One Chance, Fancy (Bear Bottom Guardians MC 5)

Bayou frowned. Brielle looked gleeful.

“Have a good day!” Brielle chirped, sounding so falsely cheerful that I laughed on the way out the door.

That laugh fell away the moment Bayou didn’t make a move to follow me.

Was I fooling myself here? Was I thinking more into this than there actually was?

Maybe Bayou’s definition of ‘boyfriend and girlfriend’ wasn’t what mine was. Maybe he’d never defend me against Brielle. If that was the case, I’d seriously have to rethink this.

Brielle wasn’t going away. That I knew.

Hell, Hoax had still had quite a bit to do with her despite Brielle being openly hostile to his now-wife, then girlfriend.

Pru had to deal with Brielle stalking her.

Stalking.

Stalking was a bad thing, no matter who did it.

Slamming the door a little harder than necessary, I crossed the street and walked over to my sister’s place, smiling widely when I saw Hoax out there watering the lawn…and the pig.

“Bacon’s getting dirty,” I told him as I walked up the walkway.

Hoax’s eyes flicked to me and then narrowed. “Why do you look like you’re about to murder someone?”

I opened my mouth to tell him exactly why, and then closed it.

He didn’t need to know that I had my doubts when it came to Brielle. I’d tell my sister sometime when Hoax wasn’t around so we could commiserate about her awfulness without anyone there to hear us whine.

“Nothing,” I lied.

I didn’t turn around and glare at the house like I wanted to, either.

Instead, I just stood there while Bacon rolled around in the dirt while Hoax continued to spray him down.

“Are you watering the flowers or the pig?” I asked curiously after a few long minutes of silence.

“Both.” He paused. “Once Pru got too pregnant to maneuver herself over even ground without a little bit of help, I made it a rule that Bacon couldn’t get into the shower with her. Now I do this, and it seems to be a good enough substitute.”

I frowned.

“He looks at you,” Hoax said, surprising me from my contemplative mood.

I frowned. “What?”

“He looks at you. He looks at you and doesn’t look away like he does with the rest of us. It’s not anything anyone but me notices, really. He’s been doing it so long to me that I don’t really even notice it. But with you? He can’t take his eyes off of you.”

I felt my heart swell in my chest at his words.

“You don’t have anything to worry about with Brielle and him,” Hoax continued. “Brielle is like a broken little doll to him that he has to protect from more harm. You’re not a broken doll. You’re like that bird in the sky that he’s so captivated by that he wants nothing more than to reach out and keep you.”

Out of everything he could’ve compared me to, comparing me to a bird was the one thing that actually penetrated the nerves.Chapter 13Snow in November happens because people prematurely decorate for Christmas.

-T-shirt

Bayou

I slammed my hand down hard, straight into the inmate’s chest, and bellowed at him. “Stop!”

What in the absolute fuck was going on?

I’d had more fights and almost-riots in the last month than I had in my entire career at the prison.

The man that I had pinned down with my hand planted firmly in his chest growled low in his throat. “Fuck you!”

He struggled to sit back up, and that was when I decided that I was done playing nice. Pulling out the taser, I took him down with a four-second jolt straight to the neck.

He stopped moving and went limp.

The next person I took out was the inmate struggling underneath Rome, who was having to use his considerable strength to hold the man down and also try not to hurt him.

Normally we wouldn’t give one flying fuck about whether we were hurting them or not, but in the next couple days, the state was coming to inspect the prison and we didn’t really want any roughed-up inmates telling stories to the state department that would make them stay any longer than they needed to.

It was audit time, and I was not looking forward to it.

Not with the way the prison had been on pins and needles lately as things went from bad to worse when it came to the infighting.

The man underneath stopped struggling within seconds of me pressing the taser to his neck. Then he was out just like the other guy.

I stood up and re-holstered my taser, giving the remaining men glares. “Go back to your cells.”

They did with the utmost reluctance, not stopping once like I thought they might.

I turned to Rome. “Help me get them to their cells and spread the word. We’re in lockdown for the rest of the day.”

“Gonna be unhappy about that,” Rome admitted.

I didn’t really care.

Not when I could feel the blood running down my face, and the black eye forming already.