No Saint (Wild Men 6)

Sometimes I forget this whole goddamn town has it out for me. It’s Luna’s fault.

She makes me forget the bad.

Nobody gives me a hand up, not that I expected it. My back’s bruised to hell, and my head is throbbing in time to my pounding heart, but otherwise I’m just fine.

What the fuck... that wasn’t an accident, was it? And thinking back at the string of near misses I’ve had in the past weeks, I’m starting to wonder if someone hasn’t decided to help me take that little last step in my downward spiral and end it all.

Hell’s balls.

I’m just talking out of my ass, of course. Maybe that’s all they were: near misses, near accidents because my head’s not on straight. But the doubt is there, a worm eating its way through my thoughts.

Vowing to myself to be more careful from now on, I carry on with work. More careful because of Luna, for the chance to hold her in my arms tonight, kiss her lips, bury myself inside her. Erase the world, the past and the future, keeping the present like the precious damn fragile thing that it is.

***

Superintendent Asshole’s on my case again, claiming I’m slacking, and I’m of a mind to deck him just to shut him up. I’ve been working my damn ass off, keeping an eye for any loose rubble, spilled oil or loosened scaffolds, and it’s taking all my concentration to keep all the balls in the air without the bastard yelling in my ear about being lazy.

Muttering under my breath about where he can shove his lame ass-chewing, I grab my pack of smokes and stalk out of the site, because I have the right to a break, dammit, and I’m taking it. Fuck that guy.

I almost drop it when my phone chimes again, and I grunt, starting to get pissed. I prepare to lay in on my half-brother, I pull out the phone.

But it’s from Luna.

And I can’t fucking help the way my heart jolts and my mouth smiles.

‘Sorry I vanished’ she writes and my smile widens. ‘My aunt’s here to visit. She’s leaving tomorrow.’

I wait but she doesn’t say anything else and I curse myself as I impatiently start typing back, to ask if she’ll meet me, come over tonight, be...

Be there.

My fingers freeze on the phone screen. Shit. It keeps happening when it comes to her—my every last defense crumbling before I know it, leaving me exposed. It’s never happened to me before.

What I feel for this girl has knocked me on my ass, that strange, unnamed feeling, so huge it punches my breath out sometimes. It’s like a dragon, blowing fire through my veins, gripping my chest in its claws. I’m afraid to poke it in case it bites my damn head off.

Yeah, not touching it with a ten-foot pole.

Thankfully she shoots me another text before I drive myself nuts, and I let out a relieved breath when I read it.

‘Your place tonight?’

I chuckle, rub a hand over my face, kinda amazed that I didn’t manage to chase her away with my erratic behavior and asshole-y moments.

‘Wear something sexy,’ I write back and turn back to the site, ready to take whatever the superintendent or any other son of a bitch wants to dish out on my plate today. There’s a weight off my chest I hadn’t realized was crushing me, and now it’s gone.

I’m gonna see my girl tonight.

***

Of course my good mood is a magnet for trouble. Good things usually are, getting life ideas on how to trick you and then kick your ass.

So of course I’m intercepted on the way home—to the house, dammit, not my home, never—by Ed and his usual band of psychos.

Fred and Crichton are with them, I note with distant interest, and wait, is that Jenner hanging back, watching us?

“I’m honored,” I spit out. “Looks like the whole damn town showed up for the party. Has anyone brought drinks?”

“Told ya, Ross. You’re either with us or against us.”