His question jogged my brain enough for me to scan the road. Har’s beat-up truck sat at the curb.
I smiled. “You’re right, Brute. Bad idea. You have a nice day. I’ll call an Uber.”
He was speaking, but I hung up and beelined it inside. It wasn’t cool to take Har’s truck, and it would be uncomfortable to rummage around his bedroom in search of the keys. But he should’ve known better. After all, I had been nosy as a girl, and he’d accused me of being that way still.
Sometimes you get what you ask for.
Fortunately, Har kept his bedroom neat as a pin and the keys to his pick-up were right on the dresser. That was unfortunate for the nosy side of me who had looked forward to rooting around in his nightstand and other things, but I had wheels and a girl couldn’t ask for more.
Har
LAST NIGHT, HE’D BEEN in the kitchen when the light shining from beneath her door went out. An hour after her light had gone dark, he quietly opened her door. With nothing but ambient light, he could still see the box had been closed and nudging it with his foot he knew it was full to the brim.
It shouldn’t matter to him if she left, but something made him want her in his house. When he found her with his mother, he thought that feeling would evaporate, but seeing her and Mom together had intensified his belief she needed to be here. Yet he had no idea why that was, no matter how much he tried to figure it out.
Har hadn’t flattened someone’s tire in years. But doing it to Stephie’s bike gave him a perverse sense of joy. That joy stemmed from the reason he had the road name “Harmful.” Deep down, he knew deflating her tire would cause himself as much harm as it caused her, but he did it anyway. He looked forward to her reaction.
When Brute got a call from her at ten in the morning, Har grinned. Brute’s question of whether she’d ever driven a truck made him choke with laughter. The quickness with which Stephanie ended the call surprised him.
With a grin at his brother, he said, “Gotta run, man. Put her out of her misery.”
Brute laughed as only a stepbrother would.
Fifteen minutes later, when Har pulled onto his street, it looked different. Then he noticed his truck was missing. He swung his bike into the garage and closed the door. Inside, he found his spare set of keys to the truck were gone.
“Damn, is she smart,” he muttered.
Times like these made him miss one of his high school buddies who had gone through the police academy, but left the Biloxi Police Department for the FBI. Nothing would be better than Stephie being pulled over on a stolen vehicle claim, but he couldn’t do that to her. And not just because his buddy wasn’t around to do him a favor – no matter how unethical it would have been.
He had half a mind to take a folding chair to the driveway and wait for her, but it was too hot and too humid for that shit. Instead, he went to the living room and flipped to the sports channel.
She’d be home soon enough.
WHEN HE HEARD THE GARAGE door open, Har sauntered to his bedroom doorway. His bike sitting in the garage would alert her to his presence so he had no way to surprise her. The door opened and she shot daggers at him with her eyes.
“I do not understand you, Michael Har Walcott!”
His head dipped in a half-nod. “Could say the same thing about you, Stephanie Miss Priss Combes.”
Her eyes bulged and he fought laughing. “I am not prissy!”
“Tomato, tom-ah-toe. Too prissy to fill your tire back up.”
Her arms folded on her chest. “Yeah. Convenient how that suddenly took care of itself.”
He shook his head. “Not convenient. Took a fuck-ton of my time to put your tire back to rights.”
That was a lie since it only took him thirty minutes, but she didn’t need to know that.
Her lips flattened and she poked a finger at his chest. “Serves you right, since you deflated my damn tire to start with. I don’t understand, Har. I don’t need to be mooching off you. I’m trying to move out, and you do shit to keep me here! Why?”
“You don’t need to leave.”
“How can you say that? I’m costing you money! Your water bill has doubled for sure, your electric bill can’t be far behind it. Either I contribute toward that, or you stop fucking with my efforts to move out.”
“Not doin’ that.”
“Why?” she cried, like he was zapping her last ounce of patience.
“Why do you want to leave so bad?”
“Why do you want me to stay?”
“I’m doing you a solid letting you stay here. No rent. No nothing. Bonus, I know someone’s here when I’ve got to stay at the clubhouse or make a long run. Which is why you don’t need to pay me rent.”
She blew out a breath with her eyes closed. Those eyes remained closed longer than he liked, but when she opened them, he did not like what he saw. Sheer frustration.
“I need to move.”
His eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“I need to.”
He shook his head. “Don’t buy it. Why do you need to?”
Her lips pressed together into a line. Seeing her irritated expression, he knew what she was getting at.
“Mom was right about you,” he said in a low voice.
Her eyes blazed at him. “No.”
His eyebrow cocked. “So you didn’t have a crush on me?”
“That doesn’t matter. I need to move on, be on my own.”
“Why?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter, Michael!”
“Stay,” he said in a patient tone.
“Why won’t you let me go? You’re the worst.”
He frowned. “How am I ‘the worst?’”
She leveled serious eyes at him and arched a brow. His jaw clenched at how much better she did it
