit over the last few years. And that he’d gone to jail.
That was really all I knew about him.
But over the last few years and me visiting him once a month, I’d come to really like him as a person.
Not to mention he was hot as hell.
But I digress.
I didn’t know what Hunt would do in this situation.
He’d definitely gotten a little rougher around the edges since he’d gone to prison.
So there really was no telling what he would do in this position, but he got out of the car right after I did and moved to stand in front of me.
“Listen, you little twit. I could eat you for breakfast. I literally just got out of prison. I’m more than capable of handling my own. Do you really want to try me? Because your pressed white shirt and Dockers don’t give me the indication that you can handle yourself. So move. The fuck. On.”
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