Gen Pop (Souls Chapel Revenants MC 6) by Lani Lynn Vale

I grinned.

It was weird, getting this blatant fear.

I wasn’t used to people staring at me like I would kill them at any second.

Before I’d gone to jail, despite my overall imposing appearance, people looked at me like I was a savior.

After being locked up, though?

They now looked at me like I was going to rear back and kill them.

Needless to say, that was an adjustment, too.

“You can go take a seat and I’ll bring your order out as soon as it’s done.” She paused. “You’ll have to have chips, though. I don’t have the oil heated up anymore. I turned it off a half hour before you came in.”

I nodded once. “No problem.”

Well, it was kind of a problem.

I’d wanted fries.

But it wasn’t like I was going to make her start all over again for just my batch.

I’d deal for now.

Walking toward where the tables were, where the chairs were already stacked in preparation for cleaning up, I took a chair down and was just about to sit when I spied the clothes on the wall behind the tables.

They were sweats, really.

Sweatpants, sweatshirts, and t-shirts that all said ‘Crockett’s Corner’ on them.

I walked up to them, picked out a pair of sweats, a sweatshirt, and a t-shirt that was a size too small and hopefully would still fit, and headed to the bathroom.

I came out moments later all dressed in the clothes, the orange jumpsuit in my hands because the trash had already been taken out for the day as well.

When I came out, I headed to the counter with the tags in one hand, and a hundred-dollar bill in the other.

Murphy was at the counter, and he took the tags from me, as well as the orange jumpsuit.

“On the house,” he said, waving away my money.

I frowned. “What?”

He gestured to the suit that he’d tossed in the big trash can behind the counter.

“I was you once,” he said.

“Were you?” I asked.

Murphy didn’t look like he’d been to jail.

But then again, I didn’t think that I looked like I’d been to jail, either.

Not when I wasn’t dressed in the orange jumpsuit from hell.

He lifted his long-sleeved shirt enough to show me a tattoo on his forearm. One of a clock.

“Served eight years for assault and battery,” he said. “Caught my wife cheating on me with another man in our home. I beat the absolute dog shit out of him. Come to find out he’s some big wig executive with a shit ton of money and little else to do with his time but fuck my wife and make my life a living hell. Funny thing was, the day I went to jail we were still married. She divorced me while I was on the inside and moved in with the big wig. They were ‘nice enough’ to leave me my store,” he pointed to the roof above his head. “And the land that it was on. Thinking they were fuckin’ me over. I didn’t care. I sure the fuck didn’t want the house that she fucked other people in. About three years into my prison sentence this big oil guy comes to me and tells me I have an ass-ton of oil underneath the property that my store is sitting on. I became a millionaire overnight. Then Big Wig, also named Tarrant Beene, comes back in the picture demanding their half. Sadly, for them, I was able to win because they did their end all legal like. Best day ever, them getting told that they couldn’t have any of my earnings.”

My brows had lowered, and I could do nothing but laugh my fuckin’ ass off.

Inwardly, that was.

I didn’t outwardly show emotion.

Not anymore.

Not after what it’d gotten me last time—a prison sentence.

“What did you go in for?” he asked.

For some reason, I’d never had a problem telling anyone what I’d gone in for.

What I’d had a problem telling them was that the reason I’d done it no longer wanted anything to do with me.

“My girlfriend was hit by a rich prick kid. Seventeen-year-old who’d been spoon fed every single thing in his life.” I shook my head. “Never heard the word no. Well, he heard the word no from a friend, and he’d gone after his girl. Only, his girl looked a lot like my girl when they wore hats, and he ran my girl over and nearly killed her. Left her broken on the side of the road. Couple of weeks later when that little asshole comes into my ER, I might’ve not tried my hardest to make sure he didn’t die.”

Murphy’s shoulder went up minutely. “Shit happens.”

“Shit does happen,” I agreed.

“And your girl?” he asked. “She okay?”

I was the one to do the shoulder shrug this time.

“My girl is no longer my girl,” I explained. “She was disgusted by the way I acted, killing a kid for her, and wanted nothing more to do with me after that.”