Though, likely, that had a lot to do with my sister and her extensive upkeep on the premises.
When I’d gone to prison, I’d asked my sister to sell the Harley I was currently sitting on to pay the house payments for me.
Instead, she’d kept the bike and had gotten a second job all so she could have it for me when I got out.
Which she did.
And now I was looking at a house that I still had to pay for without a job to pay for it with.
Getting off the bike, I stood up and stretched my arms above my head, feeling my shirt ride up and not caring.
Absently, I dropped my hands back down to my sides, not bothering to tuck my shirt back down as I did and stared at the front door.
The first step was the hardest.
I remembered the exact conversation I’d had with Vanessa about the color.
“What do you think about blue?” I asked.
“I think that you should just paint it a color. If I had to choose, it’d be a brown or something that wouldn’t draw attention. Something that wouldn’t show dirt well.” Vanessa laughed.
My partner in both life and work was a minimalist. She liked order and functionality. What she didn’t like was pomp and flare.
And a blue door was exactly that.
“What about red?” I asked, ignoring her.
She sighed. “I don’t care, Slate.”
I grinned and looked over at her sitting in the squad car next to me.
“Why not?” I asked. “This is our place we’re talking about. You should care that the color of the front door is nice.”
She rolled her eyes. “I care that the door works. I care that the door holds out intruders. What I do not care about is the color.”
My stomach rolled at the memory.
It rolled again as my eyes caught on the stupid nameplate that I’d carved out of wood, stained, and then hung up beside the door that she repeatedly said she didn’t like the color of.
“Babe, when I said that I didn’t care what color, I didn’t mean paint the damn door fire engine red,” she murmured as she stared at the door in horror. “What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that you said you didn’t care what color the door was, and I liked the color red,” I muttered darkly. “How was I supposed to know that you actually cared?”
Jesus Christ, how the hell was I supposed to navigate that minefield?
Vanessa was the worst of the worst.
At one point, you would think that you could treat her like a normal woman. As if she actually knew what she was thinking and spoke exactly what she thought.
Then there were the times like then when she went back on her word and actually acted like a girl.
“I can paint it a different color,” I sighed. “What do you think of the nameplate by the door?”
“I think that you’ll have to put my last name under it,” she snickered. “I’m not a Solis.”
I looked at her like she was dense. “You will be. Remember? That’s what that little ring on your left ring finger is for.”
She scoffed. “I won’t be changing my name though, silly.”
I viciously shut those memories down.
Those memories led to nowhere that I wanted to be. No sir.
Forcing myself to take the first step forward, I put one foot in front of the other, then cursed when I realized that I forgot my bag.
It was as I was turning on my heel that I saw her.
She was lying on the hammock.
The one that I’d put up before I’d left all those years ago.
Honestly, I was surprised that it wasn’t disintegrated.
I was also pissed.
All of a sudden…so pissed.
I crossed my arms over my chest and contemplated what to do.
It wasn’t that she was in my yard and using the hammock that was mine that pissed me off. At least, not all of it, anyway.
What pissed me off is that she used it and it annoyed me.
Which had to be why I did what I did next.
Walking up to the blonde, whose hair was so long, thick and curly that it was snaking through the gaps of the rope material that was supporting her, nearly going all the way to the ground as she slowly rocked back and forth, I stared.
It was then that I realized who the blonde was.
It was her.
The girl, Harleigh, that visited Tray.
The woman that I hadn’t seen in well over three months since I’d left the penitentiary.
Elation and exultation barreled through me, and I nearly turned around and walked away.
But I had a thing about people touching my things.
It’d developed in my first year of being in the pen.
Your things were not your own.
It didn’t matter if they were actually yours or not. The guards—at least a few of them—and the other inmates didn’t give a shit.