Breaking Even (Sterling Shore 5)

Hadn't thought of that. And I really wish he hadn’t just put that thought in my head.

“Then I'll sleep with one eye open. I couldn't let her get away with smashing my car and not do anything about it. It wouldn't be... me.”

He tilts his head, and I keep my eyes trained on the road in front of me because I refuse to see the scrutiny in his eyes. “Then call the cops. The girl hit your car and drove off. Don't sneak into her house and saw her bed down.”

My laughter escapes before I even realize it, and Wren’s eyes widen again. Christ. You’d think I never laugh at all. Okay, so maybe it is rather rare, but that just means I’m not an easily entertained fool.

This is more fun than I realized, and I might have laughed a long time ago if I had known how fun it was to piss someone off as well as I’ve pissed her off.

I would have loved to have seen her face when she crashed to the ground after that bed collapsed. As high as that bed was, it had to have gone into a forty-five degree angle the second it fell.

We turn onto my road, and I grow curious when I see people walking down the sidewalk in mass quantities. It's rare I see more than a few joggers. These are regularly clothed people in suits and casual wear, all of them walking as though they're on a mission.

Just as I near my house, I quickly whip into the spot that will piss her off in the morning. I can't help my smug-as-fuck grin.

“Holy shit!” Wren says through a cough, his gaze going across the street to my house.

It's then I realize my lawn is littered with people who are dying laughing, and a projector screen is playing on the side of my white home. What. The. Hell?

It's a scene on repeat, and it's not exactly something I want my damn neighbors seeing.

“What the fuck is that?” I screech, irritated by the unusual octave of my voice.

I climb out of my SUV, wondering why there's guy-on-guy porn on the side of my house.

“What the hell is this?” I growl as soon as I near Leslie Marks, my neighbor from down the road.

“It's Broke Back Mountain,” she says through a chuckle, and I cringe as the scene starts back over, apparently playing on a loop as two cowboys in a tent breathe a little too heavily.

“Ah, hell,” Wren says, walking away from me like he doesn't know me at all.

I'm going to kill her.

I rush over and grab the projector, and then I stomp the fuck out of it as the sounds and images end.

Everyone is laughing, but I tune them out as I zero in on the girl sitting on her porch, grinning as she absently stirs a straw in her glass. My stride turns into a sprint, and she squeals while jumping up and running inside, dropping and shattering her glass in an attempt to escape me.

The door slams and locks seconds before I reach it, and I pound fiercely as the neighborhood continues laughing at my back.

“Who is it?” she asks in a singsong voice, a mocking lilt to her tone that proves she feels cocky and safe inside her house.

“Open the damn door!” I bark, and her laughter pours out to taunt me.

“Not happening. Consider us even.”

Even? “You've got to be fucking kidding me!”

She only laughs harder, and I glare at the door like I can blow it to pieces with the sheer power of my enraged mind. Unfortunately, all that happens is the abrupt promise of a migraine.

“Fine. You want to play this game? Then consider this a declaration of war. Just remember you started it.”

“Bring it on, Darlin’,” she says in a playful, deep tone, recycling my words from yesterday.

There will be hell to pay for this.

***

BRIN