Mad Gold (Providence Gold 2)

“Yup!” someone shouted, accompanied by snickers.

The other door of the truck opened, and I heard her faint footsteps as she walked around the front to stand beside me.

“So, does Benadryl cure a swollen tongue?” someone yelled, but I was too busy watching Dahlia to look at who it was.

She was leaning on the front of the truck with a marker and a piece of paper she’d gotten from somewhere, frantically scratching something onto it.

When she turned around, she held it up and shrugged.

Leaning around her to read it, I growled as everyone else burst out laughing.

My ass isn’t itchy anymore.

“Cute,” I muttered, and started walking toward the asshole gallery and my front door.

“Di deed asth,” Dahlia mumbled awkwardly around her swollen tongue.

I’d never seen anything like it when the doctor had explained what it was. Jesus Christ, it was freakin’ massive. Why would someone get their tongue pierced if that’s what happened?

“Did she just say she needed ass?” Hurst Townsend, the grandfather of the family asked. I was sure I’d find out soon enough why he was here instead of with another branch of the Townsend family at their ranch in a place called Piersville.

“Ice,” I hissed through clenched teeth.

How I had already learned to understand her convoluted speech, I don’t know. But, at that moment, I realized that ironically Dahlia felt less of a stranger to me than the Townsends did.

Stomping through to the kitchen, I filled a beaker with ice from the thing on the door of the freezer and walked back to where Dahlia was now standing, looking at the line of weirdos who were all staring at her.

“So, you got your tongue pierced?” Levi asked, leering at Dahlia, which pissed me off. “You single?”

Dahlia squeaked and took a step back right into my chest. The squeak that followed was louder, and she tried to jump and turn at the same time, ending up groaning and bending over as she held her stomach.

This had been another surprise – the reason for those weird movements on the plane had been the fresh piercing in her belly button.

Who the hell got their belly buttons pierced before a flight?

“Is she okay?” Jer, the father of the younger generation of Townsends asked, taking a step forward as he looked at her with concern.

“She got her belly button pierced today too,” I explained, gently helping her straighten back up again and passing her the ice.

“Belly button and tongue,” Levi said as he grinned and took a step forward, wiggling his eyebrows up and down. “Seriously, are you single?”

My hand shot out, grabbed the beaker of ice out of Dahlia’s hand and launched it at his head before I could even think about what I was doing.

I didn’t stop to see if I hit the target as I turned and went back to the kitchen to get her a new one, but a thud followed by the sound of ice hitting the floor and his groan filled me with immense satisfaction.

“Don’t poke Harambe?” My sister was asking in confusion as I walked back toward them with the new ice. I refused to drink out of glasses, they didn’t hold enough, so I had big plastic beakers – non pussy tumblers.

“What the hell?” I sounded just as confused as Luna had.

“Wasn’t Harambe that gorilla?” Noah asked, taking his phone out and tapping the screen. Nodding, he held it up and showed us. “Yeah, that was the gorilla who was protecting the little kid and got shot. Well, it sounds like he was protecting him,” he muttered the last bit, frowning as he looked back at his screen.

“Who’s Harambe?” I asked looking around for a gorilla.

When I looked back at her, she was pointing at me and grinning.

All the pieces of the puzzle fell into place and I groaned knowing that this would now haunt me for the rest of my life. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!”

“Easy there, gorillas in the mist,” Tate, one of the brothers, chuckled.

“Why me?” I asked no one in particular, but it truly needed asked. All I wanted was a peaceful and normal life.

That’s when I felt something poking my hand and looked down to see Dahlia holding a banana that she’d gotten from the bunch in the fruit bowl on the coffee table.

Snatching it from her hand, I walked back to the kitchen listening to the gorilla jokes start behind me.

“Come back, King Kong. We’re only messing with you!”

Fuck my life. Seriously, fuck it hard!ThreeDahliaI hadn’t seen or heard from Madix Blue since the morning after I’d spent the night at his. That night, he’d put me in his spare room, given me some Ibuprofen to help with the swelling and had then said goodnight. The following morning, he’d dropped me off at Dad’s friend’s house (to pick up the keys since he was sober) with a grunt, and that had been it.