I close the distance between us. “I’m trying to figure out whether to be impressed or amused by all these detective skills you’re showing me right now.”
“How about just answering the question?” She takes a step back and gives me another of those adorable squints. “I’m not going to be able to enjoy our hot one-night stand if I’m worried about the cops busting in here to arrest us for breaking and entering. This is Latham County, and I’m Black.”
I don’t pretend not to know what she’s talking about.
At the ceremony where they renamed the county after him, my dad told a story about how Blacks and Whites lived on separate sides of the lake when he was growing up here. And the county-wide rename was partly to patch over the whole scandal that came after the feds raided the compound of the white supremacist motorcycle club that used to sit on a large patch of land on the “white side” of the lake.
But . . . “The cops here know better than to cross the Reapers,” I assure her. “Doesn’t matter what color you are. You’re here with me.”
“Okay, fine.” She holds up her hands. “I’m not worried about the cops anymore.”
Hyena said she was new, but she must have heard about our reputation. The Reapers transport illegal shit all over the South, and Waylon and Hades are looking to expand up to the Midwest and the East Coast. The police here either agree to work with us behind the scenes or mysteriously disappear.
“But I’m still nosy,” she says, glancing around. “I want to know who actually owns this place.”
“Relax, the cabin belongs to my dad.”
“Your dad,” she repeats, her eyes going wide. “But you’re a Reaper. Reapers crawl out of holes, not cabins that look like they could be featured in the Tennessee edition of Town & Country.”
I’m not supposed to let her know who I am, or that I share a last name with the whole damn county. So I just shrug and say, “I’m the black sheep in my family,” and leave it at that.
“Hey, me too!” she answers to my surprise, clapping me on the arm like Geoff does whenever he meets somebody else who also went to Vanderbilt.
But then she winces and admits, “At least I’m trying to be. I guess you could say I’m going through a rebellious phase right now. Hence me working in the roadhouse and you know . . . being here with you. But why did you decide to become a black sheep?”
I shake my head, a little confused. Every word out of this girl’s mouth seems designed to throw me off my game.
“It wasn’t really a decision,” I answer. “My parents got divorced when I was pretty young. My mom was kind of shitty, but she was, you know, there. But then she went home when I was still in high school, so I ended up having to spend more than holidays and a couple of weeks in the summer with my dad and brother here in Nashville. Turns out I couldn’t cut it at any of the private boarding schools he sent me to, so he tried to ship me off to military school. But fuck that. I dropped out and joined up with the Reapers instead.”
I don’t know why I told her all of that. That’s not the part of my backstory I share in the media or even in private.
But she nods like she completely understands where I’m coming from. “That’s a lot of good reasons to rebel. And I’m sorry about your mom. It’s horrible to lose a parent before you’re ready.”
This is way more deep talk than I wanted in a one-night stand. Part of me is telling myself that I’ve already said too much. But the other part of me can’t help being curious about her backstory too.
I find myself asking, “How about you? Why did you become a rebel?”
“Mainly for the opposite reasons,” she answers with a wry note in her voice. “My parents were really great. But then they died in a car accident when I was still a kid.”
She lets out a sharp breath, and I can tell the memory still pains her. “For a long time after that, I thought I had to be exactly what they would have wanted me to be. Get everything exactly right to preserve their legacy. But then, the grandma who raised me after they died passed away too . . . just a few months ago. And I guess that’s when I kind of lost my mind. I realized that no matter how good I try to be, that’s how everyone I love will end up eventually—dead in the ground. Including me.”
She chuffs, and the sound comes out bitter and a little sad. “I guess I just got sick of trying to be my parent’s legacy. I decided to live my own life. That’s why I took the job at the roadhouse. I’m saving up money to move to New York.”