How could I not love him?
CHAPTER 20
How do you make a tissue dance? Put a little boogie in it.
-Text from Shine to Iris
SHINE
The day had been brutal.
Our little part of Texas had a heat index of one hundred and fifteen degrees with humidity of sixty-two percent.
That meant, the moment I drank a bottle of water, I sweated it out in fifteen minutes.
It also meant that, after I rode all the way home from delivering a note to a certain someone, I was dog-tired.
I arrived at my house to a van in my parking spot.
One that had a big ass lock painted on the side of it.
Smile kicking up the corner of my mouth, I walked up to the man that was changing the locks on my front door.
“Hey,” I called to the familiar man.
Desiderrick, a man that I’d gone to high school with once upon a time, looked up with a grin. “Didn’t know this was your place.”
I nodded. “It is. What’s up?”
“Got a call to change the locks today,” he said. “Saw that cute little thing inside and thought I had a chance. But, sadly, she told me she was taken. If I’d have known it was by you, I’d have pushed a little harder.”
I scoffed and slapped him on the back as I walked past. “Keep dreamin’, bro. Keep dreamin’. You couldn’t steal my girl in high school, and you can’t steal her now.”
Desi snorted. “I could’ve if I wanted to. But you always drifted toward the ones that were crazy, or high maintenance. Or both. Don’t know if I can handle either of those things right now, so probably a good thing she turned me down.”
After a few more minutes of bullshitting with him, I walked inside to hearing Iris’s voice from the other room.
“No, I haven’t seen her,” I heard her snarl. “Why would I go see her now, after all that I just found out? I mean, Mother, she slept with my boyfriend. And it wasn’t as if this was something that was just once. From what she told me, it was more than once.” There was a long pause. “Not to mention, how the hell would I hear from her when she’s blocked me on all social media accounts, as well as blocked my phone number? Kind of hard to hear from someone when they do that.”
There was a long moment of silence and then, “No, I will not go to dinner with her. I’ll stay my happy ass here Sunday and try to cool down enough to have a meal with her next week. Until then, y’all are on your own… not that you have a problem eating without me.”
I walked up behind her where she was angrily stirring a cup of coffee.
It was apparent that the cream and sugar that she put in her cup was well mixed.
I caught her hand, stilled it, and then bent down to press a kiss to her exposed neck.
Her long blonde hair was beyond gorgeous.
But when she had it up in a messy ponytail?
That shit did it for me.
Or maybe it was the tiny little shorts that showed she’d gone to work out at some point, and had gotten home—God, it felt good to say this was her home—and hadn’t changed out of her clothes yet.
No matter what the reason for me liking her there, I did. I fucking liked it. I liked it a whole lot.
And it scared the absolute shit out of me.
I was so lost in thought that the last thing in the world I expected was a quiet knock at the door.
When I opened it to find Lindy there, standing with a bunch of cops, I was stunned silent for a long few moments.
Iris came up behind me, squeaked her way underneath my arm and the door, and said, “What’s going on?”
“Ma’am. Sir,” the closest officer said. “We’d like to speak with you all for a few minutes.”
Frowning, I looked down at Iris, but ultimately backed away and allowed them into my house.
“What’s going on?” I asked once the door was closed.
There was a clearing of a throat and then, “The man that I now rent the house from? He’s dead.”
“We need to know where y’all were between the hours of three this afternoon and six,” the officer that’d come to be closest to me asked.
I sighed. “I was riding back from Bastrop. It’s about an hour and a half from here.”
There was a moment of silence and then the other officer, the one that looked like he had seen a little more than the average cop, asked, “Is there proof of that?”
I thought about it for a moment and then, “The person’s house that I left a note on had a doorbell camera. I’m sure that you can look for it.”
“Who is this person?” the cop asked.