Make Me (KPD Motorcycle Patrol 4)

She hadn’t seen the car she’d pulled out in front of, and for her troubles, she’d lost Jimmy because my dad had been pissed that he now had to deal with a child that was paralyzed from the waist down.

Sensing that they’d like some alone time, I chose to give it to them instead of being ignored.

I knew they didn’t do it on purpose, but they were mother and son. I was just the half-sister.

I knew Marta loved me. Hell, she’d helped raise me since I was a toddler. But her love for me and her love for her own son couldn’t compare.

“Anything else I can do to help you get ready for work, Jimmy?” I called out, knowing I’d given Marta and Jimmy enough time.

Jimmy looked up and held out his hand.

I went to him and smiled, bringing that hand back up to my cheek.

“No,” he said. “I’ll get Mom to give me a ride. Thank you for coming over.”

I rolled my eyes and playfully punched Jimmy in the thigh.

Jimmy gave a fake ‘ow.’

I flexed my hands.

What I would give for him to feel that pain.

“Love you guys. I’ll see y’all on Tuesday, hopefully,” I said as I gathered my purse and belongings up.

Marta gave me a quick hug. “Love you, too. Be careful at work tomorrow.”

I gritted my teeth. “Aren’t I always?”

Marta gave me a pointed look. “No.”

That was true.

I wasn’t always careful.

“I’ll be as careful as I can be,” I admitted. “Y’all have a good one.”

With that, I left before I could be mothered anymore.

I knew that Marta meant well, and I loved her like I once did my own mother, but I didn’t have any choice where I worked. I couldn’t be picky seeing as every single job I was ever hired onto fired me within a week.

See, Royal St. James was a royal fuck-up. A royal pain in the ass. A royal nothing.

I had a special set of skills. A special set of skills that nearly always got me fired—at least before I’d started working my current job—in trouble, or both.

Then again, I didn’t really try to keep my jobs when I was younger.

I knew it pissed my father off to know that I job-hopped as much as I did, but when I felt the urge to wander, I had.

Speaking of my father, I wasn’t out of the house for a whole minute before he was calling me.

I answered with a long-suffering sigh.

“Hello, Dad. How are you today?” I called out jovially.

“Get that woman out of my house,” were my father’s first words to me that morning.

I looked at my phone and considered hanging up, but he’d just call back.

And I didn’t want to deal with the asshole’s constant pestering.

He would bother the shit out of me until he got to say what he wanted to say, and then I’d agree just because that’s the only way he would stop, and do what I wanted the next day regardless of the previous day’s lecture.

“I can’t,” I said. “I’m already gone.”

“You just left the house. I can see you in the driveway still,” he said, not sounding amused.

I shrugged, knowing he could see me on the security system camera. “I can’t. I have an appointment with my gynecologist. I may have a sexually transmitted disease and can’t miss it,” I lied. “And since Torri isn’t here to help him, I had no choice but to call Marta.”

My dad was silent on the other end of the line for a few seconds, then he cleared his throat. “I hope that’s a joke.”

It was, but I wasn’t going to tell him it was.

The more annoyed I made my dad, the more he focused on me and the less he focused on the woman in his house that loved her son.

“Anyway,” I said. “If you’d just allow Marta to come over every day to help like she wants to, Torri wouldn’t have to be the one to half-ass him getting ready.”

And Jimmy wouldn’t have to come over to my job or Marta’s bakery and have one of us help him change his underwear because Torri didn’t feel like doing it that day.

“That woman is not allowed in my house anymore,” he said, angry and pissed, I was sure more at my words about having an STD rather than at Marta now.

“That woman loves her son and wants to help,” I said. “And I’ll keep inviting her over to help because I want to.”

My father didn’t say anything. “I’ll change the codes to the house, and you won’t be able to come over anymore.”

I laughed at that. “Your precious Jimmy would hate that. And he’d eventually wear you down.”

Just like he always did.

My dad threatened and implemented the ‘keep Royal out’ plan at least once every couple of months. It’d last for about two or three days before Jimmy was able to convince my father to let me back into the door.