Let’s also add into it that he was shooting buds with the longest-serving Piersville judge, so anything he had a vested interest in here happened how he wanted it to.
In short: he was a dick when I was younger, he was a dick now, and how he’d become Mayor was highly suspicious.
Turning my head so that I was facing Carter, I saw him glaring at the ground. “Is there anything we can do to help?”
His answer was simple. “Yeah, don’t vote the cock or his fuckhead sons in again. That whole family belongs behind bars.”
Coming up beside us, my parents, Bill, and Hurst all chimed in with their agreements. Logan didn’t say a word throughout it all, he just continued to rub up and down my back in soothing, slow movements.
Tilting my head back to watch him, I took in the dark circles under his eyes and the tension in his face. “You need some sleep, dude.”
Lowering his head, he gave me a smile that had zero power behind it, just exhaustion. “No shit. I also need assholes to stop fucking around, but so far, they seem dedicated to doing just that.”
“Is there anything I can do to help you?”
The question had been an innocent one, but the way his eyes softened and lowered to my mouth proved he hadn’t taken it that way. His answer backed it up. “Tonight. No interruptions, no phone calls, just you and me tonight.”
If I was a lady, I might have been offended by how certain he sounded that it’d happen. Thankfully I was no lady, and my coochie was a whore who would’ve screamed ‘Yes!’ if she could. “I like the sound of that.”
He was just opening his mouth to say something when Dad asked, “Weren’t you due back in school?”
Apparently, the news train only choo-choo’d quickly with juicy gossip here, because I’d have thought they’d all have known what’d happened as soon as it went down.
“There was a malfunction with the fire alarm system. The alarm started blaring out of nowhere, and the sprinklers in the offices and some classrooms went off. We vacated the school while it was checked to make sure there wasn’t a fire, but then they realized there was a problem anyway—not all of the sprinklers that went off were on the same circuit. We also don’t know why it was triggered, so without a functioning and reliable fire alarm system until it’s fixed, we can’t be in the building.”
“How old is the system?” Logan asked, sounding irritated by it all. “That’s dangerous.”
“Here’s the kicker—it’s eight months old. The school was ordered to upgrade its system last year, so Kirkwood took bids for the work and awarded it to—”
“Lemme guess, a company associated with his friends or family,” Hurst drawled, sharing a look with Bill.
“You should run for mayor, Hurst,” Dad suggested, and suddenly they all started talking again about what a great idea it was even though Hurst said he’d rather pluck his nose hairs with chopsticks.
Using their distraction, Logan leaned in and whispered, “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Huffing out a breath, I looked at Pops’ car sadly. “Yeah, just embarrassed and upset that I dinged his vehicle
. It wasn’t that bad an accident, but I wanted to keep it the way he’d left it. Every time I drive it, I’m scared I’m going to do something like that, so I was really hoping my car would be here by now.”
“It means that much to you?”
Biting down on my lip, I realized how dumb it sounded, given that either Mom or I could’ve been hurt, but I couldn’t help it. “I learned to drive in his old truck, so when it broke down and couldn’t be repaired, he put it in the garage and made sure rust didn’t set in. He didn’t want to ever stop driving it because of the memories we had in it, so he sort of preserved it to keep those memories.
“Two years ago, I came home one weekend, and we went to find him a new one.” I pointed at the Toyota 4Runner. “That one. We took it out for a test drive together, drove around for a while after he bought it, had a picnic in the back while we discussed my job and plans for the future…” I swallowed back the tears that wanted to come out thinking about the memories. “He didn’t have it long, but he wanted memories of us in it, so every opportunity he got, that’s what we did.”
“I get it,” he sighed, surprising me. “I absolutely get it. The truck I used to drive us around in is in the barn behind my parents’ house. I couldn’t get rid of it when it broke down, either.”
“Well, I’ve got some good news for y’all,” Jarrod Klein announced, having joined us at some point during the aftermath of the incident. “It can be fixed, no problem.”
Okay, I’m not going to lie, every time I looked at Jarrod or his brothers, I got flustered. There was something magical in the water when those men were conceived, and they had the kind of hotness that made your brain just flatline. I don’t know how Katy did anything with him around because all I’d do is stare and drool.
Like I was doing right at that moment.
With my arms around Logan.
Oops.
A glance around showed that my Klein-predicament hadn’t gone unnoticed, so I didn’t dare look up to see what Logan’s expression was. Instead, I tried to wing it.