No. If.
“Just doing my job,” Eve said, the corner of her mouth twitching with the words.
“Look, I’m not looking to hop on a bone because who needs the hassle of a damn man when I can buy one in any size I want and it doesn’t talk back,” Rory began, “but even I know that guy is like biting into shortbread, finding out it’s a gooey chocolate chunk, and an hour later realizing you ate an edible.”
“It’s simple then. Just say no,” Zara said with a straight face, making the rest of us break out in cackling laughter, easing the tension, but not obliterating it altogether.
Cause like she said, Priest was gooey chocolate chunk and while drugs had never been my thing, I was all of a sudden totally down with popping an edible.
7
With a couple quick knocks on the side door at Rockabilly’s, I waited to see if Jackson Stone would answer. I should have called, but I itched to do something, anything at this point that got me out of my own head and kept me from finding...Mayhem.
Yeah, I was itching to see her again.
Restless to the point Lilith was ready to strangle me with the straps of the baby carrier she’d just gotten in the mail, I hightailed it out of there to give her space and give me—well, hell if I knew.
I avoided town. With so much speculation about my interest in Mayhem, the last thing I wanted to do was hover in her space—basically anywhere within a five-mile radius—and feed the voracious gossips in town.
I didn’t need to be giving the town the wrong idea.
Or her.
Or me for that matter.
Because the closer I got, the harder it became to see the boundaries between reason and a colossal mistake in the making. And that was after only two encounters.
It was going to be a hell of a long two months.
Curling my fist, I pounded the door again.
I tried to imagine the guy I knew so well from school and endless weekends at the skate park running the decades old roller rink, but I could never see him managing the place like an actual grown-up. Definitely not the same as his father and grandfather before him.
After all, he spent his teen years running with the crew of punk kids often banned from the property for getting high in the woods at the edge of the parking lot. Family or not, Old Man Stone, the original owner of Rockabilly’s and third generation hard-ass, didn’t put up with bullshit.
A laugh crept into my throat as an old memory of him took hold, cigar clenched between his teeth in the corner of his mouth, smoke wafting into his one eye, making him squint. Thick bushy eyebrows low and pinched as he griped about dumbass teens and their wacky tobacky.
Old Man Stone could be a real son of a bitch, but a weathered New Englander to the core, he always shot straight.
Jackson sitting at the 1950s steel tanker of a desk his grandfather coveted as good ol' American craftsmanship? God no. All I could imagine was Jackson, lounging in the high-back chair, his feet propped on the edge of that scarred monstrosity, headphones blasting The Ramones and Beastie Boys as he suffered through his own personal hell—or in this case, his birthright.
But then, sometimes birthrights were a punch in the balls like that.
At least he had a legacy worth taking over. Some of us had a mountain of rot ingrained in us from one parent that we try relentlessly to keep from infecting the good in us from the other parent, leaving us wondering if we really are an even split of our mom and dad or if the bad managed to wield a majority stake in our soul.
This was exactly why I convinced Lilith and Jordan to raise their kids at the family farm we’d inherited fifty/fifty. This was the chance for something good to come from my mistakes. For smiles and laughter to overwrite the loss and sadness.
With no sign of life from the other side of the door, I pounded louder with enough force to rattle the sheet metal on either side of the frame. I debated giving up for all of a handful of seconds, but I had to burn off the past week and what town was doing to me each day I stayed.
Come on, Jackson.
The blue box monstrosity with swathes of red and yellow signage drew in families from Bangor and Augusta where roller rinks had all but died under the crushing costs of upkeep and stiff competition from growing cities with more modern entertainment options.
Even with the support of the towns surrounding Galloway Bay, I wondered if this place could survive the onslaught of competition, but I also knew if anyone could pull off saving it, it was Jackson Stone.
He’d saved me from myself a time or two with his quick wit, his free spirit, and loyalty.
Maybe that’s why I couldn’t make myself go now.
I needed a friend—I hated admitting that even to myself. I still had a few in town, but I needed someone who wouldn’t try to pick me apart and just let me be. Most of all, I wanted to see what he made of this place—how much had changed, how much had stayed the same.
I wanted to see if I could find a bit of my youth here, the guy I had been before everything went wrong not once, but twice.
The door burst open and Jackson swung out with it, his lanky body stretched between his firm grip on the door handle and his feet firmly planted in the doorway. He scanned the area, his shrewd gaze barely visible through the safety glasses shielding his eyes, a laser tag vest strapped to his chest, and a laser gun locked in his hand.
“You alone?” Jackson asked with a quick flick of
