It Happens (Bear Bottom Guardians MC 6)

Hell, the only spot of color on her at all was the necklace that Annmarie used to wear—an oval opal on a delicate silver chain. Something that I had actually given to Jubilee for Christmas, but Annmarie had stolen and had never given back.

At the time I’d given it to Jubilee, it’d been my first Christmas with Annmarie, and Jubilee’s first Christmas with Eitan. We’d all exchanged gifts, and Jubilee and Annmarie had laughed as they’d gotten their gifts that I’d bought the two of them with my hard-earned part-time paycheck at the auto body shop that I did paint for.

I’d gotten Annmarie a deep purple oval stone necklace because purple had been her favorite color. I’d gotten Jubilee the white opal because I had no idea what she liked and felt bad for not getting her anything.

I thumbed the silver belt buckle Jubilee had gotten me and took another sip of my beer.

An obnoxious laugh had me stiffening.

Sometimes I wondered if Zuri laughed like that just because she knew that it grated on my nerves. It was a high-pitched, ear-piercing laugh that never failed to hit an octave that sounded like nails on a chalkboard.

And just when she stopped, I let out a relieved breath only to see BJ come up to the bar four stools down from me and order his ‘girl’ a margarita despite having a waitress that was running back and forth to them all night.

I knew why he’d showed up near the bar. He wanted me to see him.

Well, goddammit, I had.

And now I was pissed.

Would it be so fucking hard for him to stay across the goddamn bar and give me goddamn room on one single day of the year?

Why yes, yes it would kill him.

The motherfucker.

I downed my beer and was just about to turn on my barstool, giving him the attention that he so obviously wanted, with my fist, when a feminine sigh sounded from my other side.

“Listen,” Jubilee said as she sidled up to the bar. “Getting drunk and then starting a fight with those two isn’t going to do you any good. The town is on your side because you’re the one wronged. You start stooping down to their level and you’re going to regret it. You’re a sheriff’s deputy, act like it.”

Jubilee sat down on the barstool next to me and continued drinking her beer, and I reluctantly started to cool down because goddammit, she was right. I needed to cool my jets. I needed to get a handle on this anger that I felt toward them, yet it was hard seeing as every goddamn time that I did try to let it go they brought it back up again.

With a vengeance.

But I didn’t stop drinking.

There was no way that was happening today.

“Why are you talking to me?” I grumbled, gesturing to the bartender for another round with a raise of my glass.

She nodded her head but didn’t fill me up a glass of beer, but a glass of water.

I glared at the woman at my side.

“Why must you always make deals with the bartender before I get here?” I asked with annoyance.

“Because if I don’t, nobody else will. And your dad and I have an understanding,” she muttered darkly.

I didn’t bother to say anything to that. Jubilee’s dad, Pete, and I had an understanding, too.

No matter what happened, or how much we disliked each other, I would always have Jubilee’s back. I was sure the same went for her and the ‘understanding’ she had with my father.

Whatever the reason, we’d never let anything happen to the other. Despite both of us hating the other.

Jubilee’s and my dislike for each other went way back. It didn’t start the day that we both were struck by lightning and Eitan and Annmarie died. No, it started back when her father and my father first brought us around each other at the age of six and nine and she stole my favorite hat and threw it into the fire.

It only got worse from there, and eventually our aversion had turned into a strong dislike, closer to hate.

Not that I would say I hated Jubilee now, but I definitely didn’t like her.

I took another swig of beer instead of saying anything to her idiotic statement.

“Thirty-four years old,” she murmured. “How do you feel? Old?”

I looked over at her and glared. “You’re only three years younger than me, and I’m sure I’m in way better shape than you. Why don’t you tell me how you feel?”

She made a disgusted face. “I was just trying to make conversation.”

“Well make it with someone else. You annoy me,” I muttered darkly.

Jubilee rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

Another dark laugh had us both looking in the direction of Zuri, who’d come up to get the drinks this time.

“Still can’t get along, I see?” Zuri sneered.